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Re: [LUG] OT surveillance

 

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Brad Rogers wrote:
> Do people genuinely believe that, prior to the advent of email,
> governments did *not* 'spy' on their own citizens?  They've always done
> it, they always will.  It's just that email makes it easier for them to
> do so.

Yes, that. It makes it a _lot_ easier and our activities are a _lot_
more traceable.

> Whilst they have the (in theory) ability to monitor all communications,
> something like 99.99% of it will be of no interest to them.  They'll
> monitor people that are known activists (e.g. Abu Hamza), members of
> dissident organisations and so forth.  The rest will be cherry picked
> either at random, or flagged because of certain criteria such as
> keywords.

'Dissident organisations' like family and friends of a murdered black teenager?

> Does anyone here believe that what they get up to is *so* important that
> GCHQ monitor their every move?  Surely not.

Although I have performed activities such as 'being a member of a
political organisation' and 'supporting gay rights', they weren't
illegal, or even controversial, in the time and place where they
happened. But they are illegal elsewhere and have been illegal in the
past. It's good to keep this in mind.

I actually think the vast majority of the people at the NSA and GCHQ
mean well. They are misguided and wrong, not evil. But the information
is there for anyone to access. It would take one bad person, or one
change of government, or one change of public definition of evil, for
this to have really bad consequences.

Also, as Snowden himself showed, it takes one person to take away a
lot of secret information. In this case it was information on the
operation of the NSA's surveillance program. Perhaps next time it is
information on certain activities that are deemed evil by a small but
violent minority.

Martijn.

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