Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: goblin on August 20, 2013, 01:52 pm
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If this is not terrifying enough for you, I don't know what could possibly be. The GHCQ, NSA's equivalebnt in the UK, has literally walked into the offices of the British newspaper The Guardian (this is the paper that has been publishing all those juicy, and frightening, revelations on NSA and GHCQ spying around the world, as revealed by Edward Snowden and written by Glenn Greenwald), and demanded that they destroy ALL the hard drives containing the Snowden files.
They actually stood over the shoulders of Guardian employees watching to make sure they were in fact destroyed. Naturally you know the Guardian must have multiple copies of these files in other locations and probably encrypted all over the internet (as most likely does Greenwald), so the damage is really minimal.
But the point is that we have now crossed the threshold to honest to goodness Gestapo tactics in the west. If this doesn't chill your blood, or make it boil, you're not human.
We are on the verge of tyranny in all its disgusting reality, and it's only a matter of time before the US starts doing the same in its territory.
This in addition to the unlawful 9 hour detention of David Miranda, Gleen Greenwald's partner, at Heathrow airport, on a trumped-up terrorism fishing expedition. This was done absolutely to intimidate Greenwald, and to send a signal that the big boys are about to start playing really rough with dissenters and whistleblowers from now on.
Stay tuned, folks, the future looks veritably dystopic.
goblin
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subbed
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Agreed this is very disturbing, but I'm not at all honestly surprised. With all the revelations that have came to light lately, thanks to the true American hero, Edward Snowden, they seem to be engaging in these gestapo tactics all over.
I personally feel that way about the whole Lavabit shutdown, you don't get much more gestapo than saying "either do what we want or you are out of business". May not be murdering a person, but definitely a business. Sadly we will quickly see the few Americans that actually put their integrity before greed being lambasted by the government and media for doing the right thing, but at least we know who's on our side.
I certainly hope we get more whistleblowers and more of the truth to come out. Someone needs to get these assholes in check and I can tell you, the pacified American public certainly won't. But on the bright side, since this all came out, I bet Tor and other anonymity services have seen their user base grow exponentially which will hopefully thicken the soup they are trying find people like us in.
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They detained greenwalds partner at an airport for 9 hours last week.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow
The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.
David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.
The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.
Miranda was released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
Since 5 June, Greenwald has written a series of stories revealing the NSA's electronic surveillance programmes, detailed in thousands of files passed to him by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Guardian has also published a number of stories about blanket electronic surveillance by Britain's GCHQ, also based on documents from Snowden.
While in Berlin, Miranda had visited Laura Poitras, the US film-maker who has also been working on the Snowden files with Greenwald and the Guardian. The Guardian paid for Miranda's flights.
"This is a profound attack on press freedoms and the news gathering process," Greenwald said. "To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.
"But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively."
A spokesperson for the Guardian said: "We were dismayed that the partner of a Guardian journalist who has been writing about the security services was detained for nearly nine hours while passing through Heathrow airport. We are urgently seeking clarification from the British authorities."
A spokesperson for Scotland Yard said: "At 08:05 on Sunday, 18 August a 28-year-old man was detained at Heathrow airport under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. He was not arrested. He was subsequently released at 17:00."
Scotland Yard refused to be drawn on why Miranda was stopped using powers that enable police officers to stop and question travellers at UK ports and airports.
There was no comment from the Home Office in relation to the detention. However, there was surprise in political circles and elsewhere. Labour MP Tom Watson said he was shocked at the news and called for it to be made clear if any ministers were involved in authorising the detention.
He said: "It's almost impossible, even without full knowledge of the case, to conclude that Glenn Greenwald's partner was a terrorist suspect.
"I think that we need to know if any ministers knew about this decision, and exactly who authorised it."
"The clause in this act is not meant to be used as a catch-all that can be used in this way."
Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act has been widely criticised for giving police broad powers under the guise of anti-terror legislation to stop and search individuals without prior authorisation or reasonable suspicion – setting it apart from other police powers.
Those stopped have no automatic right to legal advice and it is a criminal offence to refuse to co-operate with questioning under schedule 7, which critics say is a curtailment of the right to silence.
Last month the UK government said it would reduce the maximum period of detention to six hours and promised a review of the operation on schedule 7 amid concerns it unfairly targets minority groups and gives individuals fewer legal protections than they would have if detained at a police station.
The government of Brazil issued a statement in which it expressed its "grave concern" over the detention of one of its citizens and the use of anti-terror legislation. It said: "This measure is without justification since it involves an individual against whom there are no charges that can legitimate the use of that legislation. The Brazilian government expects that incidents such as the one that happened to the Brazilian citizen today are not repeated."
Widney Brown, Amnesty International's senior director of international law and policy, said: "It is utterly improbable that David Michael Miranda, a Brazilian national transiting through London, was detained at random, given the role his partner has played in revealing the truth about the unlawful nature of NSA surveillance.
"David's detention was unlawful and inexcusable. He was detained under a law that violates any principle of fairness and his detention shows how the law can be abused for petty, vindictive reasons.
"There is simply no basis for believing that David Michael Miranda presents any threat whatsoever to the UK government. The only possible intent behind this detention was to harass him and his partner, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for his role in analysing the data released by Edward Snowden."
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Annnnnnnnnnnd good-bye freedom of press. I mean we already knew that, but now it's public. Great! All the more reason to stay in my hole.
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Snowden piece in The Guardian forces the UK gov to destroy its hard drives*
There. Fixed it. I like that version a lot better ;)
Fuck these fascist scum!!! >:(
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Lol the UK is becoming Airstrip One. All hail Oceania!
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Lol the UK is becoming Airstrip One. All hail Oceania!
When wasn't the UK the USA's little bitch?
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Lol the UK is becoming Airstrip One. All hail Oceania!
When wasn't the UK the USA's little bitch?
I hate to say it, but Australia is still the UK's bitch. Along with New Zealand and Canada they are the "5 Eyes". PRISM is just a supercharged ECHELON
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29
So still. Basically Oceania if I'm up to date with my Orwell.
And... oh shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania_%28Nineteen_Eighty-Four%29
Bam.
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Lol the UK is becoming Airstrip One. All hail Oceania!
When wasn't the UK the USA's little bitch?
I hate to say it, but Australia is still the UK's bitch. Along with New Zealand and Canada they are the "5 Eyes". PRISM is just a supercharged ECHELON
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29
So still. Basically Oceania if I'm up to date with my Orwell.
And... oh shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania_%28Nineteen_Eighty-Four%29
Bam.
I think Australia is more the USA's bitch than the UK's as it goes, I think ever since the CIA had a democratically elected Australian Prime Minister booted (Gough Whitlam) because they considered him a threat to national security (he was asking inconvenient questions about the top secret USA spy bases in Australia that were not sharing any intel, just making Australia a first strike country in any nuclear conflict) they have had AU by the short and curlies.
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TL;DR
DPR has all our monies and we're going to die. George Orwell was right but he had a boner for helicopters. And hairy chicks.
Fuck it. I'm a start my own book club. With blackjack.... and hookers.