“Britain’s
top counter-terrorism official has been forced to reveal a secret
Government policy justifying the mass surveillance of every Facebook,
Twitter, Youtube and Google user in the UK.”
“The
statement, from Charles Farr, the Director General of the Office for
Security and Counter Terrorism, claims that the indiscriminate
interception of UK residents’ Facebook and Google communications
would be permitted under law because they are defined as ‘external
communications’.”
“Farr’s
statement, published today by the rights organisations, is the first
time the Government has openly commented on how it thinks it can use
the UK’s vague surveillance legal framework to indiscriminately
intercept communications through its mass interception programme,
TEMPORA.”
“The
secret policy outlined by Farr defines almost all communications via
Facebook and other social networking sites, as well as webmail
services Hotmail and Yahoo and web searches via Google, to be
‘external communications’ because they use web-based ‘platforms’
based in the US.”
More:
“Tempora
is a clandestine security electronic surveillance program tested in
2008, established in 2011 and operated by the British Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Tempora uses intercepts on the
fibre-optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet to gain
access to large amounts of internet users' personal data. The
intercepts are placed in the United Kingdom and overseas, with the
knowledge of companies owning either the cables or landing stations.
The existence of Tempora was revealed by Edward Snowden, a former
American intelligence contractor who leaked information about the
program to former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald in May 2013, as
part of his revelations of government-sponsored mass surveillance
programs. Documents Snowden acquired claimed that data collected by
the Tempora program is shared with the National Security Agency of
the United States.”
More
and more revelations for mass interceptions come in surface by
government officials mainly in UK and US. Is this a part of a tactic
to exploit rather than cover up such revelations in order to "train"
societies get used to it?
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