Thetownend.com

...any thoughts on this latest whistleblower, and his "revelations"  I'd imagine GCHQ, might pay this site an occasional visit and have a look at some of the outpourings of our more politically volatile members.

im sure dosser would love to have his say on this

He's probably been taken away already.

I thought this was going to be about Lisa Snowden having some sort of affair

Is this the affair thats been all over Twitter?

GCHQ in snooping shocker. Yes I know it's a gross simplification of the issue but we moan soon enough when a threat slips through the net.

In any case it's claimed they acted within the law so non story for now

Agreed although there is a certain delicious irony of the MP's and peers moaning about the papers secretly recording their conversations and the then Hague coming out and saying that if even if we are snooping if you arent doing anything wrong you have got nothing to worry about!

Well I mean obviously it's right that mp's and peers have more personal freedoms than everyone else. It's not like the average person is really important is it?

If the snooping did anything much to avert the threat, that might be a point. Although I'm with Ben Franklin:
Or put another way, we keep being told we have to win the "war on terror" because the terrorists are a threat to our "way of life". But if this is used to justify all kinds of "temporary" expediencies which radically erode our freedoms and dismantle our democracy, don't the terrorists win anyway?
The key word there being "claimed". By a bunch of lying bastards.

From a personal point of view I really don't care if GCHQ 'snoop' on my strange mix goat porn and geek forums. They are all over social media, phones and the like in the same way anyway and will learn far more about me.

The problem I have with Government is where the line is drawn, that consists of
a) what else they do with the data (sell it, use it for other purposes, etv).
b) whether (as you say) they try to use it as a hammer to force through ridiculous schemes like identity cards.

you have a point regarding lying bastards though, I just can't be arsed to be outraged. Yet.

By now you will be tearing your hair out, so I may as well push you over the edge by saying I find the new x-box 'must be online' thing (and "the cloud" in general) a much greater threat to my information being misused!

Not really (tearing my hair out), more inclined to agree tbh. I find it especially amusing when people who are quite happy to post their personal lives all over facebook get a gob on about "Big Brother government"

There was a line in the "Person of Interest" TV series where the guy who developed the all seeing computer system said that the US Government were searching for ways to keep tabs on people when along came the internet and social media sites that did it all for them. Not far wrong.

It is legal - government,polizei etc are exempt from DP Act, don't get me started on the 'cloud'. FFS you can store all you financial info on my nas if you like.
I think I'll go dark now.

Wrong!

Not exempt, but do have certain legal privileges.

I think that certain departments such as MI5/6 should have some access to whatever they need to do their job. I'm not quite sure how that should be regulated though.

This is what I think. There's a huge difference between finding out if, say, you've pirated something, or you're claiming for £20 extra benefits you're not owed, compared with matters of national security like bomb plots and opposing agents attempting to damage the country.

Certain security services deserve to have access to anything and everything they need to protect us from exterior threats. I'd hope that this kind of power would be used selectively and sensibly by those involved, seeing as how they're our security/intelligence services, and not the insecurity/dumbarse services. I doubt an intelligence officer gives a fuck how much goat porn one bloke watches.

But then who watches the watchmen? And who watches the watchers of the watchmen? And who watches the watchers of the watchers of the watchmen? (And so on ad infinitum...)

It's all a bit Orwellian isn't it?!

There's always been the need for policing. We don't generally moan about Bobbies patrolling the streets or driver's licences to regulate road safety, for example. These could be considered intrusive or Orwellian but most of us don't because we see them as common sense.

The internet has changed things quite a bit though. It's thrown up a fair few legal and moral challenges to be faced but it does need to be policed somehow.

There is a certain irony in the defense which essentially says "to protect your rights and freedoms we are going to infringe on/piss all over your rights and freedoms".

I just wouldn't trust the government with private information.

These people are human beings with agendas who have royally fucked up in the past.