Not An Endorsement! / The Spy Split

[cdnmatt]

And I for one am glad they do it but then I'm not planning to blow people up while they're out shopping.

Why would you be glad they do it? I hate that "if you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about?" line people use. That's not the point. I don't have anything to hide, but I don't feel like having my entire life databased and catalogued without my consent. That's bullshit, and that's what happening.

If you have cause for suspicision that I'm doing something I shouldn't be, then ok, go ahead and put survelliance on me, wire tap me, read my e-mails, and so on. That's understandable. However, that's not what they're doing. They're grabbing almost literally 100% of the world's internet traffic, filtering and databasing it. They're not getting search warrants or anything. They're just simply stealing everyone's data.

Again, I highly doubt they care in the slightest about us peons, and our sexual proclativies in Thaiand. However, in 10 or 20 years, that may no longer be the case, as expanding these powers is the logical progression. When you return home to visit your family, do you really want some cocky 23 year old immigration official questioning you about *ths* or *that* post you made on SGT while you were on vacation? Whether you like it or not, there is the potential of things like that happening in the future. Whether or not it actually happens remains to be seen, but the technical capability will be available to governments.

Then as scottish-guy pointed out, we don't actually know what their capabilities are. We know a fair bit, but it goes without saying, they're probably capable of a whole lot more. For example, the most commonly used encryption algorithms are currently considered secure, but at the same time, it's not like the NSA is going to publicly announce when they've broken a certain algorithm. If they haen't perfected quantum comptuing yet, they're definitely working on it, and that's going to weaken nearly every encryption algorithm on the plarnet.

And the NSA didn't do things like build this data center in Utah for no reason. It's absolutely massive, and over 1 million square feet. That's probably the largest data center the human civilization has ever seen, and I'm quite confident it wasn't built to host the President's weekly radio addresses.

[arsenal]

Scottish, you're clearly in one of your ever more frequent 'anti UK moods' so there is probably little point in trying to engage you in rational discussion, But I shall try. No, of course their not interested in the goings on of members bedrooms and I never suggested they were. However do you really think terrorists use conventional means to communicate with each other? No, they use other less obvious ways and message boards are one of the ways they COULD. Therefore it is likely that organisations interested in their activities will keep tabs on them. It is also unlikely meta words will trigger a full investigation. It is more likely someone who understands language and it's little idiosyncracies. can see between the lines and perhaps deduce something that may not be instantly recognisable. In short someone like me. The Gatekeeper with a not undeserved reputation for troll spotting. It's the language Scotty.

CDMatt. Do you not think that governments have been spying on their own citizens since time began. Of course they have.

I'm not sure either of you actually understand the role of the intelligence services. What do you want from them?

[cdnmatt]

I'm not sure either of you actually understand the role of the intelligence services. What do you want from them?

To get a warrant from a judge due to reasonable suspicion, instead of just spying on all 7 billion of us carte blanche.

[arsenal]

And how exactly are they supposed to know who to spy on without doing a little spying first?

[scottish-guy]

I'm sorry Arsenal but if you really want to have a rational discussion then stop inventing things I DIDN'T say and dis-inventing things you DID say.

You DID say that the intelligence services would be reading this board and boards like it - now you're saying that whilst they're not interested in the mundane shite of who's fucking who and for how much, they are looking for hidden meanings within the posts?

We''ll I'm sorry to burst your bubble (and maybe that of our esteemed owner) but mundane shite about who's bonking who and the means and ramifications of said bonking is all there is

As for hidden meanings - most posts struggle to have much in the way of obvious meaning, far less anything underlying it

If the security services have this board under scrutiny then what a waste of bloody resources!

As for what "we" want from the security services - Matt nailed it!

Finally:

And how exactly are they supposed to know who to spy on without doing a little spying first?

Well, you've already told us - Messrs Khalif & Ahmed wasn't it - or anybody else with a funny name and a beard.

[cdnmatt]

And how exactly are they supposed to know who to spy on without doing a little spying first?

By arresting people after they do something bad, interrogating them, getting to know their accomplices and friends, etc. You know, standard law enforcement work. Remember that whole innocent until proven guilty mantra?

I don't know, I guess there's a couple different mind sets here. On one hand, you have people such as yourself who are naive enough to think these survelliance programs are making us more safe. Then you have people such as myself who believe, a) it's complete illegal bullshit, and b) it's actually making us less safe due to the amount of resentment it's causing.

Then there's people like you who are naive enough to trust not only current governments, but future governments with this amount of data. I'm not that optimistic. All it'll take is a few far right governments to get elected, a little bit of time to expand that infrastructure, and that data will begin getting used against common folk like us. Donald Trump is probably a decent example of that.

What's that famous quote again? "Those who give up liberty in the name of security deserve neither"? Yeah, I think that's the one I'm looking for.

[Surfcrest]

You DID say that the intelligence services would be reading this board and boards like it - now you're saying that whilst they're not interested in the mundane shite of who's fucking who and for how much, they are looking for hidden meanings within the posts?

I believe arsenal may be closer to the mark with this one. I think if you look at the Edward Snowden discussions you would see that one of the approaches to internet intelligence is to pool as much information as possible and then to sift through that information for keywords. The keywords magnify the searches to either leads or non-leads and that magnification either increases, or is abandoned depending on the risk. While I doubt any intelligence is reading this Board today, that's not to say that couldn't change in a hurry. Make a post with one of those "keywords" in the title or the body of the post and no doubt, I'll notice some extra traffic.

The front end of this site knows there is a message board attached and keeps track of all page views from anywhere on the site. This includes guests, members and bots. It keeps track of all external activity, so that I know when the Bitchboard members are up to fun and games, whether we are being attacked by Spam or hackers, whether the Thai authorities are having a look around, whether facebook is cruising through with some bots or whether we have a legitimate person trying to join Sawatdee.

I have included a snapshot of my own activity from yesterday. The system knows it's me, by my log in history and that I'm logged in from my building downtown. It keeps track of everything I do while I am here. It's not interactive with the Board's software and so can't describe in detail the Board actions other than to provide a link to the page, where possible. It keeps track of what page I am at before I arrive here and where I go after I leave.

If you look at the map I posted earlier in the thread you'll notice all of the members spread out to the different countries we'd expect (We'll maybe not Ethiopia...but maybe latin is traveling) in fact you might be able to see your own location that day. There is no clumping by members to the Proxy service they subscribe or VPN, as kommie would lead you to believe.

All of these tools were handy to block Bitchboard Sally from making posts about what she saw or read over here, because she wasn't able to. It has allowed me to see the Thai government snooping around from time to time, not ever getting any farther than our front page. If you visit the front page, you'll see that I support both the TAT and Gay in Thailand, a government sponsored group promoting a less moneyboy vision of Gay Thailand. I do this mainly for their benefit. It also allows me to manage the bots, as these little critters wander about in the site capturing "keywords" that might be of interest to facebook or Google users. I can monitor the work that I do with Google Web Tools with some of the external response we get. Most importantly, this tool allows me to manage the Spam and malicious attacks we and every other site gets from other sites looking to tag on to our traffic. I delete all Spam, as some of these come with malicious attachments that can harm the site. If you go through our membership rolls, you will not see any Spam members...unlike Gay Thailand.com.

Rest assured, this system does not allow me to spy on you or your activity. This is just a snapshot of one of the many tools available to us here. You can imagine the US government, with their one million cubic foot facility and all the information they are trying to funnel their filters to find they keywords that will lead them to crime or terrorism? If you wonder what I'm doing in the snap shot, I am reviewing new members and deleting the Spam.

Surfcrest

[arsenal]

And neither do you Scottish. Quite clearly.

CDMatt: The general idea of good intelligence is to arrest people while they are planning to do something bad, not afyter they have done it.
It's like going to the supermarket. All you want is some chicken but in order to find the chicken you have to look (briefly) at many other things first. All the security services want are terrorists. spies etc. But in order to find them they have to look (briefly) at many other people too. You and me for instance. Ans Scottish is a self confessed enemy of the state so he's under permanent surveillance. Didn't you notice Scotty that naked German boy dancing on the table in Hamburg was actually an undercover MI5 operative.

[cdnmatt]

Again, two different mind sets here. One is people such as yourself who believe intentions alone are enough to throw someone in a cell for 10 years. Then there's people such as myself who believe that's far too slippery of a slope to be standing on, and we should probably wait until they break a law before throwing them in a cell. I'm also of the beleif that too many innocent people get caught up in this stuff, which breeds resentment, and ultimately makes us less safe.

Regardless, this conversation is obviously just going in a circle, so let's just agree to disagree.

[arsenal]

It's a deal Matt.