GCHQ dismisses Trump wiretap rumours as tosh UK intelligence agency GCHQ has dismissed US reports - cited by the White House press secretary - that it was involved in running a surveillance operation on Donald Trump before last year's US election as "utterly ridiculous". During a press conference on Thursday, White House press Secretary Sean Spicer cited a Fox News story …
You can never trust a Govt than operates in secret, its as simple as that. The fact big businesses also work for Govt and can use commercial confidentiality to hide their Govt contracts to help spy on you is just another trick. Journalists are useful for spying in plain site in your own country and abroad, you never get to see all the hours of footage made when you watch your news bulletins online. Next time you talk to someone beit HMRC, your GP, a nurse, emergency services & armed forces personel, just ask them if they had to sign the official secrets act? They might lie to you or you might get told the truth. Fact is unless you join one of these organisations or become a CEO of a top business, you will never know just how extensive the Govt spying really is. Just look at the latest TV ad's suggesting women could be working for the secret services, your own other half could be spying on you right now. Thats why you can never trust anyone, not even your own parents, brothers & sisters.
@credas
Do you know who you are talking to when you call a call centre? How do you know its not GCHQ intercepting your calls? Laws? They do anything they like in secret, its how they stop you getting blown up by terrorists.
Unless you meet someone in the flesh and get to know them, how can you prove someone is who they say they are, when you talk to them on the phone?
Not the first time someone has killed themselves after being spoofed over the phone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jacintha_Saldanha
Do you know how many impressionists there are in the world?
Unless of course her death is just another example of Fake News?
You decide... whats real and whats not when you use electronics to communicate.
Do you think black hat hackers will tell you they have hacked your systems at home, watching and listening to you on your smart phone, they lie in wait, logging everything and then come back to blackmail you, just like the Celebs who's indiscretions get leaked to the media for you to gawk on as Emma Watson and Amanda Seyfried found out the other day.
Hackers or spooks, you decide!
Your only clue your smart phone is spying on you is if the battery goes flat more quickly than normal.
Use the laws of physics to help you prove something.
@ tr1ck5t3r
Actually, the black hat hackers did contact me, because they were so bloody bored of watching me sit on my arse watching TV all evening, waiting for me to do something blackmailable.
In the end they had a whip round, and together with the spooks (who were also watching me), they managed to scrape up enough to hire your mum for a night, and eventually everyone went home happy.
@phuzz
Not happy with Virgin Media then or your flatmate? Havent got any PC's to dust or users to upgrade to the latest M$ offering? Have you got the planned migration from Windows to Linux sorted yet?
Are you even soooo lazy & believing of your Govt that you dont check back for a response?
Thats right, keep kidding yourself you have not been spied on all these years because you have no way of telling that your smart phone is listening to you right now, watching your every move, because you werent good at physics.
I can see you have not put tape over your smart phone's camera yet, dont worry, most people are so lazy they only tape up their laptop and tablet camera's if they can even be bothered to do that, they dont think about blocking up their microphones or taping over their smart phone's camera's because it would look silly having a smart phone with tape over the camera's wouldnt it and who wants to look silly now? Dont be a Silly Billy, I'll protect your precious mind, the Govt doesnt lie to you, and the govt doesnt operate in secret.
I'm a dedicated follower of fashion...... I must have a mobile phone tracking my every move with triangulation that is hidden under the guise of cell phone load management software. I must use my payment card for purchasing. This electronic world makes you a sheep. Baah!
Because you like the convenience of your electronic world, online purchases, payment cards, mobile phones, its possible to monitor your every move. Do you really think you would be given toys that could not be used to track your every move? Change is subtle, use the earlier adopters to do the selling it lowers your guard.
Did you know your NHS medical records are online, in M$ dot net web systems? If you didnt, then you dont know much, but here's a clue watch the jobs being advertised with recruitment agencies, find out the clients and then ask yourself, if the Govt are happy to have your medical records online, then they obviously have total oversight of the internet coming in and out of this country. They dont just launch sub's to cut undersea cables in the Middle East for interception for the fun of it you know....
I'm curious why you dont want to believe that your every move is spied on with electronics? Is this like a religious thing, just like people espouse the existence of their sky faerie of choice despite no proof?
Story telling has been going on since Caveman times, only most adults have progressed from Lady Bird books to Religion, although I note a resurgence of Lady Bird books for adults, so perhaps we are still going backwards. Ah, precious mind.
In the mean time enjoy having some phone hacking time in your local boozer tonight. Get yourself a Software Defined Radio usb stick costs about £30, set up your own fake mobile phone tower in a pub or club and start tricking people into thinking they have pulled when it comes to closing time sending different parties photo's from their phone to others and Man In the Middle the text conversation. Its geeky humour, but it keep the bouncers happy and in work.
Cilla Black's Blind Date has evolved.... Have fun!
@ tr1ck5t3r
I upvoted, nobody can be that crazy? Surely?
tr1ck5t3r's comment clearly reads like a schizophrenic! They often get extreme paranoia outbreaks where they even question the loyalty of close friends or family, been there, witnessed that ...no, one should not take the piss, this is simply the result of inadequate levels of neuroleptics in the blood.
Whats inane about the petition? Let me guess you asked to be born and you still believe in Santa Claus, your parents never told you the truth that he doesnt exist? Good name BTW, you remind me of someone? I wonder who that is?
Why do so many people choose to believe so many lies?
Are they scared to find out the truth?
Perhaps thats why Religion is so good, you can never find your sky fairy and perhaps thats why your smart phone with a camera on both major faces is such an excellent tool for keeping an eye on you, that alarm clock function is such an easy seller, some can laugh from a far when you get undressed. The best joke is you thought you had some privacy! What a sucker! ROFL.
So do you believe we are spied on or not?
Why do you choose to believe the narrative instead of forming your own independent thoughts?
Is it logical to preemptively target trouble before it gets out of hand?
Do you find the idea that we are spied on 24/7 harmful to your thought processes?
"Whats inane about the petition?"
The utter and total irrelevance in where it was posted, for starters. I guess that's why El Reg have now deleted those posts.
And why the personal attack? Can't you make your point rationally?
I think you ought to go read the forum guidelines, especially item 15.
Yes I keep being called a troll, I've got a nice photo of one waving at me from the Mozilla start page with accompanying text saying "Now seems like a good time as any for an important reminder. Never read the comments." Now how did they do that?
As to point 15, well considering my email servers & websites keep being hacked and taken down when hosted with major companies, been going on for years now, slowly putting me out of business and now currently I cant send emails, hard drives wiped losing decades of work, I have little other option than to post here. Its one of the few places I can post online. You see this ideology called the financial system forces people to take drastic steps, and theres this illusion about computer security, it doesnt exist, you all live in an electrical digital panopticon. You slept walked into it for your own safety.
So when is a troll not a troll, when its someone who doesnt agree with you.
As to the petition, I suppose you find it acceptable that people cant end their life in a dignified manner for what ever reason they choose? How selfish that you think you should control other peoples lives, forcing them to involve other people in often messy ways even when successful.
Just because rules exist, doesnt mean they are right, does it?
Why do scientists think they know best?
Why do they think they even have a right to study other people secretly?
When will the donkey realise they cant have the carrot?
And all the while, the population keeps growing, standards keep being lowered and people just dont get it.
tr1ck5t3r is not mad.
His points regarding the extent of digital information collection, surveillance and monitoring are spot on.
Corporations collect personal information. Spending habits, personal details, photos, phone and email details, browsing history to name just a handful. This info is easily obtained by the TLAs.
The NSA/GCHQ et all are fully connected to all ISP backbones - your network traffic IS monitored.
Proactive remote conpromise (hacking) is something the TLAs do to compromise a PC or smartphone. Even switched off phones can listen, record and transmit if malware is installed.
Your location is tracked with the position of your phone being known with a triangulation range at all times. Road traffic cameras with number plate scanners also in use.
None of the above is in dispute - multiple sources not of the tinfoil hat brigade show this to be true. Just look at the revelations of Snowdon or any number of articles on El Reg.
"tr1ck5t3r is not mad.
His points regarding the extent of digital information collection, surveillance and monitoring are spot on."
Hmmm.
Consider those two points separately, shall we? Second one first:
"His points regarding the extent of digital information collection, surveillance and monitoring are spot on"
I'll agree wholeheartedly with that, and if necessary the evidence is readily available from relatively trustworthy sources (not just Snowden, though he did a great deal to help).
tr1ck5t3r is not mad.
He's certainly angry about.. something.. and the "mad" part is strongly debatable.
His points regarding the extent of digital information collection, surveillance and monitoring are spot on.
Corporations collect personal information. Spending habits, personal details, photos, phone and email details, browsing history to name just a handful. This info is easily obtained by the TLAs.
It's not *easily* obtained but it is obtainable. Those are not the same thing. The problem is what comes next...
The NSA/GCHQ et all are fully connected to all ISP backbones - your network traffic IS monitored.
This is partial truth. They've been and probably continue to be able to access traffic flows between key points in the internet infrastructure and the carriers have been and are complicit in that. Where it breaks down is the tin foil hatter response of they can actually monitor all this information for every person all the time. They have to get useful intel out of the data they collect, and they can't monitor every packet because the flows are obviously far too big for that level of data collection - it'd take a secondary parallel internet infrastructure to make that work and it simply doesn't exist. The fact it obviously can't work as an intelligence tool is the entire problem with it. If it worked it wouldn't be so easy to question it's existence but it missed key events like the Boston bombing and the (numerous) Paris attacks so why should we have to give up privacy for a system that can't possibly - and provably doesn't - work. There's no amount of funding that can make the system they've (apparently) been trying to put together actually be functional at doing this.
None of the above is in dispute - multiple sources not of the tinfoil hat brigade show this to be true. Just look at the revelations of Snowdon or any number of articles on El Reg.
Snowden docs never really stated this though, you have to be clear about what Snowden actually said and not reinterpret them to mean they have more capability than they really do. They've gone too far but we're in the zone of total capability on all devices at all times and nobody is safe and the agencies concerned clearly don't have that; and nobody has said that - including Snowden who was running rings around them at the end, and arguably continues to with fairly basic security measures, crypto being a key one.
"tr1ck5t3r is not mad"
Well, depends how you define mad, but if they were a friend of mine, I'd be wondering about getting a professional opinion about now. That's not intended as an insult, he/she/it is about as bonkers as some of my friends have been at times, but tr1ck5t3r mate, if you've recently changed your meds, consider changing back eh?
"As to the petition, I suppose you find it acceptable that people cant end their life in a dignified manner for what ever reason they choose?"
Then you suppose incorrectly. Unless it's on-topic, your petition is just noise. As for the spying/surveillance aspects of your disjointed posts, your teaching granny to suck eggs in these forums.
I like Trolls, they are often unintenionally funny. I try not to feed them. Not saying you are one though, I dont think it is my call.
However your last sentance "And all the while, the population keeps growing, standards keep being lowered and people just dont get it" - some people do get it as this site indicates, its just there is not much you can actually do. I dont know if standards are being lowered, they certainly seem to be breeding. Is the population growing? I did hear there may be peak population coming soonish.
@ tr1ck5t3r
Hi there! Can I introduce you to a great friend of mine. He's called the Apostrophe, and you can find him on most keyboards (I believe in the US he is just to the left of the Enter key).
The Apostrophe is mostly used in contractions of words such as "it's", "won't" and "can't" and not only does using it make your message clearer to read, but consistently [i]not[/i] using it tends to make your readers assume you are uneducated, and you wouldn't want that, would you?
The Apostrophe is mostly used in contractions of words such as "it's", "won't" and "can't" and not only does using it make your message clearer to read, but consistently [i]not[/i] using it tends to make your readers assume you are uneducated, and you wouldn't want that, would you?And if you had used angle brackets instead of square brackets, the word "not" would have appeared in italics. Further, the word "not" would also have been emphasised by a screen-reader. It's called HTML (hypertext markup language).
Just a little smidgen of education for you :-)
I read the other day that poorer people in the US with conditions like epilepsy or diabetes who may be prone to collapsing in public places have to wear medical bracelets saying "DO NOT call 9/11 or for an ambulance" -- as they can't afford the thousands of dollars it costs just to be picked up and taken the local A&E.
Evidently the same conditon obtains in the field of mental health, too.
:(
can never trust a Govt than operates in secret, its as simple as that
So you can never trust a government. No matter how benevolent there's always going to be a level of secrecy around various issues. No getting round that.
Next time you talk to someone beit HMRC, your GP, a nurse, emergency services & armed forces personel, just ask them if they had to sign the official secrets act?
Generally only people who are likely to be exposed to official secrets have to sign official secrets act related paperwork. I've done it several times, it doesn't make me part of the state spying and cover-up apparatus. Indeed if you see my submissions here or had seen my twitter you'd see that I regularly call out GCHQ and others for working outside their remit and invading people's privacy. FWIW nobody at HMRC, or in the medical profession would ever generally be exposed to the official secrets act or information covered by it. Most doctors who aren't military doctors would refuse to sign such paperwork, I'd be surprised to hear of even military doctors being required to sign anything non-standard and exceptional. Official secrets act isn't fit for purpose because nobody is ever prosecuted under it anyways.
Fact is unless you join one of these organisations or become a CEO of a top business, you will never know just how extensive the Govt spying really is. Just look at the latest TV ad's suggesting women could be working for the secret services, your own other half could be spying on you right now.
This is pretty much the definition of paranoia. Do you hear the voices often?
Thats why you can never trust anyone, not even your own parents, brothers & sisters
Yep don't trust your family. Go live out in the forest in a shelter made of twigs and wear a tin foil hat to protect you from the alien signals.
I have a very biased point of view. If you are too addle-brained to get the phrase "plain sight" right ("plain site?" Really?), you may not be up to the task of tracking and understanding a multi-national conspiracy involving individuals and organizations whose entire purpose is obfuscation and secrecy.
I just don't see many well-written, skillfully argued conspiracy theories, and that lack is very apparent from the "wire tapp" Accuser-in-chief, who clearly favors using Twitter on his smart phone, because his tiny hands don't comfortably fit a regular keyboard.
Everybody in America is under surveillance by the NSA and their friends and I don't see why Donald Trump and his colleagues would, or even technically could, be left out of that vast dragnet. Although the amount of surveillance every American suffers is grotesque and a serious long term threat to American democracy, he is arguing that it was even greater for him than for most other people.
Whatever the truth of it, the British are in a vulnerable position. If President Trump believes GCHQ specifically targetted him then he can retaliate quite easily and at little political cost since the British are so dependent on American goodwill that they could not do anything back. The British can rubbish the claims, but it would be impossible to disprove them since evidence either way cannot be put into the public domain, and anyone sufficiently security cleared and senior enough to carry out a proper investigation clearly wouldn't be the sort of person who was in the habit of embarrassing the British Government.
This post has been deleted by its author
As an American I hope for sure that as many external observers as possible are keeping an eye on this damn nutcase in the White House.
Не безпокойся, товарищ, мы будем за ним присмотривать.
As Saturday Life put it jest: "This is the most expensive thing we ever bought, of course we will try not to break it".
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I sincerely hope that GCHQ are now keeping a very close eye on "President" Drumpf and his crazy cronies. Then we might get more than 4 minutes warning of the end of the world.
Indeed, they're already making noises about doing something about N Korea. That's the problem with business people: their "negotiation" tactics are pretty binary and always require a losing party to be considered a success. Political negotiations are a bit more subtle and complex, but as they have effectively all but closed down the State Department, that expertise (and remaining goodwill) is vanishing fast.
I wonder if we managed to make it through one year of Trump before them engaging in a massive war somewhere because Trump couldn't keep his stupid gob shut, or because Trump needed a distraction from him breaking the law like the emolument clause or active collaboration with Russia.
Political negotiations are a bit more subtle and complex
Considering there current idea of diplomacy is to have their whitehouse press guy Spicer accusing an allied intelligence agency of trying to influence an election, I'd say its safe to say were pretty much fucked for the hope of subtlety and complexity from them.
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