Data snooping: law abiding citizens have 'nothing to fear'

guardian

This is a close transcript to the interview William Hague gave this morning about British intelligence gathering.


"intelligence gathering in this country is governed by the united kingdom is governed by a very strong legal frame work. so we get the balance right between the liberties and privacies for the people and the security of the country.

Did you know about prism?

Well I can NEVER confirm nor deny in public what Britian knows about and doesn't know about for obvious reasons. once we start doing that on this or anything else, terrorist we are trying to defeat or the intelligence we are competing with will build up the picture of what we do.

The next effect, if you are a law abiding citizen going about this country, going about your business and your personal life, you have nothing to fear about the british state or the intelligence agency listening to the content of your telephone call, or anything like that.

You will never be aware of all those things the agency is using to stop your identity from being stolen, and to stop a terrorist from blowing you up tomorrow, but if you are a would be terrorist or a the center of a criminal network or a foreign intelligence agency trying to spy on britian you should be worried, that is what we work on and we are on the whole quite good at it."

I like how liberties and privacy for the people weigh just as much on a scale combined as national security in justifying the collection of data. Selling you on two for the price of one.

He can never confirm or deny because he would be incriminating govt agencies from around the world in how they all legally collect information from the public

If you are a law biding citizen you have nothing to fear because you have nothing to hide. Raise your hand if you have nothing to hide. Just what I thought. Look at all those who hold public office with their hands firmly under their arses. He just admits he cannot reveal information to the public because the nation comes first .not the people. if the people did in which they are trying to protect, there would be no need for national security.

For if the Nation has nothing to hide, the people have nothing to fear.

"You will never be aware of all those things the agency is using "

point hopefully made well aware of to the public.

"that is what we work on and we are on the whole quite good at it."

When you study law all forms, laws are made by man and based on language or words. Listen carefully to the wording of your public officials. It is how they buy you on what they are selling. Think of all politicians as door to door sales man or used car sales man. Sure there will be the rare honest one trying to make a living for their family, but the rest are all crooks.

He is telling the public the govt gets away with what it can because we make the laws that guide our nations.

FYI they do not listen to your phone calls, emails, text messages, they have computer programs that do it for them and with multiple algorithms that single out key words, phrases, etc. so they are RIGHT when they say no ONE is listening to your phone calls but they are being screened and monitored.



If this is what America is capable of world wide, imagine when intelligence is shared and gathered.

The problem is the US gov is about as trustworthy as a Somali lady of the night
If you have nothing to hide !
Really !
Looking at how opposition and other groups have been targeted by the administration .........what were they doing wrong ? Other than disagreeing with them ?
If you disagree .....they will come after you.....and now it's confirmed, they can see everything

Lets say 2 years in the future YOU disagree .........they can also now go through 15 years of YOUR emails texts phone calls, internet sites youve visited, everything .......and find that one little thing to use against you

Maybe you once threatened the Gov in passing in a text to a friend
Maybe you knew a drug dealer
Maybe you were friendly with the waiter in your local Mexican .......and his cousin is in the cartels
Maybe you had that holiday to Pakistan or Egypt
Maybe you once visited a website linked to extremists ........like ATS.....I'm sure the occasional extremist posts here .......have you debated and agreed with them, maybe added them to your friend list ?................BOOM you have links to extremists............ And that includes oath keepers !

And as we've seen ........all the US gov needs to do is use that term....'links to extremists' and you can disappear with no rights to anything


If the US gov doesn't like you or what you have to say it will and does come after you
PRISM makes it so they can go through everything to find something to use against you.......anything

Years ago .. when this first started ... 'They' said that the only calls/emails being snooped on were those going overseas to known terrorists and terrorist groups. I thought ... okay. That's fine. But now we find out that has been abused and it's now EVERY email and phone call. My phone calls and emails will bore the heck out of whoever gets stuck snooping them ... and they are totally innocent .... but thats not the point. the point is .. it's a HUGE overstep of authority on the part of the Obama administration and when you combine it with how the Obama administration is targeting reporters and groups that disagree with the administration .. it becomes very frightening!

They had you (us) convinced with fear that it was for your (our) own safety and only Al-Qaeda related issues. Any possible terrorist is a threat to national security of the individual GOVT entity.

Define a terrorist?

If you have not read this article yet, its worth the time.
atlantic< br />

All the Infrastructure a Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy of Bush and Obama

Originally posted by whatzshaken
If you are a law biding citizen you have nothing to fear because you have nothing to hide.

That is correct.

The problem is, once extreme surveillance is placed upon the masses, laws can be passed that may not be in the interest of the general population.

Then you have no option but to tolerate these laws, no matter how bad they get.

reply to post by NuclearPaul


The knowledge of being known that you are being watched by CCTV's alone will change someone's behaviour in public settings. Amplify that by electronic transmission, but only to those who are deemed a threat.

The secrecy in which they have been watching everyone and used Al-Qaeda or "terrorist threats" which is left to their discrepancy, allowed them to search who ever they deemed a threat to national security. Each individual govt entity's national security based on their own threats.

You have meetings such as Bilderberg where vast amounts of information sectors collectively conglomerate to share what they have collected, analysed, calculated, predicted, amongst those who reside in the "need to know" basis.

The cracks became chips now the chunks are starting to fall on those who built this tower of fear.

reply to post by whatzshaken


What makes those who believe they have nothing to hide think they are the ones who are going to make that decision. What makes them think the government definition of 'nothing to hide' is always going to match theirs.

Cant they see that in order for the government to determine you have nothing to hide they must first monitor and spy on you in order to be able to arrive at that decision.

You have nothing to fear "as long as you do exactly what we say"
The most depressing news ever. Double plus bad.

reply to post by whatzshaken


This system can be used in so many ways besides keeping a nation safe. It can also be used to suppress and put pressure on individual regardles of them being terrorists. All they have to is appose its own government. Which is not illigal "yet".
A system like this will demand a different system to Catch what this system can not, as the Public adapts to it.

In other Words in the future it will become illigal to adap to the system if you just want a person to person conversattion.

This is my favorite new topic going around right now.

Someone in another thread made a clear point that I loved and I agree with it 100%.

If we the people shouldn't be afraid of this type of thing if we have nothing to hide. Shouldn't all government business be transparent as well, because if they have nothing to hide, they shouldn't be worried about it.

Maybe they said it better, but you get the idea. I'm a slave and I do nothing about it. Yay me!

Don't forget the mail

...FBI tracking system that photographs EVERY item of mail

We are all in prison now. youtu.be...

I still have a problem with the entire 'invasion of privacy' idea. I could care less if the NSA collects my information in the form of Data Mining. Too me it seems like a sideways version of the issue that is so prevalent in today's younger internet users that they have an out blown image of their own importance.

If you ever travel to Europe by the time you arrive back at the nightmare that is JFK airport every single bit of information about your data life will have been stored by the government somewhere. So what! What about your hum drum life makes it so important that it's an invasion of your 'privacy' from an endeavor that you choose freely to go on?

If your 'privacy' is so important then throw away your phone, stay off the internet and don't travel. There problem solved.

Everything has risk involved in today's world and if you freely choose to participate in it then expect the consequences.

It the political game both sides( rep, dem, (indep).) of the American political system play together an use to their advantage. It is dirty and maniacal and only politicians who play the game can get way with using those rules.

Its the Midas touch, who ever has the gold makes the rules. The people willingly hand over money they do not have to in the form of taxes to pay these politicians salaries, plus benefits, expense accounts, and they still get political campaign contributions to boot.

Repeatedly you have administration after administration in some type of scandal revealing some form of corruption and the people are naïve enough to believe it is just limited to that person. That the person abused their responsibility or power.

The system that is in place, the GOVT system, allows for such devious politicians.

And when President Barack Obama finally spoke, he effectively shrugged. "What the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls," said Obama, as if that were a mere trifle.

cbc

Neil Macdonald: Big Brother is listening in and no one seems to care

Obama himself put it nicely in 2005, speaking forcefully against the Patriot Act, the very legislation that authorized the secret court orders to the phone companies.

Echoing Frank Church, then-senator Obama told Congress that the U.S. government "has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record, or private document … the phone calls you make, the emails you've sent. This legislation gives no rights to appeal … in a court of law.

"No judge will hear your plea, no jury will hear your case. This is just plain wrong."

Seven years and a couple billion dollars made in Political campaign contributions and I would say Obama was bought off too.

It is the peoples responsibility to do something about this, Nixon was impeached for far worse, so was Clinton.

If the American people do not LEAD the way in this violation of privacy for the purpose of national security and see the irony, the GOVT watching its own people for the protection of the Nation built upon the people residing inside its borders, then the whole world deserves to live in this totalitarian system and become the de-evolved, dumbed down consumer, spoon fed what ever you are told to.

Humanity honestly deserves it because they just do not get it. Sincerely, the information is there and some see it, those people who just don't care, or fight for this political way of life, make it difficult by accepting that there is nothing, nothing, those who oppose this tyranny can do.

And that is up to the people to decide what to do and Time is not with us, it is working against us.

Originally posted by spooky24
I still have a problem with the entire 'invasion of privacy' idea. I could care less if the NSA collects my information in the form of Data Mining. Too me it seems like a sideways version of the issue that is so prevalent in today's younger internet users that they have an out blown image of their own importance.

If you ever travel to Europe by the time you arrive back at the nightmare that is JFK airport every single bit of information about your data life will have been stored by the government somewhere. So what! What about your hum drum life makes it so important that it's an invasion of your 'privacy' from an endeavor that you choose freely to go on?

If your 'privacy' is so important then throw away your phone, stay off the internet and don't travel. There problem solved.

Everything has risk involved in today's world and if you freely choose to participate in it then expect the consequences.

Soon it will be a crime to be off nett. Because than they wont be able to monitor you.

The other thing is my private life is not a consern of the government. But the government is a consern of mine. If anything is, it is Our governments that should be monitored not the Public. Because, why should we be forced to have blind faith in them?

Many of them are potential criminals just like the rest of us.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Years ago .. when this first started ... 'They' said that the only calls/emails being snooped on were those going overseas to known terrorists and terrorist groups. I thought ... okay. That's fine. But now we find out that has been abused and it's now EVERY email and phone call. My phone calls and emails will bore the heck out of whoever gets stuck snooping them ... and they are totally innocent .... but thats not the point. the point is .. it's a HUGE overstep of authority on the part of the Obama administration and when you combine it with how the Obama administration is targeting reporters and groups that disagree with the administration .. it becomes very frightening!

ok...I'm also not thrilled about this indiscriminate gathering of information...but you are a member on this site, and there has been plenty of documentation here, that this NSA spying is not political in nature, and has been going on for some time...also, the bush and dick admin. directly informed Robert Novak, a right-wing journalist, who proceeded to make public in 2003, that Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA agent and outed her, along with an entire hub of middle eastern agents and informants built up over many years. maybe, Obama found out about the damage done and the set-back in overseas intelligence operations and he didn't want that to happen again.
and as far as targeting groups?...if you mean IRS 501c4 groups, every one of these groups are a "target" for the IRS regardless of political affiliation. it's fine to form a group to disagree with the president, and to receive as much money to run it as you wish, however, trying to avoid taxes while at the same time using that group to bash one political group, is not legal. the IRS was doing it's job, it was following the laws put into place by congress.....and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that "tea party" groups formed before the 2012 election, had one goal in mind...to oust the democrat Obama

Main Core

Main Core is the code name of a database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government of the United States. Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security. The data, which comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other sources, is collected and stored without warrants or court orders. The database’s name derives from the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.”

Infowars


More evidence on how the GOVT has been collecting data on their own people secretively since the 80's

So we have a small number of people whos agender,morals and principles are unknown with enogh power to track you ,find you and ship you off to guantanamo,order a hit on you-triads, take your freedoms away,blacklist you,target your family or whatever else money can buy.
I thought the usa had a constitution to stop this sort of thing. I thought your precious gun laws were to stop this sort of thing?
Scared? Boston showed how easy it is for the gestapo to put you all on lockdown.

reply to post by symptomoftheuniverse


The US does, these documents incriminate previous administrations.

This technically, was implemented Dec 23, 1913, with theFederal Reserve Act and has slowly over the course of Time and various Political Officials, dissolved the American People's Constitutional Rights and Freedoms.

These are mere PIECES to a larger PICTURE.

My problem with this is Everyone is guilty of something illegal.

I can download a song on the internet from Pirate Bay and that song is illegal. I can record the same song to cd from my stereo and it's legal. But now, most download instead of recording because they get the digital format they desire. Got a camera on your phone? Chances are at least once you took a picture of someone without their permission.They can always find something they can use against you.. even my 85 year old mother that does Not have a computer ( she has an I Phone) has watched a copy of an illegally streamed movie.