Edward Snowden and how were the US and UK spying?

Question

I know that Snowden apparently leaked info to the press about us and uk spying on ...who? How were they spying, why were they spying, what were they doing? Ta in advance!

Answer 1

I'm amazed people were shocked to learn the US was spying on their own citizens and allies. I always assumed the paranoia a the top levels of government would automatically lead them to do this.

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

A UK Parliamentary report purports to assure us that although the data is being collected indiscriminately it is only accessed on a proper warrant. I doubt it. The USA is clearly using a wide-spectrum trawl of all communications and if they apply of a warrant it is after they have already assembled the data. The UK shares all its information with the US, although I also doubt if the US really reciprocates, it would not be their usual form. Neither government has a very good record is securing its computer systems from external predators. If the Pentagon cannot keep hackers out then is the NSA any better? The use of external private corporations for handling this data also has implications. Snowden was a contractor, not a staff member, and yet he had access to a huge amount of information. Likewise Bradley Manning was a lowly member of the US Army but his "need to know" was almost unbounded.

Anyone who remembers their US Constitutional history will know that general warrants were regarded as completely unconstitutional, but now it seems they have become legal without any change to the Constitution.

As in previous examples of State power being extended into dubious areas we will only know the truth if we are ever given access to targeted cases which did not lead to prosecution, then we can form an opinion on whether these powers are being abused. In the UK even in cases brought to court the prosecution does not have to identify the means by which the evidence was obtained, so keen in the Government to hide its methods, in fact they have let cases fail rather than reveal just how pervasive their spying is.

It is clearly not all for the sake of national security. The UK government has had to admit it has spied on allied nations at international meetings held in the UK. The US has certainly done the same, the French long ago accused them of industrial espionage. It appears that the German Chancellor was unaware of the scope of intelligence gathering in her country, although Germany has one of the better systems of constitutional over-sight of the intelligence services.

The danger is that we really do not know who has access to this information and to what use they put it. As an example from history J. Edgar Hoover blackmailed US congressmen and administration officials using information gathered by the FBI through wire-taps. Congress and government is no cleaner now than it was then, but intelligence gathering is much more sophisticated, which gives great power to those with access to the data.

Answer 4

Ammananius normally on the ball is niave on this one, to cite Germany during the Nazi period as an example is way off mark.



During the Cold war and especially towards the end in the late 1980s 'All' British Telecom UK internal calls were monitored and speech recognition software was developed especially to pick up on certain key words, if the words were picked up, then the call was directed through Langley (USA Pentagon) and recorded, and logged.



I would assume (dangerous) that GCHQ also kept tabs on these calls.



After WW2 one of the Collosus Computers is still unaccounted for, and certainly UK used Cable and Wireless another large UK Telcoms company to monitor overseas 'Traffic' and had done so since at least the 1930s to my (very limited) knowldege.



It is not that this information is being tracked and logged, it is whether the controls needed for free speech and freedom of Democracy are in place.



That Nazi Germany read peoples mail is largely irrelevant (the USA certainly didn't, Henry Stimson during Hoover's administration famously said 'Gentlemen do not read each other's mail', fortunately the British didn't see it that way, and certainly read and intercepted anyone's mail they suspected of Espionage) it is how it is used and to whom the people using it, are responsible and answerable to, and whether they work within the spirit, if not the actual word of the Law.



Snowden is a rather Niave nit wit who thinks he is being a hero of free speech, he is nothing of the kind, just someone who is misguided enough to think Henry Stimson was correct.



Snowden certainly lacks political intellect, he is being used by all sides.

Answer 5

Everyone.



The NSA PRISM system is monitoring ALL e-mails and ALL phone calls and SMS messages.This info is then stored and can be used against an individual later for whatever purposes the NSA or US government wants,at any time.



No government authorization to do so on an individual basis,nor reason for monitoring YOUR e-mails and phone calls needs to be given first.



So,what Snowden has done is clearly in the public interest,and for all the Obama bluster about it being justified on the grounds of national security - that's exactly the same argument the Nazis used for new security laws they introduced from 1933 onwards.

Answer 6

Every major country has some sort of data mining system set up that analyzes electronic traffic passing through their country (and sometimes traffic that never touches their territory) - we know that the USA, UK, and France all have PRISM-like operations going on (run by the NSA, GCHQ, and DGSE, respectively). Other major countries certainly have the same capabilities and programs - Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Australia, and so on. The security and intelligence benefits are too great for the potential political fallout to prevent the establishment of such programs.



Basically, all of that traffic, as its being routed from one node to another (along the world's electronic traffic cables) is being read and stored by massive computers on massive servers, to check for traffic between suspicious phone numbers, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, and so on, and to search for suspicious characteristics, like the use of the word "bomb." New technologies are even allowing these computers to monitor voice traffic.



The real question is whether you care about your electronic presence being monitored or not. Honestly, I don't care, but not everyone feels the same way. In effect, just consider that nothing you do with your computer or phone is actually private - some computer is going to read it and store it. Will an actual human ever see it? Almost certainly not, unless you do or say something truly suspicious.

Answer 7

I know only about the US. The NSA (National Security Agency), a U.S. government agency, was in an agreement with AT&T, a telephone company, and Google, a company which possesses a widely used e-mail service, to gain information about telephone calls and emails done on their services.