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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 8:41 pm

From a shed in Cornwall.

Same sort of thing.

Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 8:42 pm

@ music man, damn, so all this time the Chinese authorities have been listening to me tell lads that I'm Simon Cowell and can make them pop stars Laughing

Oh to be a fly on the wall in that debrief.

Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 8:53 pm

The worrying thing is that here in the UK nothing will come of it, until some bright spark realises it could be a revenue earner. Then the authorities will start looking through to see who the easy targets are. Then you will see 100's of 1000's of ON The Spot fines being issued for minor, but provable offences, like setting up an email address in a false name.

Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:10 pm

I don't mean to get at the OP, and I've read these stories before, but this is from the (my) country that employed an Iranian as interpreter to one of our most senior commander's in Afghanistan who was spying and/or offering to spy for Iran. He enjoyed the same security clearance and access as the colonel.

It appears that he was a complete wingnut and was, at times allegedly, even representing himself as the Colonel in discussions. He termed himself the 'King of Salsa' and was running Salsa dance classes in Afghanistan, to which he invited the Colonel, and back home he was up to his eyeballs in debt.

Our government scares me, but not because of their incredible security capabilities. Laughing

Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:26 pm

GomerPyle wrote:

Our government scares me, but not because of their incredible security capabilities. Laughing

That reminds me of the campaign to close Sellafield here in Ireland, we had the callers to the door and he was stating the terrorist threat, I laughed at that and said I was more worried about the incompetence of the company such as faking accident reports and sending off a load of nuclear waste with the wrong papers half way around the world rather than a bunch of jihadists in a minivan driving around Wales asking for directions to Sellafield

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

GomerPyle wrote:

I don't mean to get at the OP

I thought your points were salient.

Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:46 pm

SamSpudz wrote:

Sellafield here in Ireland

Cumbria surely? [/pedant]

Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:54 pm

I didn't mean Sellafield was in Ireland, as quite obviously it's not, but it is on the coast of the Irish sea, therefore any disasters that were to happen such as a chernobyl style meltdown, we'd be directly in the fallout zone.

Edit: And there's also all of this Click

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

Has this or anything like this ever prevented anything? Something where you didn’t already have probable cause. With probable cause, you can already get a search warrant in the USA and monitor someone.

I mean them going through emails at random and stopping a real terror attack, or other crime. I don’t think that all this is for crime prevention or terrorist prevention.

I dont know about Privacy laws in other countries, though.

Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 9:27 am

buried under 419 emails wrote:

Has this or anything like this ever prevented anything?

Yes, monitoring of targetted mobile phone calls by GCHQ has helped stop many terrorist attacks, from back in the IRA days, up to the present day threats. When you hear on the news that someone has been arrested, that memory fades very quickly compared to memories of the successful terrorists.

buried under 419 emails wrote:

I mean them going through emails at random and stopping a real terror attack, or other crime.

As I said in an earlier post, they don't go through emails at random. There are far too few security operatives and far too many emails (think hundreds versus billions). Rather, those emails will be stored, and recalled if a suspect comes to the attention of the security services.

Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 9:40 am

It's naive to think that emails and phone calls aren't being monitored if "They" think it's worth looking into and it's nothing recent. Since I have nothing to hide I really can't get bent out of shape about it and certainly don't regard it as an invasion of privacy or an erosion of my civil rights. If a million good guys' info is monitored in order to catch just one bad guy then go for it. And it's not just info gleaned from the internet or a phone. If you own and use a credit card you are on a database which "They" can look at if necessary that contains all kinds of info about you, your finances, your spending habits, etc.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

I agree with Gomer .Where are they going to store all the data?
Our household alone has an online gamer, a teenager into anime torrents, another teenager making and uploading videos, the usual teenage music downloads and MSN conversations that mostly seem to contain lols, rofls, and he said she said, then theres the shopping sites, the forums the mad mother living in a fantasy island breeding rennets and haggis.

And how safe would it be given the security breaches
we've seen
Latest one being a list of private landlord addresses being sent out via email

scotsman

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

Sorry for the very late response

If we put terrorism aside, because that isn’t the most prevalent crime on the net in my opinion.

Are they going to monitor for fraud? Even if I give them probable cause? Like sending emails addys that are tied to the 419 fraud. Will any government agency of any country forward the information to enforcement of the sender’s country? I haven’t seen it yet.

My own experience is that an amazing number of email accounts belong to just one person. So the prosecutions (of fraudsters the home country) argument would be enhanced by many more email accounts tied to this person.

Of course we have the tired excuse of this crime is perpetrated in another country so there’s nothing we can do. This is much like the campaign promise of slashing taxes and increasing services. Anyone who has paid attention to world events knows the lack of validity of this argument. Treaties can be signed and intergovernmental cooperation can be granted for this as it has in been done in the past.

This will only happen if a magical event happens and internet fraud actually becomes the cause of the moment, ie they start to care.

This just seems like something else that is being done for “our own good”.

I might be proven wrong, so where do we send our emails addys to be monitored? I can always seem to scrape up a few or more.

Trophy Videos · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 3:13 pm

Look what the DOJ wants to sneak through under proposed new rule changes over here. You don't even have to be suspected of any crime.
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/4336/1/407

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