GCHQ 'intervened' over Harry Potter leak

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36010426

by jackgavigan • 10 years ago

98 70 10 years ago

bbc.co.uk

sevenfive_• 10 years ago

"There was [an instance] where a child was going to die of an awful childhood condition before the book came out," he said. "So we did the only thing we could do and referred it to the author to decide how to handle it because it's her story, not ours. "History doesn't tell the outcome of that sad story, but I'm sure it was a happy one."

Ouch.

Normal_gaussian3• 10 years ago

An interesting quote.

I know I wouldn't publicise it - it is rather vulgar to use the death of a child to improve ones public images; publicly granting such a request will also bring the problem of more being made in the future.

There is also the risk to the book to consider. I can completely understand if an author chose not to give anybody special consideration. It is an unfortunate fact that it is impossible to guarantee the security of such a reading.

Not an easy decision, and I think the publisher is speaking out of turn by mentioning that such events have been considered.

nsgi2• 10 years ago

I also wonder if some of the requests this statement inspires will be less genuine.

ceejayoz• 10 years ago

Not an easy decision, and I think the publisher is speaking out of turn by mentioning that such events have been considered.

Such events have already been publicly confirmed. Here's two:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Natalie_McDonald

cmrdporcupine• 10 years ago

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

fit2rule2• 10 years ago

This is doublespeak at its absolute finest. A child died at the end of this (article) story, so that'll be your last thought about GCHQ/Harry Potter: children die, and we have to have an exclusive, secret society with self-granted powers in order to stop this, or else. Or else, children will die, unhappy.

mtgx2• 10 years ago

So is this what the doubling of GCHQ's budget is going to be used for? Protecting against the piracy of various novels and movies?

I thought it was to stop terrorism or something like that. Silly me.

alfiedotwtf2• 10 years ago

With the money that the series has generated, it's probably gone over some threshold to consider it a "national security" issue.

chris_wot4• 10 years ago

I think that's highly unlikely.

NamTaf2• 10 years ago

"A spokesperson for GCHQ told the Sunday Times: "We don't comment on our defence against the dark arts."

I don't care about anything else, I'm just so glad that someone at GCHQ maintains their sense of humour whilst being a spook.

abrodersen• 10 years ago

We should start calling intelligence analysts "Dementors"

delinka• 10 years ago

I think they'd call themselves Aurors.

jMyles• 10 years ago

I'm just so glad that someone at GCHQ maintains their sense of humour whilst being a spook.
I don't care about anything else

I suspect that's exactly the intention of this sort of PR.

NamTaf2• 10 years ago

I should have clarified, my statement was with tongue planted firmly in cheek. A sibling post described it best when they said it was flippant. It's up there with the Google wiretap post-it note smileys.

fit2rule2• 10 years ago

Yeah, this is clearly a fluff piece to associate two nice, fluffy British institutions - Harry Potter, and GCHQ - in a way that reminds people its not all about death, destruction, prejudice, using arcane methods to control people against their will, killing those not of your own race/culture, stealing their resources and covering it up so that an ignorant 'sub-class' of people can continue to live their pathetic, un-magical lives, etc.

Oh wait. It actually still is all about that. Just warmer and fluffier.

madaxe_again2• 10 years ago

That is indeed the purpose of this PR, and PR it absolutely is, as they did not prevent the leak of the book - I for one read it as a PDF several days before it was published.

This is up there with the piece they ran a few days ago about how they saved us from shitty smart meters, which were instituted and approved by another department of government (ofgem). They're playing themselves off against themselves in order to make you think of them as GCHQ as better, when the whole is still just as rotten as it ever was.

nsgi2• 10 years ago

I'm not. I think questions about the actions of GCHQ merit a serious response.

AnkhMorporkian• 10 years ago

Do they? There's no reason to think that anything creepy was going on. Surely one of GCHQ's legitimate missions is simple OSINT, and certainly forum trawling. Someone posts a copy of the supposed manuscript to some forum, some GCHQ minion sees it, off-handedly mentions it to a supervisor who is a Harry Potter fan, the supervisor calls the publisher, mentions he's from GCHQ, and 11 years later it's mentioned in a retrospective story.

When I was in the military, I discovered a vulnerability in a website while I was browsing the web bored at work. I did mention I was an airman. If somehow that resulted in a news story, I don't think it would be fair to demand a response from the Air Force. Sure, they were technically paying for me to do that, but it wasn't really the mission.

branchless• 10 years ago

Yeah great guys. This after the other GCHQ feel good on smart metres. No thanks GCHQ.

PR on a dodgy govt agency that thinks the rules don't apply to them delivered via state web site.

mistercow• 10 years ago

I think there's something super creepy about a secretive government agency flippantly exhibiting power creep.

superuser2• 10 years ago

Noticing that something has been "posted on the internet" isn't an exercise of power. Plucking it out of private correspondence, or offering to help take it down, sure, but intelligence agencies are entitled to access public information, same as everyone else.

tempodox• 10 years ago

GCHQ may be good for nothing else, but defence against the dark arts is obviously very important.

whoopdedo• 10 years ago

And how many times did they discover stolen credit cards, or evidence of identity theft, and helpfully notified the banks and account holders?

Normal_gaussian3• 10 years ago

Banks have made many decisions about the acceptable level of credit card and identity theft. These essentially come down to - quite a bit is ok. For all you know GCHQ does report such evidence, but if they don't I would expect it to be because nothing will realistically be done about it.

When something unusual, or of a large magnitude, comes along these organisations will talk with each other to help mitigate the damage.

GCHQ does a lot of good work alongside invading our privacy.

ZanyProgrammer• 10 years ago

I know anecdotal evidence and all that, but I've never received a genuine report from a bank saying that a card has been stolen, but I've gotten a lot of annoying false positives saying my card has been declined because I've traveled more than a 2 hour drive away from home and had the nerve to use it.

madaxe_again2• 10 years ago

The main decision banks have made about payment fraud is "make it the consumer's problem".

This is the actual purpose of 3d-secure and contactless payments - if you take the time to read the small print, or if you work on the merchant/retailer side of things, you'll know/find that in both cases liability for fraud is shifted to the consumer for the majority of cases, as by giving you the "secure token" (i.e. a cookie or a card) the only possible reason for any fraud in their reasoning is your own negligence.

mikeash3• 10 years ago

I don't think we have enough information to even speculate about what the answer to that question would be. Is there a particular answer that would make you happy?

nxzero• 10 years ago

Almost sounds like an attempt by someone at GCHQ to get a copy of the book before it was released. Given how popular the book was, this would have been a great asset for "trading" with sources.

nicky03• 10 years ago

With logic like this you probably think the moon landings were faked too.

awetyq345y345r• 10 years ago

It's telling that they forgot to mention that their 'interventions' ultimately failed and that the book was leaked online anyway.

partycoder2• 10 years ago

Book sales for Harry Potter are $7.7 billion dollars. They are just protecting domestic business.

To put things in perspective BAE systems revenue was $25 billion some years ago.

mtgx2• 10 years ago

So spy agencies' purpose is to help domestic business now?

extra882• 10 years ago

To protect domestic business, yes. As stated in the article, "GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, is a secret intelligence agency which monitors electronic communication to prevent terrorism and tackle serious and organised crime."

Spy agencies should not help domestic businesses by engaging in serious crime, i.e. industrial espionage, though some nations' intelligence agencies, including France's have done so.

agd• 10 years ago

The logic is that our national security is partly dependent on our economic success. This is the problem with vague definitions, you can extend national security to cover anything really.

junto• 10 years ago

Germany: http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960011/trans-atlanti...

France: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/new-wikileaks-documents-rev...

Other: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-glaser/america-as-economi...

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/04383424450/lates...

taneq• 10 years ago

    "There was [an instance] where a child was going to die
    of an awful childhood condition before the book came
    out," he said. "So we did the only thing we could do and
    referred it to the author to decide how to handle it
    because it's her story, not ours.

    "History doesn't tell the outcome of that sad story, but
    I'm sure it was a happy one."

Poor turn of phrase when talking about "a child about to die of an awful childhood condition". O.o

raverbashing• 10 years ago

Bloomsbury's Nigel Newton said GCHQ contacted him in 2005 after it apparently discovered an early copy of The Half Blood-Prince on the internet.
However, after a page was read to an editor, it was determined to be fake.

This is hilarious

There was a lot of crap being put online being named for an upcoming book, usually fanfic (especially at the time of Book 5 and 6)

But it was easy to tell

stuaxo• 10 years ago

However, after a page was read to an editor, it was determined to be fake.

So someone at GCHQ finds a story someone has wrote pretending to be new Harry Potter, and that warrants them ringing them up ??

DanBC3• 10 years ago

You, and most people in the thread, are assuming that GCHQ did call the publisher.

Maybe the publisher is lying.

Maybe someone called but lied when they saidthey were from GCHQ.

I'm pretty sure the story didn't happen as the publisher claims.

nicky03• 10 years ago

You make it sound like an employee making one short phone call is a huge waste of the agency's resources.

nicky03• 10 years ago

You make it sound like making one short phone call is a drastic, unwarranted step. Come on, it's just a phone call.

pieter_mj• 10 years ago

As a Belgian, i can't wait until the British vote themselves out of the European Union. GCHQ is the prime reason. They and other organizations like them are the cancer of a modern democratic society.

arethuza• 10 years ago

Why do you think that whether the UK is in or out of the EU has any impact on who GCHQ and SIS/MI6 spies on?

hackerboos• 10 years ago

If anything I would imagine they would be able to violate EU law even more without the accountability to Brussels.

ianpurton• 10 years ago

Perhaps he thinks the British will physically re-locate.

throw7• 10 years ago

Half-blood Prince Spoiler Alert. GCHQ notified. Of National Security Import.

ddp• 10 years ago

That's not a world I want to live in.

GCHQ 'intervened' over Harry Potter leak

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