My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers

Time seems to have had a way of vindicating at least some tin foil hatters, yet people today are just as ready to dismiss as 'crazy conspiracy theory' any similar extrapolations or speculations.

If you strip off the really genuinely nutty stuff, quite a bit of what I remember reading nutters talk about on places like Usenet alt.conspiracy in the 1990s is now reality. Some of what's now reality would have made them blush. The conspiranoids would have called you crazy if you'd suggested that everyone would be carrying devices that constantly report their location at all times to central servers owned by closely state-connected corporations -- and that people would accept this willingly and even pay out of pocket for these devices themselves.

tedunangst4• 11 years ago

If you strip off the really genuinely nutty stuff, quite a bit of what I remember reading nutters talk about on places like Usenet alt.conspiracy in the 1990s is now reality.

well, yeah. if you ignore all the crazy, what's left isn't crazy. why is that surprising?

The conspiranoids would have called you crazy if you'd suggested that everyone would be carrying devices that constantly report their location at all times

would they? that seems like a pretty obvious consequence of carrying a cell phone.

maybe my recollection is different, but i don't think people were saying "the government reads your email" was a crazy idea. they were saying "the government reads your email on their secret moon base staffed by hitler clones" was a crazy idea.

if you want to make the argument that the hatters were right all along but were wrongly dismissed, find a specific claim that was made, and a specific counterclaim. these "right all along" discussions always slide into unfalsifiable generalities and strawmen.

dntrkv• 11 years ago

I know quite a bit of conspiracy nuts and I'm sure that some of the stuff they talk about may one day be revealed as true, but that doesn't mean that I will listen to 99% of their bullshit for 1% of potential truth.

Throw enough mud at the wall...

geomark• 11 years ago

It seems to me that in today's environment with what we already know even using the term "conspiracy theory" marks you as a little bit naive.

krapp3• 11 years ago

people today are just as ready to dismiss as 'crazy conspiracy theory' any similar extrapolations or speculations.

Extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof. No exceptions.

Because 99% of the time, those extrapolations or speculations are exactly that - uninformed, paranoid fantasies without any grounding in reality. The ones who turn out to be right are inevitably drowned out by the ones who will believe any conspiracy so long as it seems paranoid enough, and given that signal to noise ratio, skepticism even in the face of vindication seems only right.

pdkl952• 11 years ago

dismiss as 'crazy conspiracy theory'

This is simply a current example of the political strategy known as the paranoid style. Just like the fear about "reds" in McCarthyism and various right-wing groups that used racial fears for political gain, there has been a very succcessful application of the paranoid style against the very idea of investigating the intelligence community.

If you (or anybody else) haven't read it, I suggest reading the original essay[1] on the subject. It may be over 50 year old, but it is probably one of the more important essays for understanding the modern (~post-WW2) American politics and how "conspiracy theory" has been used as a way of rallying people against "the enemy".

[1] http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-ame...

TeMPOraL9• 11 years ago

There's conspiracy theory, and there's conspiracy theory. Nazi spacemen from the Moon are obviously bullshit, but there's a heuristic I found to be good at predicting the real stuff that most people still don't recognize and treat as conspiracy - namely, that with technology, if something is possible (i.e. not breaking the laws of physics) and would benefit a group with deep enough pockets, it will be done.

So for example, is reading through most of the e-mail traffic possible? Yes, it is, there are ways to get this data in principle, and algorithms will help you in filtering. Is it useful for a government agency? Obviously. So it is most likely being done. Believing that before Snowden was not tinfoilhattery, it was accepting an obvious conclusion. Lo and behold, now we know for sure it happens.

People still don't get it. I die a little inside every time I see someone genuinly surprised about side-channel attacks like timing, reading the screen from light reflected off a wall, reading keys by power analysis, reading keypresses from accelerometer, etc. It's obvious this can be done and will be done. Computers are not magic boxes, they're made of matter and obey the laws of physics. They interact with the world.

TeMPOraL9• 11 years ago

I'm very reluctant to dismiss anything as tinfoilhattery nowadays. I always thought that people afraid of "chemtrails" are paranoid and believe obviously silly stories. Because why would anyone do that? And then very recently, on HN of all places, I learned that US Government did in fact spray bacteria on their own civilians for biowarfare research purposes, without the public knowing for decades.

It's getting harder to distinguish the crazy from the truth. I still don't believe in faked Moon landing though.

shahryc• 11 years ago

"Since then, the program has largely been presented to the public only through posts on government surveillance/conspiracy forum..." ------ I guess the conspiracy theorists weren't that crazy after all.

guimarin• 11 years ago

Back when I was a kid, Enemy of the State was not a documentary.

But really, if you cared about Privacy/Security at all since the 80's you'd've known about Echelon, Echelon II, etc. You've also read up on ThinThread and Trailblazer.

My favorite is the No Such Agency adjunct that pulled like $200m a year in funding with 3 people in the division. Well and this patch: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Logo_of_... quite literally the greatest US Gov't Patch of all time.

codezero• 11 years ago

I've always been partial to this one: https://i.imgur.com/XaIWseY.jpg

WiseWeasel• 11 years ago

Sure, that's a great example of classic Bond-villain-like appeal, but I still have to recognize the design team who pushed this work of an entirely different level of greatness through committee approval:

http://www.nro.gov/images/launches/nrol-66/NROL-66-patch.jpg

kristofferR• 11 years ago

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/NROL49_pa...

The text translates to: "Better the devil that you know".

wozniacki• 11 years ago

A 2006 Italian movie, "In ascolto" ( The Listening ) [1] [2] [3] presents a much more realistic plot.

[1] The Listening (film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Listening_(film)

[2] NYT Review

http://www.nytimes.com/movies/movie/351999/The-Listening/ove...

[3] Trailer - The Listening (2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlVK906Xzr8

toyg2• 11 years ago

Wow, an Italian film on Echelon starring Michael Parks and I didn't know the first thing about it... Thanks for the tip!

ra1n85• 11 years ago

No love for YGBSM?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Wild_Wea...

vezzy-fnord• 11 years ago

Back when I was a kid, Enemy of the State was not a documentary.

No, but The Conversation might have been.

echelon• 11 years ago

The dystopian film of the late 90's I recall being most frequently cited as a glimpse at our future was "GATTACA". While that portrayal may one day come to pass, it doesn't feel like something immediately dangerous.

"Enemy of the State" wasn't a particularly great film at the time it was released, but these days it feels remarkably prescient. We've willingly accepted an eerily similar world to live in, and we have to place an awful lot of trust into those at the helm...

iwwr• 11 years ago

For some reason Gattaca doesn't seem like that much of a dystopia. Poverty and disease are largely conquered. It's a harsh future that fosters alienation (or there wouldn't be much of a movie), yet the problems of that world seem fewer than those of today.

rangibaby• 11 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

DonHopkins• 11 years ago

They spelled "Semper Villains" wrong.

signaler• 11 years ago

First learned about ECHELON in Robert Ludlum's Bourne series: http://bourne.wikia.com/wiki/ECHELON The key difference being that this is trunk VOIP ingestion, not the more sinister PRISM and TURMOIL stuff which is much more invasive

1arity• 11 years ago

A Moral Thesis in Defense of Surveillance

People talk about civil freedoms, and they incorrectly attribute lack of surveillance the status of a civil freedom. Freedom from observation is not freedom, freedom from incorrect enforcement is freedom.

Observation does not alter the moral scope of the individual, or the moral scope of the society. The individual's choice to limit their own moral scope under observation is what limits their scope. Surveillance does not affect the effective moral scope. Enforcement defines the ( effective ) moral scope ( the scope of actions that individuals can do without expecting hindrance from society ).

More comprehensive surveillance, leads to more clear enforcement, and more clear enforcement preserves in clearer definition those freedoms which are expressly not prohibited under the moral scope of a society. Surveillance is a tool of freedom. Specifically, a tool that contributes to preserving the freedom of action of individuals by contributing to more effective enforcement.

Without surveillance the machinery of enforcement can be more messily and liberally applied.

The fake left doctrines complain about surveillance as a tool of oppression.

Surveillance is seen in fact a tool of freedom, it is the light shone upon. The fake left doctrine has framed the entire debate incorrectly. Absence of surveillance is not a civil freedom, it is in fact an assurance of imprecisely applied enforcement.

Surveillance is a civil freedom.

Lawful enforcement is a civil freedom.

The remaining civil freedoms, known as "civil liberties" are those things permitted by an individual's effective moral scope.

Civil liberties, like morals in general, are not absolute, they are the choices made by societies to define themselves at a particular time and place. ( The color of absolutism is invoked because that promotes harmony -- if something is absolute it is beyond question. This is not a real admission of absolute, simply a shorthand for a society saying the debate about this way we define ourselves is complete, for now. )

Civil freedoms are distinguished from civil liberties in that civil freedoms include those acts, two of which are defined above, which effect whatever civil liberties are chosen. Civil freedoms include the machinery of creation of civil liberties.

The relationship between the state and the individual is somewhat akin to that between a parent and a baby. A baby is many things, and it is also helpless and chaotic without the governance of the parent. The parent's attentive observation ( surveillance ) of the baby presents the baby from harming itself. The state's attentive surveillance of the individuals presents them from harming themselves and others.

If large groups of individuals were capable of governing themselves in an ad-hoc fashion then...the internet, reddit, all of these places would be domains of inclusion, tolerance, peace, and respect. In fact, moderators, and moderators of moderators, and policies, and a central authority are required to prevent chaos and harm.

These things ( observations and controls -- surveillance and enforcement ) are the very enablers of the same liberties that the fake left doctrine purports they destroy.

The fake left doctrines complain about surveillance as a tool of oppression. They use "freedom" in an intangible, absolute sense. A mythological "Perfect Freedom of the Individual", a delusion that fails to acknowledge the social context in which any freedom of action exists.

These fake left doctrines are founded on a delusion of a freedom unhindered by a social context. They are the fake left's dream of the mythical Powerful Individual, a delusion to compensate for the collective belief of the fake left of the powerlessness of the individual against some mythical oppressive force. In fact, for an individual exposed only to lawful restriction of their action, their only powerlessness is their fabrication of their own powerlessness.

The mythical oppressor of the fake left is in fact, not the lawful surveillance state, it is the individual that chooses to believe itself powerless. Surveillance is not oppression, incorrectly applied enforcement is the very definition of oppression. And as the net of surveillance is narrowed, a broader net of enforcement must be cast to protect individuals from themselves. The fundamental that the fake left has not grasped is that the trade off is not between "broader freedoms and broader surveillance" it is between "broader surveillance or broader enforcement", and broader enforcement, without the information, is going to be incorrectly applied.

tux1968• 11 years ago

What about the real left though? You've left their arguments completely unscathed.

hyperdunc• 11 years ago

The surveillance-enabled "freedom" you describe relies on those doing the surveillance to be either nearly incorruptible or thoroughly monitored. And we know that in practice they are neither.

TheOtherHobbes2• 11 years ago

Make absolutely all payment and money transfer records completely public, and then we can talk about freedom of surveillance.

igravious• 11 years ago

Your intriguing missive would be better served by not slandering your opponents. By which I mean, why say "fake" left without explaining what the left position is and what is fake about it. It's as if you expect us to be privy to some evolving thought process or conversation and that expectation is a little troublesome for me.

But apart from that. Of course you come across as a little, (um, how do I put this delicately?) ... half-baked. Sorry! It's true. Like that old joke, you read 1984 as an instruction manual, not a warning? But seriously, surveillance is freedom. Like I say, intriguing. I've often wondered about the behaviour modifying properties of believing in an omniscient creator. I think you're pointing to something similar, except humans themselves are the ever-watching eyes and ears. I actually think you could be correct to some extent, the knowledge that someone is observing you does affect ones behaviour -- cf: chilling effect.

Taking you at face value: counter-argument. 1) Adults are not dependent on the government in the way you describe. In modern society we are all dependent on each other. 2) Who watches the watchers becomes a very real problem and not one that has been solved. 3) We know empirically that total surveillance states don't last very long. Have we got it right this time? Let's see. If we have then human society has been changed utterly and political theorists will have a lot of work to do. 4) Lots of people (from the left and right) don't want to live in that kind of society, no matter the benefits. 5) I'm not convinced the good you put forward outweighs the obvious dangers, you'd have to present a much more coherent argument than the one you are presenting.

I know you'll be shot down here but I find the intellectual challenge of responding to your position rewarding, so thanks for that.

edit: thought of a sixth. 6) maybe some behaviours you want (like being able to speak out against injustices and corruption and so on) will be suppressed as well as the "bad" beahviours you want rid of.

colllectorof2• 11 years ago

1. Global surveillance is not a left/right thing. No matter what you believe in or where you stand on issues, global surveillance can be used to force you to do things you do not want to do - without regard to any moral, ethical or legal considerations.

2. The article pretty much proves you wrong on the moral scope thing.

Surveillance is seen in fact a tool of freedom, it is the light shone upon.

War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

If large groups of individuals were capable of governing themselves in an ad-hoc fashion then...the internet, reddit, all of these places would be domains of inclusion, tolerance, peace, and respect.

Many parts of the Internet are domains of inclusion, tolerance, peace, and respect. Reddit, Twitter and 4CHAN are designed to be what they are. They're not the only models of how things work, they're just the largest centralized platforms that draw the most attention.

EliRivers• 11 years ago

This stream-of-consciousness manages to get surprisingly far before the utterly irrelevant personal definition of "left" comes out, revealing this particular poster's koolaid of choice. The fake left doctrines? Really? Still, at least it doesn't have a go at "liberals".

sandworm101• 11 years ago

The problem with Echalon-type programs today is cultural. They were/are intelligence operations. But today "intelligence" has grown to encompass criminal investigations and targeted, violent, operations such as drone strikes.

An intelligence operation does not need to be 100% accurate. Huge volumes of less-than-perfect data are examined by experts who then issue reports, opinions, on what is actually happening. The top report would be the sort of things included in a president's daily briefing. That was basic cold-war intelligence.

Today's leaders expect surveillance to be absolute. They don't want "and increased likelihood of attack", they want "Mr. Smith will be onboard flight 123 at 2pm". That's the level you need to send a bunch of cops to lawfully and publicly arrest a specific person and take them to a court for prosecution. Such things require very different methods, methods for which ECHALON was never designed.

toyg2• 11 years ago

today "intelligence" has grown to encompass criminal investigations

That's a function of changed political objectives. "The enemy" became a liquid definition, purely for political reasons: "Arab terrorism" can easily be redefined as OLP or Taliban or Iran or AQ or IS or or or, keeping the public "at war" indefinitely and impeding scrutiny of reigning confusion in foreign policy. Until that stops, it's politically very difficult to fight calls for "more intelligence to stop our planes blowing up".

Unfortunately, the US (and EU allies, especially France and Britain) have now managed to screw up an entire continent so much, that a clear statement of interest to "reset" this state of things is almost impossible. In comparison, Vietnam and Cambodia were a walk in the park.

teh_klev3• 11 years ago

I remember the Zircon affair quite vividly. At the time I was a 20 year old student union activist, CND member (still a member) and involved in the Scottish independence movement (SNP member when it was unfashionable).

A couple of days after BBC Scotland was raided by Special Branch a bunch of us attended a viewing of the "banned" Secret Society "Zircon" programme in Edinburgh in the City Chambers (I think). Duncan Campbell was present and gave a short introduction. It was a positively electrifying event. I managed to get hold of a copy of the episode for distribution and viewing at my college. It was handed to me in a jiffy bag, the VHS video cassette was labelled "Mickey Mouse", I think I have it in a box somewhere.

wrboyce• 11 years ago

Is this[1] the programme you refer to?

[1] https://vimeo.com/44948377

billybofh• 11 years ago

I've been looking for a copy of that for ages - thank you!

teh_klev3• 11 years ago

Yes, that's the one. Seems like a storm in a teacup now.

pbhjpbhj• 11 years ago

At 19:19 it's hilarious - British Aerospace gave the game away about the 3rd "Skynet" satellite being at 53deg East instead of where it should be, then that info was rescinded in later releases (showing it was important), then the centre for tracking the Skynet satellites (in this segment) only has 2 tracking dishes.

British SigInt were really, really bad at lying it seems.

Or, was this just the diversion ...

teh_klev3• 11 years ago

Also worth a watch, Mr Campbell himself giving a talk at The Register Christmas Lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJfFOJVRMNU

evilhaskeller• 11 years ago

I remember an IRC channel about security in the early 2000s. Somehow we started discussing government surveillance, and someone mentioned ECHELON. People's reactions were interesting: most people immediately dismissed it as being "impossible", or "another conspiracy theory".

It makes me sad.

yborg• 11 years ago

How quickly we forget. Long before that, back in the USENET days, it was a common joke to include a .sig line "for the ECHELON line reader" with a list of words that the presumed NSA computer would match against, like "KGB nuclear anthrax bioweapon" etc. The joke being that if everyone would include these, they would end up having to analyze the entire newsgroup feed.

SapphireSun• 11 years ago

Heh, there's an emacs command for that too. M-x spook

carbocation• 11 years ago

I took that more as a subversive act, rather than as a joke.

colllectorof2• 11 years ago

Yeah. The worst part, though, is that a lot of the same people now did a 180 and reside firmly in the "I have nothing to hide" camp. They jumped from dismissing global surveillance as too far-fetched and intrusive for reality straight to dismissing it as a triviality not worthy of further though.

These people have no imagination, that's the problem. They could not imagine the possibilities, which were easily guessable at the time if you knew anything about technology. Now, they cannot imagine the consequences, which are easily guessable if you know anything about people and intelligence agencies.

Mikushi2• 11 years ago

That's what happens when the ones in charge have a deep understanding of the human mind and how trivial it is to shape it and the ideas/values it contains.

As I said in another thread, unrelated, things like propaganda and by association advertising are unethical at best, it's subversion/coercion on a massive scale, it truly shapes people in something they are not.

And they count on the fact that people reject the fact that they are easily manipulated (applies for me too).

sr_banksy• 11 years ago

Great insight into how free-speech, freedom of press and privacy laws work and have evolved on both sides of the Atlantic. Having lived on either end of the pond as an average citizen, I know the American Press enjoys greater and truer freedom. They hold the legislators accountable. The British press, on the other hand, felt malleable, made to bend any which way the government choose. The BBC creates invaluable programming, but also is bound to the government by the purse. It always felt like the government meddled with its affairs. And now some great to get some historical context into it as well!

superkuh• 11 years ago

This page will reliably kill X.Org X Server 1.7.6 regardless of the browser used to render it.

keithpeter2• 11 years ago

OK on xorg-server-1.9.5 which is pretty old. What GNU/Linux are you using? Debian Squeeze?

keithpeter2• 11 years ago

Historically GCHQ has had a strong relationship and support from British government and politicians at government level probably reinforced by the 'troubles'. Mrs Thatcher altered the culture of the rank and file GCHQ staff by removing union representation and replacing it with a 'staff association'.

throwaway81922• 11 years ago

A somewhat philosophical question: what is the endgame here?

Cracking codes was no doubt fundamental to winning the Second World War (and I would imagine all wars since the invention of the Caesar cipher) - but since then the motivation for surveillance appears to have from safeguarding the freedoms and rights of the people to an full-scale assault.

We now have nation-wide surveillance of the British public (and no doubt the people of most other countries), who for the most part couldn't be of less interest if they tried. So what is the motivation for this? What is it about you or I that is so interesting to GCHQ/NSA?

pjc50• 11 years ago

The priority has been the same for hundreds of years: protect the Establishment from "subversives" threatening instability. This includes anyone leaking damaging true information. The grip seems to have loosened in recent years, partly due to overseas media and partly due to the security services genuinely having increasing panic over ISIS and Islamic radicalisation.

What is being concealed? Not just Zircon, but all the persistent allegations of sexual assault on children. A lot of the stories that have surfaced include elements of either the Metropolitan police or MI5 taking over the files and then "losing" them or silently shutting down the inquiry.

Mikushi2• 11 years ago

It's not a popular opinion, but what they are interested in is silencing and curbing any attempt to attack the current system, regardless of the merit and legitimacy of the "attackers" ( by that I mean activists, journalists, ...), they want to defend their position of power using all means necessary while pretending it's for "freedom & democracy"™.

Their repeated attacks on the press, the persecution (at time violent, if not deadly) of activists/journalists, the illegal wars, the financing of terrorism, protection of known paedophiles,... The list of fucked up shit they pull is so long I personally have lost faith of anyone -in significant numbers- caring, because if you don't care right now, you'll never do.

pdkl952• 11 years ago

It's called COINTELPRO. Just like "total information awareness", the program didn't really end; it was simply broken up and renamed.

twic• 11 years ago

The next morning, as the New Statesman hit newsstands, I went early to Parliament to meet a friend and supporter, an MP named Robin Cook. He led me to a sanctuary in Parliament, where I could stay long enough to avoid being served by the authorities and get our story out safely.

Robin Cook was one of the good guys.

Interesting to know about a remaining enclave of asylum after our discussion recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9951283

My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers

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