Is anyone else more worried about M15 than about terrorism.

[batshitlady]

That's it really. The state wants ever more surveillance power, ever more restriction on freedom of speech and even, in universities, freedom of thought. It seems to me that it's in their nature to ask for more powers and restrictions to our freedoms and privacy. Are we just going to let them have it???

If the choice is being blown up by a terrorist or MI5 reading my e-mails, no contest. So yes, I would be happy to just let them have it. I've seen no curtailment on freedom of speech - and thought? really?

I would be interested to know, OP, how they have restricted your freedom?

Any stats fans in ?

I work in privacy (amongst other things) and I'm not worried about MI5. First of all, there is a needle in a haystack principle here. If they have too much data its impossible to make sense of it, so they need to limit what they collect. Secondly, they are people like you and me and not an anonymous and nefarious organisation a la James Bond out to get us. Thirdly, practically everything digital out there I could get on you in half an hour without breaking into a sweat, and supplementary paperwork would only take me a few days. So they are doing nothing that criminals don't do when they feel like it, but there are strict controls over what they are doing it for, and how.

I would add I am worried about third party organisations making merry with my health data, by the way. Fewer controls, fewer ethics, more scope for infringement of personal liberties.

Finally you should all be crapping yourselves about some of the databases that have been developed to track children over the years. With nearly 1m innocent children profiled on the DNA database, and the Ryogens youth profiling database replete with gossipy anecdotal nonsense that could sabotage a young person's life with no means for them to challenge it, THIS is the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night. Fight your battles where they matter.

Why don't you try to do the Met's job then - see how you get on?

The ops argument is that because there has only been one death from terrorism in the uk for ten years that there is very little threat at all -

That's bat shit crazy.

Where are you getting your info from op?

Yes because it's got nothing to do whether you have anything to hide or what religion you are. These intelligence agencies will plant operatives who encourage young men to do stupid things so as to justify persecuting entire communities/nations and keep 'order'. They're involved in all kinds of shit from the drug trade to political coups. There are still very strong links to the fascists who spirited thousands of war criminals out of Nazi Germany and into western/South American countries. All our family has had some traumatic experiences with these weirdos. It's about blackmail and crimes of unspeakable darkness (think paedo rings etc).

They kill/set up those who oppose them including their own. David Kelly is just tip of the iceberg.

BoffinMum:
This kind of statement doesn't hold water, post-Snowden, and in a world of big data analytics:"If they have too much data its impossible to make sense of it, so they need to limit what they collect."
It's pretty clear that the intelligence agencies have developed tools to capture, store and analyse extremely large datasets. They are using big data techniques to spot patterns that aren't visible to human analysis, and to do that, they need to crunch shedloads of data on everyone. Those techniques will have false positive rates associated with them, because every screening technique in every field of human endeavour does. It's this routine collection and analysis of data on everyone, plus the demand for backdoors and/or the banning of encryption, that I think is problematic. The harms and risks outweigh the benefits. (The demand to ban or backdoor encryption is particularly bonkers. A backdoor would become the principle target of hackers and hostile states worldwide, and would be compromised with months.)

death in police custody figures since 1990: (source: www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/deaths-in-police-custody)

total across all UK: 1518 (of which Met police 339)

518 of those are car crashes, pursuits and shooting.

9 unlawful killing verdicts. Which is of course 9 too many.

the silly-stats do of course make no mention of the deaths from terrorism PREVENTED by police action (and there have been a lot of those).

still, if you don't like the police it is easy to avoid contact. Stay out of trouble and don't call them if you are a crime victim. . And be grateful you don't live somewhere where you REALLY don't want to be in contact with the police.

So the threat from ISIS in the West in entirely made up, and we should take our chances by not adapting to their methods, yes?????*

It's not made up. The threat is real. They will also arm, fund and knowingly let them loose ...

So whether we continue to arm the Syrian Rebels (representing neither President Assad or ISIS so by definitions the majority of Syrians) or not, we must NOT address the potential domestic threats from ISIS that you agree are real?

We are talking about UK domestic security, where if I understand correctly judges will have to authorise specific internet/email viewing based on some intelligence.

OP - no

Dear MI5,
if you are really interested in me then I give you full permission to go through my MN posts, my fb and tap my phone. You will find out nothing more useful or interesting than what I had for lunch (which was cheese on toast btw).

You also will need to significantly increase your staff on the basis that if you think me a risk, you'll think around 60 billion other people in the UK are also, so it's going to take you a long time to get through that amount of data.

If you'd like to dig up my garden to see if anything of importance is buried there, then please leave the apple trees, and replace the bulbs. If you spoil the raspberry patch then I'll bill you for them as well btw. However the rockery would be much better for you digging it over, so could you start there please.

Witchend

Ps. The reason why I kept texting "bomb" on my old mobile was because the stupid autocorrect always changed dd2's name to it. Sorry if that got you excited!

Dear Witchend

With your wicked sense of humour, despite not taking the terror threat seriously, as we need to follow 60 million citizen who all MUST be terror threats, we can use you to handle the back log.

Can you keep a secret?

If so, you are in.

signed; MI5.

Where do I get my info from? Well can you name a person killed by terrorists on British soil apart from Drummer Lee Rigby in the past decade?

I've nothing to hide so the state is welcome to snoop on me as much as it wants!.. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this. How about when stop & search laws, arrest without charge, having your home searched on the basis of emails they've read and misunderstood, is all increased because we don't care as we've nothing to hide? Or perhaps your not caring will be more down to the fact that it'll probably be happening to others and not you?

I’ll tell you why I’m more worried about M15 / the State than I am from terrorists, (who often don’t even know themselves that they’re terrorists yet). Y'know, the people we’re told we have to give up our hard won liberties to combat? It’s because British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called "national interest" abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including terrorist organisations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. But when it blows back here to our own soil, we have to forget about things like privacy, and our rights as individuals not be spied on. Instead we’re encouraged to run to our heroic secret services to protect us!

Erm- so we agree there hasn't been a successful terrorist attack on uk soil for 10 years (apart from lee rigby) what I find staggering is that from that you draw the conclusion that there is little or no risk and it's all been 'talked up' by m15.

I'm staggered you're not worried about being hit by lightning or about any one of numerous accidents you could have every day than be blown up by a bomb. Do you smoke, drink or drive?

Tell me, who started this mess, the general public? After fifteen years of the 'War on Terror' the threat is greater than ever (we're being told) and our freedoms are required to be even more curtailed and surveillance is getting worse. Do you not think we, the public, should be insisting on a different approach to this problem from our Gov't rather than saying "well I've nothing to hide so help yourself to my civil liberties"?

Perhaps you'd be equally staggered to know that in late 2002, a former intelligence officer told the New York Post that the flood of government terror warnings at the time were 'a softening up process' ahead of an attack on Iraq and 'a lying game on a huge scale?

I do worry about the erosion of civil liberties too! But with dh and dc in London all the time, yes, I worry MORE about terrorism.

I don't believe the threat is made up. Did terror attacks such as in Tunisia, France, Belgian, Pakistan, etc etc not happen or do they just not count?

TBH the time I feel least free in the UK is:

• When bureaucrats are being petty or lacking compassion
• When I am in long queues at airports being snarled at and/or shouted at by Border control
• When I can't get a school place or childcare place that I think I genuinely need for the kids
• When I can't get NHS treatment that I think I genuinely need or the family genuinely needs, including in a timely manner
• When a business rips me off big time, or shows undue arrogance
• When I experience pay discrimination

I suppose excessive monitoring should be there as well, along with establishment conspiracies to flog arms and meet their own vested interests, etc, and the putative ability of the State to track me while scuppering my daily life at will ... but ... I just find it hard to feel particularly paranoid about MI5. Seriously.

I absolutely hate the idea that if you've done nothing wrong you won't mind snooping. It's like saying that freedom of speech isn't important because you have nothing to say. Privacy is a right, you don't need to have to justify why you have it or why you are using it, just like you don't need to justify why you have freedom of speech. I do have stuff to hide, but it's not terrorism or paedophilia or a human trafficking operation, it's just my private business that I wouldn't feel comfortable with random people looking at. I simply don't trust the security agencies with access to my private information.

I've got quite into privacy since 2013 when they had all those leaks and made a lot of effort into minimizing my footprint. It proved to be a lot harder than I'd thought and as such was a real eye opener into just how vast it all is, how much data is being sucked up on everyone, and how much effort you have to put in if you want to avoid being tracked. I do things like using a foreign VPN provider to hide internet usage from my ISP and using PGP to encrypt my emails to others who feel the same and use open source software where possible. Far from foolproof (I don't believe there is such a thing) it nonetheless makes it more difficult for me to be watched. It also has more mundane benefits, my use of a password manager which generates very long and complex passwords for each individual account online meant I didn't need to worry about the DadSec hack, as I wasn't using that password across multiple sites. All I needed to do was change one password, the one I use on MN.

When we talk about the need to defend the country, there is no point in doing that if we have to eradicate those freedoms to do it. If we need to become a surveillance state in order to fight terrorism then we have to ask is it really worth it. There will always be terrorists out there and they will never all be completely defeated so just how much of our freedoms are we willing to sacrifice in the name of fighting a war that by definition can't actually ever be won?

Pacific re the tesco cards I imagine it's just people trying to find an acceptable balance between privacy and convenience that works for them. I refuse to use credit cards and clubcards for this very reason, I do not want Tesco or Asda or the state to have records of my purchasing history and trends, so I use cash for almost everything. But that's a big sacrifice and it's totally understandable for others to feel the same about privacy but not be willing to make that big step.

Ok I'm sounding the all clear you can come out now the rant is over.

Also because of the way it works there isn't a way to deny safe communication to criminals and terrorists without also denying it to law abiding respectable people, and almost 100% of the population relies on it in some way or another these days. The same encryption algorithms that stop a crook intercepting your online banking data are the same algorithms that allow terrorists to communicate without spies being able to read what they are saying. People say we should have some sort of backdoor where the government can get at encrypted data but no one else could, but because of how it works that's not actually possible. When a backdoor is there it can be used by anyone, including crooks with laptops slurping up all your online shopping card details.

DHAUn .... So in short with the following as an objective, you probably have quite easily become as technologically 'invisible' and safe as you can, correct?

Terrorists like ISIS have far more sophisticated skills/methods than you, not just to cover their on-line tracks but also their communications, correct?

With that in mind, how do you think our security services can keep up with them to head off a threat, never mind try get in front of the threat, without us giving them the powers they are asking for?

"Terrorists like ISIS have far more sophisticated skills/methods than you, not just to cover their on-line tracks but also their communications, correct"

There is actually a lot of overlap and it makes sense that there would be. Privacy minded people in this country, and terrorists abroad, both want privacy, it's for completely different reasons but they both want privacy so they will both do what they think is best in achieving that. A while ago there was a story doing the rounds about how terrorists were becoming more sophisticated and had released a security program. I downloaded it onto a virtual machine and checked it out, it was little more than PGP with a rebranding of jihadist logos. I wiped it afterwards, not that it was any more illegal to have than the PGP application already on my computer, but because I felt anyone coming into my room and seeing "Mujihadeen Secrets" on the screen may have got the wrong idea and I'd spend a few hours being grilled. I'm not a software developer or coder so I rely on using stuff that other people have reviewed and deemed to be secure. I suspect that ISIS is very much the same, the majority of them don't have any real computing knowledge beyond the average person so will probably be relying on what others have told them is secure.

"With that in mind, how do you think our security services can keep up with them to head off a threat, never mind try get in front of the threat, without us giving them the powers they are asking for?"

First, I don't see how giving them these powers could actually help in any way, so it's pointless to give them the powers. But you're asking what could they do to head off a threat, and that's a question that doesn't have a one size fits all answer. There is nothing that can be done to guarantee safety from terrorism so it's really only a case of trying to do things that make it harder and harder for them.