
UK intel agencies spy indiscriminately on millions of innocent folks - raju
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/uk-secret-police-surveillance-bulk-personal-datasets/
======
btilly
Do not lose sight of the fact that Britain is one of the Five Eyes.

Which means that their data sets include everything that the NSA collects. And
they don't have pesky (though effectively unenforced) NSA restrictions against
spying on Americans.

Enjoy your lack of privacy!

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elthran
Hacker, yes. News - probably not.

I've depressingly come to accept this as part of being British.

~~~
sevenless
I've heard China's less restrictive in some ways.

You can't call for the overthrow of the government in China or read about
Tienanmen Square, but in Britain mildly positive remarks about designated
terrorist groups or disparaging speech about minorities (like the man who
argued with a Muslim woman and posted about it on Twitter) can get you
arrested.

Even if this isn't true there's a perception of monitoring and risk which
chills speech. Britain doesn't need too many lessons from the USA, but one
exception would be the First Amendment.

~~~
DanBC
> like the man who argued with a Muslim woman and posted about it on Twitter)
> can get you arrested.

The important part is "argued with a Muslim woman" \- in real life, AFK. Not
"then posted about it on Twitter".

But the CPS were very clear that the police should not have arrested him, and
that they definitely should not have charged him, and that the CPS would not
prosecute.

~~~
sevenless
The important part, in my view, is "arrested". We have a police force that
feels empowered to arrest people for what they say on Twitter and Facebook.
And this wasn't the only occasion.

The effect of this kind of thing on what we feel free to say in public
shouldn't be ignored.

~~~
DanBC
They did not arrest him for what he said on twitter. They arrested him because
he confronted a woman in the street to racially harass her.

Twitter is just how they found out about it.

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teamhappy
You can't do bulk data collection without spying on a significant amount of
innocent people, can you?

~~~
agd
GCHQ/government would claim people aren't spied on until an analyst looks at
their data. They have normalised 'collect it all' and created a mental
distinction between that and mass surveillance. Obviously running analysis on
the data doesn't count as someone looking at it for this logic to work.

~~~
sevenless
Is that the Copenhagen Interpretation of spying?

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mhw
See also
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/21/bulk_personal_datase...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/21/bulk_personal_datasets/)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540777)

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breitling
Unfortunately, this will not surprise many folks here

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a_imho
Is bulk data collection government regulated? Meaning, is it legal for a
person to start building and sharing databases about other people e.g. about
the same people working for the organizations mentioned in the article, MI5,
MI6, GCHQ?

I'm not interested in doing that, just wondering whether there is a double
standard for this kind of activity.

~~~
razakel
>Is bulk data collection government regulated? Meaning, is it legal for a
person to start building and sharing databases about other people e.g. about
the same people working for the organizations mentioned in the article, MI5,
MI6, GCHQ?

Yes, the Data Protection Act implements a number of EU directives regarding
personal information and privacy.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998)

~~~
pascalmemories
But there is a blanket exclusion for the purposes of 'prevention and detection
of crime'.

It is widely used by the Police (obviously) but also by the likes of insurance
companies (e.g. unsubstantiated suspicious of "suspect" insurance claims) and
high street shops (the major stores operate a facial recognition database of
'known' and 'suspected' shoplifters which they use to target people on entry
to stores and either eject or detain them as they determine they want to do).

All you need to do is construct an argument about preventing and detecting
crime and you're pretty much free to store and process whatever and however
you want. The only case I've heard of this failing was in the building
industry blacklist (which GCHQ helped create and was run by Sir Robert
McAlpine, Balfour Beatty, Costain and Skanska Construction [1]).

Databases like that are part of the 'bulk collection' being used here. It has
gone on since at least 1984 (the Telecommunications bill instigated the legal
framework for it).

In the mid-80's, I worked in the UK with someone who was in the middle of some
business dispute (normal business stuff, nothing unusual or noteworthy). A lot
of the business involved dealing with military type customers who generally
worked at the 'discreet' end of the business. In casual conversation with one
customer, the dispute came up and frustration was expressed at the lack of
ways to resolve it. A few days later a large envelope arrived with a
complements slip from said customer, containing a huge ream of printouts of
extremely personal and sensitive details on the business competitor, their
businesses, their family and some choice friends. My colleague had the sense
to burn the paperwork ASAP (but did look through it!) and was always way more
careful about what and with who he discussed things afterwards.

From that incident, I know that any sort of record in the UK is fair game for
GCHQ and it was normal for your doctor visits, bank records, credit records
(purchase details), any store accounts etc. - everything - to be sucked up,
even in the 80's. Any sort of political activism (of any type) moved you way
up the interest & monitoring list, especially things like donations or driving
your car near any sort of demo or sensitive site.

The irony was that 1984 was the year the UK made legislation for it. But it
got way worse under Tony Blair, who is often chastised for treating Orwell's
1984 as an instruction manual rather than a warning.

[1]
[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/mar/03/blacklisted-...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/mar/03/blacklisted-
building-workers-court-hopes)

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Tycho
Interesting how "folks" is replacing "people" even in headlines/journalism.

~~~
tehwalrus
It feels extremely American (to a Brit).

~~~
beeboop
Obama uses it a lot so that's probably at least part of it.

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vkazanov
So much for difference between US/UK and, say, China.

