A secret report warned that British spies may have put lives at risk because their surveillance systems were sweeping up more data than could be analyzed, leading them to miss clues to possible security threats.
The concern was sent to top British government officials in an explosive classified document, which outlined methods being developed by the United Kingdom’s domestic intelligence agency to covertly monitor internet communications.
The Security Service, also known as MI5, had become the “principal collector and exploiter” of digital communications within the U.K., the eight-page report noted, but the agency’s surveillance capabilities had “grown significantly over the last few years.”
MI5 “can currently collect (whether itself or through partners …) significantly more than it is able to exploit fully,” the report warned. “This creates a real risk of ‘intelligence failure’ i.e. from the Service being unable to access potentially life-saving intelligence from data that it has already collected.”
A draft copy of the report, obtained by The Intercept from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, is marked with the classification “U.K. Secret” and dated February 12, 2010. It was prepared by British spy agency officials to brief the government’s Cabinet Office and Treasury Department about the U.K.’s surveillance capabilities.
Notably, three years after the report was authored, two Islamic extremists killed and attempted to decapitate a British soldier, Lee Rigby, on a London street. An investigation into the incident found that the two perpetrators were well-known to MI5, but the agency had missed significant warning signs about the men, including records of phone calls one of them had made to an al Qaeda-affiliated radical in Yemen, and an online message in which the same individual had discussed in graphic detail his intention to murder a soldier.
The new revelations raise questions about whether problems sifting through the troves of data collected by British spies may have been a factor in the failure to prevent the Rigby killing. But they are also of broader relevance to an ongoing debate in the U.K. about surveillance. In recent months, the British government has been trying to pass a new law, the Investigatory Powers Bill, which would grant MI5 and other agencies access to more data.
Silkie Carlo, a policy officer at the London-based human rights group Liberty, told The Intercept that the details contained in the secret report highlighted the need for a comprehensive independent review of the proposed new surveillance powers.
“Intelligence whistleblowers have warned that the agencies are drowning in data — and now we have it confirmed from the heart of the U.K. government,” Carlo said. “If our agencies have risked missing ‘life-saving intelligence’ by collecting ‘significantly’ more data than they can analyze, how can they justify casting the net yet wider in the toxic Investigatory Powers Bill?”
The British government’s Home Office, which handles media requests related to MI5, declined to comment for this story.
“Lack of staff and tools”
The leaked report outlines efforts by British agencies to conduct both “large-scale” and “small-scale” eavesdropping of domestic communications within the U.K. It focuses primarily on an MI5 program called DIGINT, or digital intelligence, which was aimed at transforming the agency’s ability to covertly monitor internet communications.
DIGINT was established for counterterrorism purposes, and “more generally for wider national security purposes,” the report said. The program was described as being focused on “the activities of key investigative targets, and on those exploitation activities that will drive greatest investigative benefits with respect to U.K. domestic threats.”
The amount of data being collected, however, proved difficult for MI5 to handle. In March 2010, in another secret report, concerns were reiterated about the agency’s difficulties processing the material it was harvesting. “There is an imbalance between collection and exploitation capabilities, resulting in a failure to make effective use of some of the intelligence collected today,” the report noted. “With the exception of the highest priority investigations, a lack of staff and tools means that investigators are presented with raw and unfiltered DIGINT data. Frequently, this material is not fully assessed because of the significant time required to review it.”
97 percent of the calls, messages, and data the program had collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities.
The problem was not unique to MI5.
Many of the agency’s larger-scale surveillance operations were being conducted in coordination with the National Technical Assistance Centre, a unit of the electronic eavesdropping agency Government Communications Headquarters, better known as GCHQ.
The Centre plays a vital but little-known role. One of its main functions is to act as a kind of intermediary, managing the highly sensitive data-sharing relationships that exist among British telecommunications companies and law enforcement and spy agencies.
Perhaps the most important program the Centre helps deliver is code-named PRESTON, which covertly intercepts phone calls, text messages, and internet data sent or received by people or organizations in the U.K. who have been named as surveillance targets on warrants signed off by a government minister.
A top-secret 2009 study found that, in one six-month period, the PRESTON program had intercepted more than 5 million communications. Remarkably, 97 percent of the calls, messages, and data it had collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities.
The authors of the study were alarmed because PRESTON was supposedly focused on known suspects, and yet most of the communications it was monitoring appeared to be getting ignored — meaning crucial intelligence could have been missed.
“Only a small proportion of the Preston Traffic is viewed,” they noted. “This is of concern as the collection is all warranted.”
Chart: A top-secret study outlines PRESTON data collection by month.
“Politically contentious”
For most of the last decade, successive British governments have attempted to obtain more surveillance powers, but their efforts have met with public opposition and ultimately failed. The present government’s effort to push through a sweeping surveillance law — the Investigatory Powers Bill — is currently being considered by the Parliament.
Documents provided by Snowden show that the U.K.’s intelligence and security agencies have wanted to obtain new powers to store domestic data about internet communications to address the “growing range of services available to internet users.” This reflects the position that has been adopted publicly in recent years by the government, which has argued that expanded internet surveillance is necessary to keep up with changes in technology.
However, the Snowden documents also reveal a more candid internal assessment of the need for bolstered spy laws and shine light on major aspects of the U.K.’s existing surveillance apparatus that government and security officials have not publicly acknowledged in their pursuit of the new powers.
In one document dated from 2012, GCHQ stated that it was “not dependent” on a new surveillance law coming into force, presumably due to the extensive capabilities already at its disposal. GCHQ added that new powers were of greater importance to the U.K.’s law enforcement agencies, which were facing “a significant decline” in ability to intercept communications due to people increasingly using internet services — as opposed to conventional landlines and cellphones — to talk or exchange messages.
But passing a new surveillance law would be a “politically contentious [and] technically complex” process, GCHQ said in the document. In the meantime, therefore, it devised something of a workaround by creating a secret stop-gap surveillance solution for law enforcement officials.
As part of a program named MILKWHITE, GCHQ made some of its huge troves of metadata about people’s online activities accessible to MI5, London’s Metropolitan Police, the tax agency Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Serious Organized Crime Agency (now merged into the National Crime Agency), the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and an obscure Scotland-based surveillance unit called the Scottish Recording Centre.
Metadata reveals information about communications — such as the sender and recipient of an email, or the phone numbers someone called and at what time — but not the written content of the message or the audio of the call. GCHQ’s definition of metadata is broad and also encompasses location data that can be used to track people’s movements, login passwords, and website browsing histories, as The Intercept has previously revealed.
The MILKWHITE program was developed as early as September 2009, and it seems to have been operational under both the Labour and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat governments of that period. One of its purposes was to allow law enforcement agencies and MI5 to sift through the troves of metadata to discover internet “selectors” for their surveillance targets — meaning unique identifiers, such as a username or IP address, that can be used to home in on and monitor a person’s online activities.
“It now appears it has been ‘business as usual’ for the tax man to access mass internet data for years.”
GCHQ focuses primarily on intercepting foreign communications that are “external” to the U.K. But in the process of doing so — by tapping into international cables that carry phone calls and internet traffic between countries — the agency vacuums up large quantities of data on British calls, emails, and web browsing habits, too. It is this British data — some of which appears to have been made accessible through MILKWHITE — that would be of most interest to MI5, police, and tax officers, as it is their role to conduct “internal” investigations within the U.K.
A GCHQ document dated from late 2010 indicated that MILKWHITE was storing data about people’s usage of smartphone chat apps like WhatsApp and Viber, instant messenger services such as Jabber, and social networking websites, including Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Access to the data was provided to law enforcement through an “internet data unit” hosted by the Serious Organized Crime Agency and it was accessible to tax investigators through what one GCHQ document described as established “business as usual” channels.
By March 2011, GCHQ noted that there was “increasing customer demand” for the service offered by MILKWHITE and the agency planned to grow its capacity, seeking £20.8 million ($30.6 million) to update the program’s “advanced analytics” capabilities and to maintain its “bulk” storage of metadata records. “Bulk” is a term GCHQ uses to refer to large troves of data that are not focused on individual targets; rather, they include millions and in some cases billions of records about ordinary people’s communications and internet activity.
Carlo, the policy analyst with Liberty, said the revelations about MILKWHITE suggested members of Parliament had been misled about how so-called bulk data is handled. “While MPs have been told that bulk powers have been used only by the intelligence community, it now appears it has been ‘business as usual’ for the tax man to access mass internet data for years,” she said. “This vindicates the warnings of security experts and the call by opposition parties for an urgent, independent review of bulk powers. The compromise review recently announced is a poor substitute and without the time and technical expertise, will struggle to address this issue of national importance.”
GCHQ declined to answer questions for this story. A spokesperson for the agency said in a statement: “It is long-standing policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters. Furthermore, all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support this position. In addition, the U.K.’s interception regime is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Documents published with this article:
- Digint Narrative
- Milkwhite
- Preston Business Processes
- Communications Capabilities Development Programme
- NTAC Overview
- Preston Architecture
- Digint Imbalance
- Mobile Apps Checkpoint Meeting Archives
- Preston Study
Related:
Simple really. The intel services have a hoarding problem. They can’t find anything in the giant mess they’ve collected, and the bigger the mess the more $$$ goes to the MIC, and the level of ineffectiveness means there’ll be cries for even MORE hoarding… and around and around it goes.
If this were a visible hands on weapons system the people paying for it would have jettisoned it quite a while ago. It’s a disaster every way you look at it.
The real question is, of course, about who the real “enemy” targeted by mass surveillance is – and quite obviously it’s the “mass” itself. Not “terrorists” but overwhelmingly left-wing, working-class and anti-imperialist or (dark green) environmental etc movements. That’s all there is to it. This is not about “crime”, not about “terrorism”, not about the official “enemies”. You’d have to be a complete moron to believe this. We should know history better than this…altough this is probably a bit too much to expect from the Western European controller class, wallowing in its own superiority.
yep. we need to keep our comms secure from the enemy as they need to keep their comms secure from us….
When a government decides to vacuum up huge amounts of information without any thoughts about cost-benefits analysis it becomes the old metaphor about adding chaff/useless information to the hay pile. That’s why the Brits have had a hard time keeping up with the real dangers/finding the real potential terrorists. The US has created a huge storage center in Utah but how much of that information is also chaff on the hay pile.
The main benefit to collecting and cataloging vast amounts of data is it can be used to see into someone’s past once they become someone to be watched. Retroactive surveillance. It’s very important to them.
And then by having, say, a decade+ (and ever-expanding) or two of said data they can either extrapolate quite well how to alienate them and destroy a person’s life (and easily extrapolate how to track them in future and make sure they can’t break out of the surveillance jail), make them unable to get a job save (if very very lucky) an Apple store (and wonder if they’ll get paid each week) and so forth. I’d say this was paranoid except we’ve seen cases like Drake, Hatfill, Machon, Webb, etc — and probably hundreds more we haven’t made connections between (because that, too, is the order of the day — every day). When ‘They’ changed Assange’s police watch tactic at the Embassy in London my first thought was not ‘they’re seeing a bit more sense’ but rather ‘they’ve decided to get more ugly’. So far I haven’t been proven wrong. MLK Jr -type COINTELPRO programs in the 70s were a cakewalk compared to now.
The fact that we are living in a world where ‘too much data’ is a ‘problem’ speaks horribly to how tremendously dangerous all of this is — because in the current world, given graph theory constraints, in a city like, say, London or NYC, according to current ‘standards’ and prejudices, we’re all a week’s worth of cab rides or so (or a year, anyway) away from the degrees of separation necessary to get any one of us on a list if the desire exists to put someone there. I’m not convinced it’s all about actual suspicion (and I never will be). I suspect we’ve entered the ‘traffic ticket quota’ phase of Bentham’s Panopticontopia, and that we’ve been there for years now. Unfortunately I’m convinced that if you are dealt one of those ‘golden tickets’, you aren’t gonna win a Chocolate Factory — or be able to get rid of it, maybe, for the rest of your life.
Where are the Oompa-Loompas when we need them to roll these black-and-blueberries out of the room for being greedy bastards who can’t get enough no matter what they decide to take without permission(s)? At the River House scarfing down tea and biscuits and ruing they didn’t get the Ponies they wanted while hugging their egotistical giraffes? ;)
I agree. I believe that putting people on “The List” is now big business. The same way that war is big business, the same reason we have so many people locked up in our jails. Like many governmental departments, it’s become an organization that serves itself so that it can survive and grow. Our fiat currency has taken the brakes off the govt and allowed them to fulfill their evil and greedy desires.
Wow.
The 2 biggest banking scandals in history (Libor and Forex) were centered in London. None of the eavesdropping occurred on the rich and powerful to help solve these cases. Powerful politicians won’t be spied on either.
Get the picture?
Everyone in government that knows of illegal activity, can now safely and anonymously report it with TOR and anonymous email. Or simply by going to Wikileaks.
NAME THE NAMES of everyone you know in government who is involved in illegal activity. You could become world famous sitting at home on your couch.
as the bankster thieves using the criminal ponzi rothschild currency system drives whole nations into a brick wall, they seem to be preparing for blowback.
What is the goal of intelligence? To collect crime scene data before it happens? Partly. But actually, to catch a crime before it happens. But you cant really do that unless you know most everything. And the truth of the scenario is “intelligence can never have enough information”. It is therefore the ambition of intelligence to have as much info as possible. And the formula for best success is knowing everything is better than knowing less. But that crosses the boundary does it not? Would you allow a monitor in your home? Probably not. So the real problem with intelligence agencies is, ACCEPTABLE LEVEL OF FAILURE.
A failure of intelligence renders intelligence gathering worthless as a whole. That is the big cahuna dilemna. What do you do? What is the solution to the best protection a society can have without being invaded by monitors?
CHECKPOINTS
“What is the goal of intelligence? To collect crime scene data before it happens? Partly. ”
NO.
Once again you prove yourself part of the problem. The goal of “intelligence” is not stopping crimes. The goal of intelligence is knowing what our enemies are doing so that our diplomatic services can act effectively. You are confusing political intelligence with police intelligence. That’s what they want you to do.
The goal of police intelligence is to gather sufficient evidence on ongoing criminal enterprises to enable prosecution, not to stop crimes (within reason). Sometimes this intelligence is useful for stepping up security to foil specific plots, as was not done in September 2001. Once again, they have you thinking that police intelligence is for stopping crimes, but that is extremely rare.
Anything else is investigation of past crimes.
“Acceptable level of failure” doesn’t play much of a role in any of this except for the investigation of past crimes. The level of NOT EVEN TRYING—9/11, LIBOR, HSBC money laundering—plays a much huger role. Again, this is what they do not want you to see.
So the dilemma you present is a wholely false one. We do not need to give up the slightest bit of privacy for our police and spy services to effectively target criminal conspiracies. Instead, we need to hold accountable the politicians and prosecutors who did not and do not act on the intelligence that has been gathered. Instead, we need to rein in the services from carrying out their own agendas unrelated to the prevention and prosecution of crime and terror operations, such as harassing minorities to collect convictions/harassing whistleblowers and pro-democracy activists and subverting foreign democratic governments/supporting foreign dictators.
As lame as our news media are, they do a much better job of linking evidence with establishing criminal culpability.
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” – Cardinal Richelieu
Maybe it is time to celebrate for some people who are happy that there is a looming possibility of intelligence failure. What should really concern them is successful intelligence operation that will expose all their plots and schemes and suicide-bombing plans and a list of all their close friends and relatives who provide them material and moral support. But that’s going to fail through the proverbial suicide-bombing plans of the agencies themselves. What a relief for those crooks!
Intercept also should be happy and declare a bonus to all its founders and staff and include the dashing -Mona- who happens to be as close to a staff as possible. Maybe tomorrow they will declare a holiday, so for the next 48 hrs we will have to deal with the same stale stuff except perhaps some entertainment from Craig and el Duce.
Are you going to apply to be the token asshole?
:-(………………………………………………bwa-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa :-))
you gotta be dumb as dirt not to have seen this coming.
BUT BE WARNED! It’s not like they’re going to just give up. FOLLOW THE MONEY. These same ignoramuses are so stupid they will make stuff up to substantiate their self-righteous crap and make sacrifices of everyday people.
They don’t need to make stuff up. They simply need to not do their job to secure their funding. The more attacks happen, the more funds we should give them, right? Such is the life of a bureaucracy.
its gonna drive the country to bankruptcy, imo
With that many building blocks to shakedowns and such, I’d be surprised if there weren’t surprise new silent underwriters on a rotating basis.
Intelligence is very important but it’s also a grossly inaccurate truth-gathering mechanism. As long as everyone views intelligence as a clue – not a conclusion – it can be helpful but those clues are grossly inaccurate.
The problem lies in those “experts” that portray intelligence as an accurate form of truth-gathering, based on hard circumstantial evidence or sworn testimony (under penalty if perjury) by the officials or witnesses.
Motive of the spooks is also a major factor. Not sure, but think in the UK they take a supreme loyalty oath to “Queen & Country”. Here in the USA, the intel folks take a supreme loyalty oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Edward Snowden upheld his supreme loyalty oath and was attacked by the intel community. Maybe there is no real loyalty in the intelligence business.
Intelligence should be portrayed for what it really is: grossly inaccurate. It should never be used for drone or assassination operations or to conclude anything.
“Maybe there is no real loyalty in the intelligence business.”
Anyone’s loyalty is to his or her boss.
Intelligence is not always inaccurate. Keep in mind that signals intelligence and human intelligence are completely different. More importantly, intelligence gathered in bad faith or to support a foregone conclusion is always wrong. The Western intelligence services boast a string of failures running over decades, but they did warn Bush of impending attacks, possibly passenger jet related. One can only conclude that they largely operate in bad faith and ignorance, not to mention with anti-democratic goals. And even a cursory examination of their history bears this out.
However, I agree that even in the best case, intelligence is never adequate to secure a conviction or support an assassination order. It’s not evidence.
Not judging, it’s natural for one’s top loyalty to be to those people that you work with first and have your back when others don’t.
For sake of argument, what about loyalty to peers in the German Gestapo during World War Two or the Stasi during the Cold War?
One could make the argument if Germany back then had an American style loyalty oath – primarily to a Constitution and Bill of Rights – that many of the World War Two and Cold War atrocities could have been prevented.
During World War Two, Germany had a supreme loyalty to a single person – not to the nation, not to the people and not to the constitutional rule of law that protected citizen’s rights.
The point I’m trying to make is that proper “loyalty” is vitally important when government officials have such immense power combined with excessive secrecy over regular citizens.
In some ways the supreme American loyalty oath to the U.S. Constitution and the “rule of law” did work with Edward Snowden. Snowden actually provided a real “check & balance” on unconstitutional and disloyal actions being ordered by disloyal leaders in our national security agencies – violating their own oath of office.
Snowden honored his loyalty oath, his critics were disloyal to that supreme oath.
Agreed so much to this:
“In some ways the supreme American loyalty oath to the U.S. Constitution and the “rule of law” did work with Edward Snowden. Snowden actually provided a real “check & balance” on unconstitutional and disloyal actions being ordered by disloyal leaders in our national security agencies – violating their own oath of office.
Snowden honored his loyalty oath, his critics were disloyal to that supreme oath.”
If 97% of messages were not read, why is TI so obsessed with NSA and GCHQ reading all our emails??
Civil Liberties experts object to the ‘collect it all’ approach not simply on the grounds that it is absurdly inefficient (as demonstrated here), but also on the grounds that recording everyone’s data – even if only for potential retroactive perusal by the establishment – is an invasion of privacy, and unjustifiable.
In the world of George Orwell’s ‘1984,’ the citizens never knew when exactly they were being watched by the establishment, and this was described as creating a climate of fear – which (by stultifying individual expression and enforcing conformism) easily oppressed the people without having to do the infeasible act of monitoring everyone in real time.
send me all your communications please – i will read them for you and report anything that may implicate you. And if there is nothing suspicious then you have nothing to worry about.
you can begin by posting your emails here so we can all get a good look at what a good person you must be.
OK?
That would be clever except the point of the article is that they’re not being read. And that’s just the emails collected under a specific warrant (which you don’t have, by the way).
Unreasonable seizure. Still a violation across the pond.
Obviously because should your name ever come to their attention, your emails WILL be read.
Next dumb question.
Fine by me. That’s sort of the point of law enforcement. And btw resorting to abuse generally means you don’t have an argument.
Build a dossier on everyone, and social control is easy.
Say you want to start protesting a government policy: they just query the system, pull up your data, find a pressure point, and you put your head down and go back to work.
You get elected, they can sit down with you and your dossier, your kids dossiers, anyone you care for…… and you will do their bidding.
Data this big isnt about crime or terror, it’s about control.
Data this big isnt about crime or terror, it’s about control.
Pierre doesnt get that. He is part of the insect colony.
Two things happen that harm national security and harm innocent people:
1) Making the “haystack” of suspects so large it’s hard to find the real bad guys. It’s easier to find the real bad guys with a smaller haystack of suspects based on real evidence of a past crime, the opposite of a “preemption policy”.
2) Mission-Creep: What if we win the so-called “War on a Tactic”? What if we essentially defeat the tactic of terrorism to such a degree that a greater threat, like antibiotics in food (a threat 115 times greater than terrorism), is virtually ignored while still funding terrorism agencies at the same rate? If there are fewer enemies with the same size agency, the agency merely invents new enemies. They mission-creep to include “non-terrorism” cases like Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street (legal activities).
Two things happen and harm innocent people: USG plays favorites and bombs in the Mideast, and Osama and others get mad and retaliate hoping to stop more bombing. And my emails get read and I get fondled by TSA.
I don’t like the subtle implication that if someone is dubbed to have committed a crime in the past they should automatically be targeted and biased against. That’s not to say there’s not a place for more suspicion etc, but given the sorry state of the justice system(s) these days is this really something we want to encourage? People don’t lose their constitutional rights just because they may have broken a law (arbitrary or non-arbitrary) in the past.
According to the Supreme Court, a lot of people lose their constitutional rights just because all the ninnies got so offended.
I know they lose some (eg, in many case, the right to vote) but when it comes to civil liberties and surveillance any excuse is just something they want to roll out to anybody. People with records (thankfully I’m not one of them (yet, anyway)) are really just the test cases for what they’d like for everybody. I used to give the UK for being a bit more sensible about this, but the UK, like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc, have all fallen more and more in line with the Five-Eye Philosophy (as has anybody who wants to not find their currency devalued and their governments overturned). It’s the footholds we need to work on, because things can snowball way too quickly (as we’ve seen).
Oops I removed a fragment of one of my sentences. Should’ve read ‘I used to give the UK credit up until about a decade, decade-and-a-half ago, for being a bit more sensible about this…’
Incidentally this stuff is kind of old. I’m pretty sure whatever problems they’re facing, while probably using the same excuses, are a bit different now. I can’t say I’m sure because I wouldn’t know, but one can probably extrapolate based on the rate of growth that’s occurred in other programs and such that while they may insist they’re still dealing with problems like this, their programs and staff have probably vastly expanded to keep in line with the expansion of other programs, agencies and contractors involved in similar ‘work’. If we haven’t seen a public contraction and apology, then chances are the toxic mold has continued to grow where we can’t see it.
Okay, now *I* sound overly dark. Sorry. It just seems to be a trend.
Hoovering up every shred of private information is the diametric opposite of intelligence.
But perfect for blackmail agencies.
When things overlap in such a way that you can’t tell anybody that said agency is threatening to strangle (metaphorically or whatever) you, your children, your pet kitten, or whatever pseudoarbitrary representation applies — because then they’d strangle (metaphorically or whatever) you, your children, your pet kitten, or whatever pseudoarbitrary representation applies while lying and saying they didn’t — then we’re in very dark times indeed. And it’s our personal responsibility — ALL OF US — to protest such things. The problem is, if they can make a No More Secrets environment a Very Real Thing (and they can if they want to, but call it a ‘mistake’ if they need to) then they win that way too. If everything becomes, or has become, to them, some sort of Nash-cum-schizophrenic game theory come to life, then truly By Any Means Necessary becomes the only thing they understand (and they have numbed themselves to it and indemnified their employees to it — or conditioned them to ENJOY it because… power) then it becomes tricky to figure out how to save oneself, one’s children, or one’s kitten — especially if everything and everyone is compromised or compromiseable. At that level, I’m not sure the word ‘blackmail’ even applies. It makes me truly Zero To The Bone to think that the only term I can come up with is ‘The New Normal’. But it’s not new, I guess. What’s new is how easy it is, and how simple it is to GET THINGS WRONG while thinking that a lot of data means ‘getting things right’. In fact studies show quite the opposite.
It’s not really about ‘intelligence’ so much as ‘power’ and projection — and their ability to use such data as a means of projecting what might seem like limitless power — if they care enough. And sure, not everyone’s worth ‘caring enough’ about. Certainly Not A Nobody Like Myself (for instance). But of course the power to track things backwards in time and reassemble things to make things look however they want to to justify whatever they want to exceeds just ‘blackmail’… almost makes me understand that ridiculous article by the ‘Socrates of the NSA’ who claimed he’d rather the NSA knew everything than only partial data — because the only thing worse than the truth, maybe, is letting these numbnut wingdings come up with conclusions to fit their fantasies and daydreams and training — because they’ve been trained such things exist, they’re rare, and by gosh golly, someone really should make sure to really squeeze such opportunities for all they’re worth.
I vote we all opt out of this system. I just haven’t figured out where to cast said vote.
I’m tired. This probably makes less sense than I’d like it to. Sorry.
I agree that stuff like this is almost certainly used to attempt to blackmail people if they can be useful and break them if they aren’t worth the trouble. Data can mean anything one’s skewed security services want them to mean.
Enterprise Data Architect is my job title, but DATA ANALYSIS is really my job.
It’s very easy to loose confidence (statistically) when the number of records and their dimensions (search keys) in the sample gets too large. To maintain a high degree of confidence all dimensions must be equally representative of the data being aggregated. In the real world, life is dirty and the data is often incomplete. It’s at these points where data collection alone will induce errors.
Very smart people, with very big computers are continuously running simulations to find patterns that can be used to make money, predict the weather, find terrorists, etc… In the end most of these systems can get very good at one specific task and require an immense amount of computer power to achieve their goals, that is until a change in the environment upsets the model. You don’t have to throw it all away and start over, but the cycle time required to make adjustments grows very quickly.
It’s when we are making these adjustments because of changes in the environment that HUMAN costs skyrocket. GIGO, is one of the original pieces of computer slang and most people recognize the Garbage IN Garbage OUT metaphor. In this case it could be something as simple as the “target” stops using skype and switches to Silent Phone. The original data stream is now disrupted, and we have to guess what is happening when the device is in use. Confidence in those dimension values decreases confidence overall and increases false “Hits” that may never be reviewed.
This is just the Tip of the Iceberg, but the big money interests will keep selling garbage compactors to the politicians they can buy.
How much collecting and analysis do “they” do on this site? (TI)
I’d bet it’s considered a terrorist site and all of us are labeled terrorists. And I use TOR a lot so I’m on a lot of lists.
Yes, that’s why there’s lots of documented cases of TI readers being arrested and tortured by the jackbooted FBI thugs.
Or possibly not..
Ever hear of the phrase ‘climate of fear’ and/or read 1984 and contemplated on the fact that jackboots might not necessarily as awful as a lifetime of wondering if/when the other shoe might drop? TPTB know well know to push a populace’s adrenals into overdrive and push them into constantly fearing ‘something bad’ is going to happen. If that ‘something bad’ is at the hand of one’s government, someone else’s government, one’s neighbors, some random act of ‘terror’ or whatever — does it matter? One knows one *can* be treated like this; ostensibly one wishes to AVOID being treated like this. If one is exercising one’s constitutional and/or basic human rights and is being penalized by being spied upon and undermined for doing so, how is that ‘humane’? Is one person’s value of ‘torture’ any more or less worthy than another person’s value of it? The best horror film directors know full well that it’s the buildup o f*tension* surrounding the actions of some unseen thing that seems to exist that terrifies an audience far more than seeing some actual boogieman itself. Which isn’t to say that physical torture is a walk in the park — I’m pretty sure we can all say it’s not. But studies have shown almost across the board that it’s the psychological scars and psychological torture that linger. The body heals; cells regenerate; bodies adapt. The mind can only heal so much — but it still has to live with the past.
Also I doubt that when that sort of stuff happens we’d probably hear about it all that much (not that I suspect or expect TI readers to have this occur to them; I expressly don’t — but I think it’s disingenuous to suggest that such levels of police abuse never happen — or to insinuate that it’d be that obvious or in-one’s-face most of the time if and when they did; in fact I doubt any one particular data point would bring it on — and thus returning to the topic of this article: the more data such agencies have the more they can use to piece together a conclusion that fits the outcome they’re expecting or hoping to see.)
People shouldn’t become too worried that the capability of collecting data has temporarily exceeded the capability to analyze it.
So I’ve helpfully dedicated some thought to how the GCHQ can improve their data analysis. While producing some improved data sorting algorithms is one obvious answer, this only constitutes a first step. Agencies still rely on human interpretation to make decisions on ambiguous data. So there is a need to hire large numbers of new analysts. Finding these resources with Great Britain may be a challenge, but fortunately there is a virtually unlimited supply of new labor available – Syrian refugees. All that’s needed is to accept several million of these refugees and put them to work as data analysts. At one fell swoop, not only is the Syrian refugee problem solved, but the national security of Great Britain is greatly enhanced.
As usual, I charge nothing for presenting solutions to pressing social problems and the GCHQ is welcome to implement it immediately.
I’m reminded of the method of data trawling used to attempt to find Ted Bundy during his peak… He hit a few suspected data points but not all and thusly was he not ensnared. Clearly the best way to make sure that all data point combinations can be reached so as to avoid any false negatives is to just imprison everybody and work out what they’re imprisoned for later.
Hell, we are far beyond that point. Anyone can now be indefinitely detained by a remote, inaccessible authority, while the exact nature of the alleged crime is never revealed to the detainee himself/herself for reasons of national security. This extralegal process is called “extraordinary rendition” and is now being knowingly practiced in at least 54 countries. Even corporate owned media has demonstrated a remarkable tolerance (feigned ignorance) of the practice. The long term ramifications of CIA spooks creating a system of ghost detainees still escapes the majority of Americans. If all of the available “mined data” eventually fails to provide the requisite justification for the indefinite detention of a particular detainee, then waterboarding is always a viable option; eventually all detainees can be relied upon to provide what ever justification is necessary for their own rendition. This emerging reality is a despot’s pipe dream on viagra.
excellent idea!
and if that labor force is not sufficient, we could do like the xmas gift draw. Everyone on the planet could be assigned to someone else by lottery. Each person would be both spy’er and spy’ee. It’s the perfect answer to 100% employment and full coverage.
As far as the “i’m spying you spying on him” scenario goes, it might get a little complicated.
Can’t resist this: LMAO.
Yours Eternally,
Continuous(Sycophant)Deception
One might reasonably counter that your plan would dangerously expand the number of people with super-secret security clearances. But this can be dismissed as a bogeyman, since the US has operated very well with millions of citizens (government and civilian) holding such clearances. We could easily handle a couple of million more, as long as the new hires are loyal to the, uh, community.
Not surprised by this at all. The worst is the faked data pumped into the Intel & Security in my direct experience since 1998 parallel with terrorism and adjacent to terrorists in N Ken 2005 & recently.
I”ve fully documented and reported this since 1998 only to be called mentally ill by the Home Office and BBC Newsnught editor in March 2005 letters that can be seen on my Facebook page.
Despite all of my reporting these abuses go making the system useless by those left in place to fake it. The Xmas 2009 Detroit underwear bomber is a case in point. Processed thru the UK Educ & mosque system he went undetected. My correspondence to Obama & Brown in July 2009 about risk verified by this attempted attack. See my Dec 2009 blog.
For five years Sir Malcolm Rifkind was MP for Kensington from May 2010 to May 2015 while he was chair of the Joint Intel & Security Committee. I sent him nearly 1,000 Emails with evidence, but this travesty was never stopped. Instead, it morphed into police & military threats on the street which helped compound the shambles that existed.
Honeypots full of poison pills. (who would do something so devious)
The response of MI5 is the predictable response of bureaucracies everywhere: give us more resources. Never do they stop to ask whether they might do better with fewer resources by simply changing their methods. The reason is obvious: in structured organizations promotions and power are linked to the size of the workforce and the budget.
Most of the people in positions of responsibility, whether it be MI5, GCHQ, NSA or the US Military, are concerned first and foremost about their own career paths. If it is necessary to murder some people or allow some people to be murdered, well, that’s too bad, but mustn’t let one get off track, should it?
Yet the statists on this website reflexively say we need more government and regulations to fix broadcasting, banks, political donations, equal access to the Internet, income inequality, etc., etc. …
The problem with the first four examples there, is that government is already deeply involved in those issues, so legislatively fixing them is not unreasonable. Income inequality is too complicated to discuss here. I’m a libertarian, which is the opposite of a statist. But I think broadband internet should be free to the consumer and through cables owned by the government.
Then you are not a libertarian. A libertarian is simply someone who believes in the nonaggression principle. Since government rules by the threat and actual use of force, it violates that principle. Now, we are not going to wish-and-hope for an immediate end or rollback of government, but at least libertarians should know that the belief in the nonaggression principle is what defines libertarianism.
” the nonaggression principle is what defines libertarianism”
http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/six-reasons-libertarians-should-reject-non-aggression-principle
Then it doesn’t exist! Which is pretty much true condidering a “libertarian” is arguing for state ownership of the Internet. Don’t worry, I still think the nonaggression principle is the only logical core of it, and I won’t punch you to make you agree with me!
There are necessarily exceptions to the nonaggression principle, or libertarians might as well call themselves anarchists, because government is force. For example, I think even most libertarians would agree that it is reasonable to use force to stop someone engaged in a killing spree.
The principle includes the provision of defending yourself if under attack. I am an anarchist.
There is ample evidence of the banking system functioning quite well in the past, under the watchful eye of the government when the Glass-Steagal act was in effect. But what happened is that large corporations, and especially the financial industry, started working to get the effective regulations repealed almost from the onset. The republicans for instance voted against G-S in the 1930s and hated it all along. But it was only when the banks bought the democrats as well that they were able to overturn the act, and we got the financial crisis of 2008 as a reward.
Of course we could follow the prescription laid down by the Libertarians and Donald Trump, and stop regulating banks in their entirety. We would then rely on their inherent sense of right and wrong and desire to behave ethically. Or perhaps people like me whose retirement savings were decimated as a result of a lack of government oversight coupled with distinctly non-idealistic behavior on the part of Wall Street might be permitted to visit a few board rooms without having to go through the metal detectors. That would suit me just fine.
I’d suggest Murray Rothbard’s “What has the Government Done to our Money”. The Federal Reserve ended any chance of honest money and banking; G-S was just a temporary fix to what the FED wrought with its easy money policies in the latter 1920s. Sure, David Stockman, whom I admire, argues for a Super G-S, but only because he knows the thieves on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Ave won’t give up their beloved FED, which allows the welfare and warfare state to be funded through inflation rather than taxes, which might make the people mad enough to stop it.
The ultra-refined, post-Christian nation of Britain will continue to curtsy to the Third Marquess of Cornhole and be soccer hooligans at Old Traford, but could care less about this or bombing the Mideast. Yet they think they are in trouble because of new arrivals.
Unrelated to this article specifically but would it be possible to change the HTML TITLE elements for the documents so that they reflect the documents instead of ‘The Intercept’ so as to make it far easier for people interested in saving and/or printing things for offline reading? Thanks. :)
good idea.
also please stop the endless scroll by offering a choice of “home page” styles. I suggest a serious rebuild.
Can we please stop pretending that GCHQ (or NSA) care if something is legal or not? It seems clear that they have made every effort to make legality irrelevant (and any acts that overstep not only not ‘illegal’ by merit of not existing officially, but by being deniable, not even subject to scrutiny vis a vis legality or lack thereof.
Will GCHQ *ever* answer questions? Is it me or is this the same boilerplate response they’ve given to every expose on their illegal surveillance and harassment programs?
We have a domestic Stasi-like apparatus. Big story, no one seems to be able to touch it.
Also, from Snowden this week:
“Skeptical? I once believed NSA wouldn’t ignore constitutional complaints. Then I heard this: ”
https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/739457253900570625?p=v
Check out his link.
We have a domestic Stasi-like apparatus. It’s a big story, but no one seems to be able to touch it.
Listen to this guy — Vito Potenza:
https://amp.twimg.com/v/ea9f6a77-6950-466d-a469-4b326002fdc6
“NSA’s #2 Lawyer, Vito Potenza, explains how they block complaints about unconstitutional surveillance programs.”
“Don’t ask any more questions, Mr. Drake.”
That really should be the replacement title for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-thomas-drake/
So everyone can recall what Drake said. Drake spoke to FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore and Mike Wiser on Dec. 10, 2013.
I’ve noticed they scoff at unconstitutionality. I persist in thinking nothing would be more lovely than for their parents to go through what they put people through while they stand by hopeless and powerless. Or their in-laws’ parents. Better yet, all of the above, plus their spouses. That whole ‘by their own petard’ thing would be deliciously apropos.
…and their children and grandchildren. It’s an outrage.