Sorry I took it that you were saying that nothing terrorist related has been stopped by highly invasive and wide ranging spying.
Don't you think that there is a reason why OBL wasn't on Skype? Why do terrorist groups refrain from using technology? Could it be because they know they can be monitored? Surely that in itself makes it harder for terrorist groups?
YES I agree with you. but monitoring 1 trillion phones when you're searching for a couple of thousand guys is like building your own absolutely massive and every growing haystack and then going i'll be damned if there's not a needle in there, lets spend lots finding it (oh look my friend Bill owns this hay removal firm, and my other buddy Randy runs a needle picker upper service). Since the introduction of wide spread monitoring we have seen more terrorism...... (technology is definitely helping people spread their words whether they are saying good or appalling stuff). I'd be interested to know how they are letting children under 18 slip out of the country to Syria even though they likely only know mobile phones, wattsapp, skype etc and will likely have had to travel through border checkpoints where all their information has to be checked and stored.
We wont catch mr and mrs super high powered criminal/terrorist etc BECAUSE they arent stupid enough to have been using commercial and easily available stuff. so where is the terrorism value (other than in stupid twitter posters, or mentally unstable people) of monitoring everyone to the n-th degree. yet that word, that very scary and oft repeated word is the supposed deciding factor as to why we should lose all privacy/liberties whatever you want to refer to it as.
I personally feel in some situations carte blanche access is important and that our super techiest groups at gchq 'should' be able to do it, however giving this power with no oversight that isn't done by themselves leads us down awful pathways. If those in charge deem it necessary to lie, and force our hand to allow them to do this then continually use it to advantage themselves economically it needs to be stopped.
We the UK are pretty complicit in these wide spread technology issues, then we (we being the West, the rich, the powerful again whichever phrase you prefer) bypass our law system in petty and piss taking ways, ie we break the US laws, the US break the UK laws then we 'swap' data and oh look neither of us has technically, by the definition of some very highly paid US DOJ lawyers 'broken any law'. Ofc then at any point that a court case comes up they do it behind closed doors generally with a selection of people presiding over it that they know will respond as they wish. That's some sick lawlessness camouflaged as 'a just and fair law system'.
What frustrates me the most is the fact that all of this is so intertwined with the US, and people are so happy to defend them when they are so appalling in so many ways. Not small things, or even things that really directly impinge on me, but utter basics that they go around the world killing people in the name of, like freedom, democracy, free press, racism. They have an awful awful record in terms of the press with a stupidly overtly biased set of networks that are in favour with the administration, a consistent disregard for the legal process when trying to punish people. When you try and leak information about the US, and all they do is file court documents stating you are a pedophile and refusing you the rights they supposedly fight to defend its a farce (search Matt Dehart if that's a new one to you). Similarly if you have kept up with the Kim Dotcom situation over the years their most recent ruling is just utterly pathetic and shows they don't even care for how they are perceived by the rest of the world. Patreous has just finally admitted to 'mishandling confidential info' not to leaking or w/e the bad people who make the US gov look bad do but he def did something awful, as a forum based on gambling, what odds do we think that a rich old white man with friends in government is going to get a prison sentence, compared to say Chelsea Manning, Snowden or any black person found with any kind of paraphernalia? Their system stinks and is corrupt from top down yet we are using their models and their techniques and letting them spread like a cancer. it sucks.
There are a number of issues - but one thing is, I don't think it's necessarily clear that you don't really (unless you're really lucky) stop terrorist activity by just reading an email from saying they're going to bomb something.
Hypothetically it would be more likely to involve something like an increase in internet traffic between a region of Pakistan and an area in Birmingham would lead to an increased amount of surveillance in Birmingham which would lead to a handful of extra people being brought in for questioning leading to a couple of arrests.
The internet is essential but it's a long way from the idea a lot of people seem to have that the security forces are reading your emails and looking at your browsing history (unless they pretty much know you're a terrorist anyway).
also
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the government line is that all this is 100% to stop terrorism (OMG TERRORISM ARE YOU SCARED YET), we must fear it, yet with what has been leaked we are shown that not only has nothing terrorist related been in any way stopped by the highly invasive and wide ranging spying, that the bulk of the 'benefits' have been regarding economic policy and gaining a leg up vs enemies and even allies.
I really don't think that is the government line. The security forces are there to defend the country which happens to contain an element of fighting terrorism - but they've spent 100 years spying on our allies and enemies - it's not like we're going to stop now
I agree with your post, and I agree that my acerbic ranting may skew us away from the point slightly, but I think my point still stands. We currently use media/governments to fear monger us about certain minorities, the US are professionals at this, and yet cause and effect doesn't line up. They use terrorism to defend these policies, whilst these policies dont have a particularly great effect. We didnt stop 9/11 (information subsequently came up that we had some leads to follow up but didn't act upon, even if it hadn't lead to us stopping it, why wasnt it followed up, did we have too many people searching databases to gain economic advantage vs germany, brazil all the friendly nations etc), we didnt stop Boston, Paris, Madrid, London........ yet those events are lumped on the fire to fuel more spending, more fear and more poorly made decisions that are in no way designed to benefit us. It just pushes more money into the areas that our leaders unsurprisingly have financial interest in whilst also increasing their grip on power. Fear is the most amazing driver, we are naturally attuned to react overwhelmingly to fear, it's how a human survives.
I most certainly don't suppose to have any kind of answer for these large scale issues, but I most definitely find many faults with the logic and reasoning and the rationale and personal bias' that go into our current decision making process. You just have to watch the recent BBC program about the commons to realise that we have a bunch of jumped up petty children not in any way working for the best interests of their constituents or country, merely trying to gain and hold onto 'power and position' and win favours for when they leave that line of work.
I would love for the decision making processes that go into affecting millions of lives had to be justified properly rather than there is currently. We currently as a prime example, have David Tredinnick as being on the health select committee and now part of the science and technology committee whilst being a completely idiotic prick. We actually have someone whos role it is to be knowledgeable about science and affect how that knowledge can help and improve society and yet this bellend thinks homeopathy and astrology will make us all better. He should be fking shot. In a similar vein we can have Jacqui Smith who had previously been doing roles related to Women and schools, then come into office, and having never even met her top scientific advisor in person presided over the reclassification of cannabis against all scientific recommendations based on what, her own opinion of a topic and the concept that she thinks that she and her party may benefit by holding voters they already had and potentially winning a few other voters who are also against something they likely know little about. It's obviously very important to look at a persons personal bias when questioning their decision making process and yet for our very most important decisions we leave it up to individuals who are out for themselves, then dont hold them accountable.
These are the underlying issues that frustrate me, poor decision making and no accountability. This week i've just read two interesting articles, one of which is on the BBC pro government website ( :p ) I say that tongue in cheek though there are some recent articles and issues highlighting how bad that issue has become. One was from Tim Cook the CEO of Apple regarding privacy and the other just went up on BBC interviewing a long time double agent for Mi6 who was in with OBL and Al Qaeda. They are both interesting and both cover the issues that have been mentioned so i've put them below. Sometimes being a very fast typer isn't the most helpful thing, brevity titbeam brevity
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/11441265/Terrorists-should-be-eliminated-says-Apples-Tim-Cook.htmlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31700894
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