
British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ - jackgavigan
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450297574/MPs-private-emails-are-routinely-accessed-by-GCHQ
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peteretep
This is a dreadful article, and the title is _deeply_ misleading.

Literally the only information this article contains is that MPs use Office365
and MessageLabs.

That they've felt the need to clarify, right at the end of the article:

    
    
        > Computer Weekly also points out that we have not made
        > any suggestion in this story that GCHQ “routinely
        > reads” MPs’ emails. 
    

I would say that is exactly the suggestion that the verb "accesses" makes.

~~~
cm2187
So you are suggesting that accessing metadata about emails (senders,
recipients, subject) is by no mean relevant? I think in 90% of the email
traffic, the content can pretty much be inferred from the subject, and that's
intended, it is meant to refer precisely to the most important point of the
email. And the sender/recipient/other emails give you the context. In my book
that pretty much qualifies to accessing emails.

~~~
peteretep
No, I'm suggesting that we already knew the NSA and GCHQ were doing mass data
collection.

The article headline - and its very existence - suggests that politicians were
being targetted, or there was some suggestion that GCHQ agents are reading
politicians email in particular. That the published had to clarify (at the
end, ad views already banked) that they didn't mean the emails are being
_read_ tells you that the article is woefully unclear.

Neither is true: all the article actually says is that digital communication
in the UK is being collected for possible future analysis, and because
parliamentarians are in the UK, their data is included.

Next up: ALL POLITICANS ARE TIME-TRAVELLERS[1]

1: They can go forward in time at the same speed as everything in their
immediate vicinity

~~~
cm2187
You can argue that it is a way to spin it, but if the aim is to make
politicians react, I don't think it's bad to tell them: all emails, including
yours, are monitored.

~~~
DanBC
Politicians frequently say that they're only looking at metadata and they only
want to monitor metadata.

If you want to persuade them that it's a bad idea to gather metadata you need
to focus on that. Creating bullshit scare headlines that aren't true allow
them to dismiss it as fearmongering.

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andy_ppp
Gosh, this is absolutely shocking. Anyway, who fancies a cup of tea and a war
in the Middle East.

~~~
halviti
According to her e-mails and public statements, I believe you are speaking
about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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joshrivers
The British are so strange. This kind of abuse of power would never be
contemplated by American authorities.

~~~
fredley
As a Brit who finds this sort of thing completely scary/abhorrent, I often
wonder what it is about our culture that makes this so. I think a big part of
it is the class-system, which has its roots in feudal structures from
millennia past, and is still very much alive and well today. We all grow up to
develop an innate sense of class (I look up to him, I look down on him etc.),
and for the majority of people, they _do_ trust the upper classes. The royal
family has approval ratings through the roof, we have an Etonian PM and
largely Etonian cabinet. We just don't have the same distrust that most
countries seem to have. On the ground, this comes across as "well it's
probably for the best, they know what they're doing", when trying to discuss
matters like these.

Also, I'm assuming there's an injunction out about this - can't find it
reported anywhere in the UK press.

~~~
sievebrain
The UK has never had to deal with a truly oppressive government, at least not
within anything like living memory.

There's also the problem that nobody outside of the software engineering
community really understands what the tech can do, or what GCHQ is capable of.
My mother's primary comment on the whole thing was, "well we're much too
boring to spy on" and that's a sentiment you see a lot. It reflects a
misunderstanding of how cheap it is to create robotic law enforcement on top
of the 5-eyes infrastructure.

~~~
JupiterMoon
> "well we're much too boring to spy on"

Have you asked her why her government feels that it is necessary to spy on her
if she is so boring?

~~~
sievebrain
The Snowden story was vast and limited to the Guardian. In the UK the other
media outlets didn't cover it at all, or actively attempted to undermine the
reporting (e.g. with stories planted by the British government that were
carefully worded to sound like they were from Snowden even if they weren't).

The vast majority of people have not read any of the Snowden leaks and have no
idea what they contained beyond "the government spies a lot". So the concept
that they might be targeted themselves is just unimaginable to them.

~~~
JupiterMoon
Tell them then!

------
lucaspiller
This coming to light is a good thing, because the MPs will finally be scared
enough to do something pro-privacy and stop all the anti-encryption nonsense.

~~~
pilif
Yeah. It will be fixed by making it illegal to access politicians data. They
need privacy.

Normal people need security, so this clearly doesn't apply to them.

/s

~~~
s_q_b
If you read down a bit, you'll notice that that's exactly what they're calling
for: increased protections for "MPs, lawyers, and journalists."

This is like when Diane Feinstein was _shocked_ and _appalled_ that the CIA
hacked the computers being used to investigate them.

Politicians are either not intelligent enough to understand that they've given
away include their own privacy in their Faustian pact, or... Well, we're
already too far gone.

Assuming ignorance, the politicians are the first natural domestic targets of
a surveillance apparatus.

How do they not realize that?

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alephu5
What if there are terrorists in parliament? How will the security agencies be
able to find them if they are allowed privacy?

~~~
triplesec
Sarcasm alert! (I hope)

~~~
walshemj
There have been MP's caught spying and its surprising that no congressmen or
senators haven't.

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cm2187
But surely this is a tiny fraction of the email traffic? Chances are anyone
sending an email from a gmail to a yahoo address, the email will not even
transit through the UK, and if it does it will pass through encrypted. The
spam and commercial emails are more likely to be unencrypted, but even then
chances are an amazon order confirmation to a gmail address will not even
transit through the UK. So outside of PRISM-like pull methods, this mass
monitoring is becoming increasingly toothless, isn't it?

[edit] and I am unfairly picking on amazon. I just checked, they do use TLS on
their mailer. Let's stay Eurostar, ebuyer or disqus who do not seem to have
heard of TLS.

~~~
peteretep
So there are two problems:

A) There's reason to believe commonly used encryption is broken. The Snowden
documents suggested VPNs in particular had been poorly set up, which allowed
their encrypted traffic to be sniffed. There will be more things we currently
believe to be encrypted and are not

B) Session cookies and tracker cookies make it easy for your HTTP requests to
be linked back to you

~~~
cm2187
HTTP? I am talking about email traffic.

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themartorana
Shadow government is shadowy. Lawmakers with nannies are toothless...
Lawmakers with overlords are nothing.

------
nxzero
Who watches the watchers watching the watchers?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custode...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F)

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london888
I trust GCHQ more than some MPs.

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beedogs
Democracy these days seems to be more and more illusory. I'm willing to bet
these same MPs will help make the IP Bill become law, anyway.

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Harry101
It's surprising to most Yanks, but Britain is the most heavily surveilled
western country. It's much worse there it is in the US. (So far.)

~~~
wavefunction
Actually it's a common trope. That and the idea that much of England and
Europe have been conquered by slavering Muslim hordes intent on instituting
Shari'a. The second is more due to American tabloids

~~~
jessaustin
What, the National Enquirer? Weekly World News? I'm not an avid reader, but I
can't recall any articles about Norbert Hofer in those publications...

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joliya65
What, you don't remember that time when they said "when privacy violations
happen, it is not an “active intrusion” because the analyst reading or
listening to an individual’s communication will inevitably forget about it
anyway"?

That's oversight you can take to the bank!

