Wednesday, June 25, 2014

UK secretary of state: "There is no surveillance state"

Britain once again mistakes 1984 as a manual to implement rather than a cautionary tale. [Link]
UK Secretary of State Theresa May -- part of a regime that presides over a spy service thatclaims the right to intercept all webmail, search and clicks; that spends hundreds of millions sabotaging Internet security; that dirty-tricks and psy-opses peaceful protest groupsthatlaunched illegal denial of service attacks; that slurps up 200M SMS messages a day; thatuses Google cookies to follow people around the Web; that targets NGOs and charities for deep surveillance; that sent spies into World of Warcraft hunting jihadis; that hacked a Belgian Internet exchange; knowingly participated in illegal surveillance at the telcos' data-centersattacked Tor; detained a journalist's boyfriend under anti-terror laws; accepted£100M from foreign spies for help in spying on Britonstapped into undersea cables; andmore -- insists that Britain is not a "surveillance state."
But, she says, there's all kinds of scary, scary terrorists out there. And she's foiling lots of terrorist plans. But she can't tell you about it, because that would be "cavalier and reckless." But we should trust her. And give her more powers to spy on us without a warrant.
As unbelievably stupid as this is, it at least beats last time, when the prime minister said TV crime dramas demonstrated the need for mass surveillance.

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