To me, this all smacks of weakness. If they were not breaking the law (at least in spirit), they wouldn't fear journalists. If they were capable of preventing or at least showing the danger of the acts they claim to fight, they wouldn't fear journalists.
But because the danger is perhaps not as immediate or as severe as the political narrative might suggest, or because their intrusions into our privacy are not as necessary as they claim, their only true threat are people who can expose such.
Are you serious ? They don't consider journalists a threat but rather a source.
Many of the modern terrorist organisations I am sure are sending videos, hostage details etc to newspapers in order to promote themselves and their cause. Makes sense that agencies would target them.
I definitely believe that there should be laws against though. Surely in the process of looking for terrorists the agencies must be finding some interesting blackmail information.
Intelligence agencies like GCHQ have targeted journalists for years, mostly out of fear that they will miss any embarrassing strategic stories which embarrass their political masters. There are tons of pre-Internet scandals related to intelligence agencies wrong-doing being exposed by the media - especially in places like Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Look at the work of journalists like Peter Taylor, John Weir and stories like Murder on the Rock, Stevens Enquiry, Shoot to Kill, etc etc
The problem was that intelligence agencies never defined and acknowledged the difference between protecting from embarrassment when they got caught doing something wrong and protecting from security threats.
A free press being a bastion of a free society, it's pretty damn troubling that journalists are being targeted. I'd argue that the press is more important to the UK's freedom than GCHQ any day of the week.
There's been global rise in violence and legal pursuit of journalists. But as many of the issues outside the US get attention I've compiled material related to the US:
* The Obama Administration issued a secret surveillance operation against the Associated Press to break their sources [1]
* Journalists like Ibrahim Jassam [2], Laura Poitras [3], Glenn Greenwald [4], James Risen [5], many others are being prosecuted and persecuted
* States are heavily partnered with news media (e.g. Ken Dilanian [6], Judith Miller and Michael Gordon [7])
* Domestic news is manipulated by the state to achieve geopolitical goals (Zarqawi Psyop [8], Fallujah Psyop [9]) - this has recently been anonymously removed from Wikipedia: now [10] before [11]
* The state uses legal pressure to delay and suppress stories (e.g. Risen's NSA story 2004-05 [12])
* On key political issues controversial journalists are pulled (e.g. Ayman Mohyeldin [13])
* Journalism exclusion zones are used to corral media for purposes other than their safety - even at home where exclusion zones were used to stop coverage in Ferguson [14]
* Sources to journalists have had their lives and their families subjugated to death threats [15]
* The state reserves the right to imitate news media outlets [16]
* There is both historical [17] and current [18] use of international cables to manipulate the press
* The White House has been caught using fake journalists during press releases [19]
* The state has been caught buying coverage from journalists (e.g. Armstrong Williams [20], Gallagher and McManus [21])
* The US government has injected (hundreds of) unattributed fake news stories into local news channels by the US through the Office of Broadcasting Services on political issues [22]
* There is current legislation that would legally compel journalists to disclose their sources [23]
* The Army was caught in a scandal where they were sending fake letters from an imaginary soldier to media organizations [24]
* Hero stories are drummed up, attested to, and propelled by state officials when guests of the media (e.g. Jessica Lynch [25])
* Anti-propaganda law have been relaxed this year [26]
* Media outlets have been given evidence from coerced testimony on the grounds it is actionable, even when it is known to have been fabricated [27] [28]
* Propaganda intended for foreigners makes it to American audiences [29] and this has been used on purpose to circumvent anti-propaganda law [30]
* The government has a history of manipulating media and through the Cold War had over 800 American news networks and personel [31] (names you may know such as Austin Goodrich [32] and Frank Kearns [33])
* The United States hires [34] contractors [35] and has software [36] to manipulate social media [37]
* Agencies publish documents compelled of them by law at inconvenient times to discourage large press coverage [38]
* It is also true that the the now president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service Patricia Harrison testified before Congress that President Bush considered Office of Broadcasting Services (1/4 billion dollar) state sponsored propaganda powerful strategic tools for swaying public opinion [39]
* Kenneth Tomlinson (a chairman to the foreign media propaganda arm of the United States) was put in charge of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR and PBS) and later retired after an internal investigation charged him with Ethics Violations for breaking the anti-propaganda law Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Before leaving he handpicked State Department official Patricia Harrison to supersede him; Harrison has brought in Cheryl Halpern, Tim Isgitt, Mike Levy, Helen Mobley, and other State Department officials formerly in charge of US overseas propaganda efforts
For some reason edits to the parent comment are not going through.
There's been a global rise in violence and legal pursuit of journalists so brits are apparently going to refuse to take responsibility and are going to point fingers at the US instead.
I was implying you are British, sorry for my mistake. It seemed like a macho British thing to do to try to deflect attention from this latest scandal by saying that the US is worse. (the UK is much worse).
My guess is that the UK is much worse than America based on their track record, history and handing of the Guardian documents. I don't live there or follow their politics as closely, so I don't have a list compiled for them.
It should also be said that there are many other countries that assuredly ARE worse than America with regard to the treatment of journalists. I have never been interested in 'lesser of two evil' false dilemmas, and don't find such comparisons very informative or important, but it should be said to make clear (if it was not) that this indictment of the Americas is similarly not a comparison with the British, with Egypt, with Belarus or anywhere else.
I would be very interested to see heavily sourced lists like this for modern day Britian (or essentially anywhere else).
The various accounts are a bit flippant of me. I tend to accumulate downvote brigades. After some time I'll notice that immediately after I post something (as in under 20 seconds) it will be downvoted several times or if a post has two digit 'karma' I will come back after some time with significantly less (though usually no new comments/discussion). In addition sometimes an account will "act oddly" - like refuse to update comments even when it is witnin the correction window or my HN tab in Chrome will be subject to regular crashes, requiring me to edit comments elsewhere and post them into HN for fear of losing edits.
Real or perceived, so far rotating accounts has seemed to deal with it fairly well. I also don't link credentials across machines (well, I try) - so you sometimes see two accounts active during the same week (never simultaneously posting however).
I've been thinking a lot about this rotation policy (solving the problem another way). Dunno.
So far as I know nobody has ever tried impersonating one.
What reason do you have for saying that the UK is much worse? The particular actions described in the article are not obviously things which the NSA would never do or hasn't done.
What can you expect from a country that still has a functioning monarchy. There's a reason America revolted against England, you can see many of the reasons listed in our Bill of Rights.
"Mr Hutchinson believes that the majority of Americans were deluded into war with Britain by a few crazies. A common experience in history. Read it, it's short. Pay attention to Mr Hutchinson pointing out logical inconsistencies between the revolutionaries' calls for freedom and their owning slaves." (https://foseti.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/review-of-strictures...)
Honestly, the GCHQ does seem a lot more brazenly nefarious than the NSA. A lot of the shit that comes out of the mouths of GCHQ spokespersons, shows open contempt and disdain for civil liberties and due process. At the NSA, it's more like they just don't respect those things, or think fighting terrorism/drug cartels/flavor of the month, is more important.
If I could choose to dismantle one or the other, I'd go with the NSA, but only because it has more capability. I definitely wouldn't want the sons-of-bitches in charge of the GCHQ, running the NSA.
They show contempt for civil liberties but claim to operate within the law. Since GCHQ is specifically mentioned (and pretty much exempted) in most surveilance related laws this seems plausible.
There is weakness in the oversight that GCHQ is supposed to have.
After all the stuff the Guardian published, and which has directly resulted in a massive reduction in Europe-wide security from terrorism, it's easy to see why.
The Paris terror attacks probably would have been stopped if Snowden/Guardian never happened or was better controlled in how the specific details were announced. UK's spy agency has more powers than the NSA can dream of; and is largely responsible for protecting not just the UK, but the rest of western Europe and even some of the USA.
> The Paris terror attacks probably would have been stopped if Snowden/Guardian never happened or was better controlled in how the specific details were announced.
Citation needed. What do you know of their electronic communications?
The thing is, even if it was true, which I frankly doubt... would it be worth it? The direction many US and EU politicians, especially David Cameron [1], want to go in, is a world without privacy, except for the governments (which means, in practice, a world where every government and cybercriminal can spy on your communications at any time). Even if it could prevent all terrorist attacks (which it won't, because drowning the security services in more data human analysts can process in a lifetime is a ridiculously bad idea...), this wouldn't be a society I would want to live in.
1: Who, at this point, appears to be either raving mad, a complete idiot, or O'Brien from 1984 in disguise.
Can you be more specific about what massive reductions in Europe-wide security resulted from the publications, and how they presumably would have stopped the Charlie Hebdo attacks?
Well, just search. But even just last week there was an article from a UK minister explaining that many dozens of Paris-style attacks have already been averted in Europe as a result of GCHQ spying. But that the tide is now growing so strong, and the terrorists much more wise after the Snowden leaks, that it is basically inevitable now that the UK itself will be attacked. The terror plot/arrests in Belgium recently were also guided by UK intelligence, he said.
Whenever you see "terror arrests made during dawn raid" on the news in UK, it's easy to dismiss it. But it happens pretty much every month now, and has been like that for a couple years now. Every one of these raids is potentially to stop a major terror attack; but the public is never told of the exact details of what they were plotting because otherwise that would defeat the purpose of averting a terror attack.
So you are arguing that despite the US (and other Western governments) capabilities at electronic intelligence being openly talked about in the press since the '90's that the terrorists only learned about this due to Snowden?
Osama wasn't keeping an air-gap because of Snowden. He was doing it because Clinton was calling in cruise missiles on terrorist cell phones back in the '90's.
I think a better argument is that only stupid terrorists talked on the phone/internet and eventually they would nearly all be "naturally selected" out of the "gene pool" until all you have left are the smart terrorists who teach their disciples how to be smart.
Unfortunately the stupid terrorists were also the ones least likely to successfully carry out a significant attack.
> Whenever you see "terror arrests made during dawn raid" on the news in UK, it's easy to dismiss it. But it happens pretty much every month now, and has been like that for a couple years now.
There are two options here. One is that there really are monthly plots to attack civilians in the UK, and these raids are genuinely saving lives. The other is that bring able to point at terrorists threatening our city centres is a very convenient way to distract people from the real issues.
How many of these raids are against real credible threats, and how many are people with a grudge getting hit for discussing the wrong thing? Unfortunately we're unlikely to know since so many of the trials are held in secret to protect the evidence being given.
So, at some point, the people need to be made aware of the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the policies enacted by the politicians they vote into office. How do you propose we make that happen? Because otherwise you're asking everyone to place absolute trust in people who you've already admitted will lie to the public as part of their job.
I see terror arrests, but not a great deal of terror convictions. Given the way newspapers work I'd expect them to be all over this.
the public is never told of the exact details of what they were plotting because otherwise that would defeat the purpose of averting a terror attack
That's not how rule of law works! If someone is accused of a crime, it is vitally important that it be described and proved in public at a trial.
We've been round this in Northern Ireland. Diplock courts, internment, etc. It's not justice and it just breeds resentment. It's completely critical to the long term success of antiterrorism that British muslims do not feel that they're going to be victims of arbitary arrest and detention.
Whenever you see "terror arrests made during dawn raid" on the news in UK, it's easy to dismiss it. But it happens pretty much every month now, and has been like that for a couple years now.
But because the danger is perhaps not as immediate or as severe as the political narrative might suggest, or because their intrusions into our privacy are not as necessary as they claim, their only true threat are people who can expose such.