GCHQ chief accuses US tech giants of becoming terrorists' 'networks of choice'

[Victorious Secret]

 

Oh boy, looks like the FBI found some common insanity with the GCHQ, claiming the same nonsense that Apple, Google and any other company that gives a remote damn about consumer privacy is now "harbouring terrorists" or some nonsense. 

 

I gotta hand it to them, they are doing their best "Fox News Sensational Headline Generating" news bit. These guys must be very upset that companies and consumers are finally taking control of what is naturally theirs. 

 

Here is a pro tip for life all you intelligence agencies: do your jobs. Investigative work. You know, like the good old days. Stop trying to setup systems to catch crime before it happens. Thats a dangerous slope. Get your warrants, get probable cause, then go barging in asking for data. Don't expect the open door anymore, not with these large tech giants realizing that their enormous wealth and power actually helps them out against the government in more ways than just effective lobbying. 
 

Privacy has never been “an absolute right”, according to the new director of GCHQ, who has used his first public intervention since taking over at the helm of Britain’s surveillance agency to accuse US technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists.

 

Robert Hannigan said a new generation of freely available technology has helped groups like Islamic State (Isis) to hide from the security services and accuses major tech firms of being “in denial”, going further than his predecessor in seeking to claim that the leaks of Edward Snowden have aided terror networks.

 

GCHQ and sister agencies including MI5 cannot tackle those challenges without greater support from the private sector, “including the largest US technology companies which dominate the web”, Hannigan argued in an opinion piece written for the Financial Times just days into his new job.

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/03/privacy-gchq-spying-robert-hannigan

[mansoor_]

Well we can now justify arresting anybody with this logic. 

[bob345]

My brain hurts from the stupidity of these people.

[DigitalHermit]

Can someone please do a...

tl;dr Whoever cares about privacy is a terrorist.

/halfjoke

[RH00D]

Can someone please do a...

His entire post is 303 words... It's not that long...

[Trik'Stari]

Meh, Fox news isn't the only sensationalist news network out there.

 

The FBI can suck my ass.

[Victorious Secret]

His entire post is 303 words... It's not that long...

 

The article itself was a decent read, and not too long. 

 

Its funny, people have the time to find a image to make a shitpost but they refuse to put the same amount of time into, oh I don't know, reading the article. 

[RainfallWithin]

These 'security' agencies are making themselves look foolish, as well as showing that they depend too much on backdoors and the like to spy on people.

[Trik'Stari]

Lol My TL;DR would be 

 

"they're in a rough spot like the fbi, because they can't break into people's computers and plant evidence at the behest of their superiors"

[IdortMasterRace]

Wait... Apple and Google care about privacy?

 

Fucking lol, wasn't Google literally going through people's email a few months ago and had reported people to the police based on stuff they had in their inbox?

[LAwLz]

Some asked for a TL;DR so here:

An organization in the UK specializing in spying is saying that Google and Apple enabling encryption by default on their devices are helping terrorist groups like ISIS. The FBI said earlier that if Apple enables it the iPhone will become "the phone of choice for the pedophile".

They are trying to push the idea that "encrypting phones will help terrorists and pedos, therefore it is bad".

 

 

I don't know if I should laugh or cry at their stupidity.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

I'll write my opinion after I get back from my next visit, still need to get in there at least once.

[MasterJV]

So if I write a piece of software with good intentions and a terrorist uses it even if he doesn't use it for malicious intentions, they can throw me a jail now and call me a terrorist too?

Murica!

[NateGSR117]

I'm sad I live in a country with idiots at the top. But what am I talking about, I,m just some civilian that doesn't know anything right?

[totjup5]

Morons.... Morons everywhere

[qwertywarrior]

terrorists are the new "commies"

another round of McCarthyism

YOU ARE A TERRORIST

[Tech_Dreamer]

They do have a valid point tho , they have been preventing countless amounts of deaths & attacks just because they were able to stay ahead of the game, now it's just a little bit harder..They did not kill anyone unreasonably over this , if so it must've been as for greater good/cause , if this was supposedly in the hands of the wrong people & i do mean wrong as in really wrong guys, it could be devastating..

[asker509]

I find it funny that i am supposed to be writing an essay about privacy and the internet and am instead on these forums.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

They do have a valid point tho , they have been preventing countless amounts of deaths & attacks just because they were able to stay ahead of the game, now it's just a little bit harder..They did not kill anyone unreasonably over this , if so it must've been as for greater good/cause , if this was supposedly in the hands of the wrong people & i do mean wrong as in really wrong guys, it could be devastating..

They claim they have been preventing.  Also, any technology can be devastating in really wrong hands.  Of course the US government wants to be the only ones that have acess to all technologies.

[Humbug]

They do have a valid point tho , they have been preventing countless amounts of deaths & attacks just because they were able to stay ahead of the game, now it's just a little bit harder..They did not kill anyone unreasonably over this , if so it must've been as for greater good/cause , if this was supposedly in the hands of the wrong people & i do mean wrong as in really wrong guys, it could be devastating..

The issue is that nobody can be trusted with all this mass scale data. As we know very well governments are organizations with agendas and who is going to police them?

 

The way the Internet works at the moment it's a decentralized network of networks. I work at an ISP in a different country. I know that an outsider cannot sniff into traffic on our network without our co-operation. Admittedly our government may be able to pressurize us into handing over data using political tactics behind closed doors, I don't know if that happens but I admit it could. I also know that once data packets leave our network other peering ISPs can sniff into it if they chose to do so. There is nothing we can do to prevent this. However some of our customers use VPN tunnels / encryption etc; In these situations even my colleagues and myself would not be able to make any sense of the data should we (God forbid) choose to sniff on it.

 

Anyway my point is that it's important that the Internet remains a decentralized global network where no one party is given too much control/access. It can only work as a global tool for democracy it remains unpoliced and decentralized. When you talk about the greater good I think it's important to look at the macro picture and not just the immediate terrorist threats.

[The_Evenger]

i... don't want to be a part of this country anymore.