A mass surveillance operation undertaken by a UK intelligence agency that recorded the web browsing habits of "every visible user on the internet" has been disclosed. According to documents obtained by National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the Karma Police operation saw Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) store up to 100 billion metadata records on people's internet habits – tracking everything from porn sites visited, to mobile phone locations. The documents, published on 25 September by The Intercept, reveal for the first time the details of the UK government's online spying capabilities. Having been drawn up in 2007 or 2008, the Karma Police operation built profiles through analysing browsing habits, emails, calls, text messages, social media interactions and geolocation data. Roughly 50 billion metadata records about browsing activity and online communications were stored in 2012, with documents revealing that GCHQ intended to boost this to 100 billion by the end of the year. GCHQ has previously stated that it does not comment on matters relating to practices exposed by Snowden's leaks and it is unclear whether the operation is still live Karma Police: From Facebook to porn, GCHQ surveillance tool tracked browsing history of every web user Nothing surprises me anymore in this suspicious crazy world!
Agreed but when there are still pedophiles and Terrorist on the Streets one has to wonder what freaking use it all is, maybe just coffee time reading EH? JP Agreed again but it is like the instructions on a Flat pack piece of Furniture, they can read them but just don't know how to interpret them or where to start or should that be When to start? before coffee or after JP
If they spent the time and resources collecting the data they knew what they were going to do with it once they had it.
All that knowledge but never did anything EH? Sounds pretty unprofessional to me And we have the nerve to take about This lot. but then again. GCHQ have been chasing their own tale for years playing chess with MI5 & MI6 and getting nowhere but blaming Each other as most security Services do. I spent 1.5 years with them in the 80's and it was the Biggest waste of Tax Payers money Posting I ever had. JP
I'm pretty sure they used the information collected...they aren't about to tell us what for though. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
It is a little late in the day for me now, but Tomorrow I will tell a story of how they never tell what they know, even to those that have a Clearance for the Information. Their Disastrous record/behaviour could and I mean Could have fouled the Mission to the Falklands by UK troops in 1982. They are very Good at telling the World How good they are but in Reality they can't sort the Wheat from the Chaff. Gays in Government OH yes they know about that but...................Tomorrow is soon enough. JP
I have no problem with countries keeping secrets. Some things just shouldn't be put out there for "national security" (a phrase I don't like much since governments abuse the sh*t out of it). There needs to be a limit on what information they can do and have access to, there needs to be some oversight on their activities and the courts need to prosecute people who violate the law. I am a bit curious what they mean by "metadata" in the OP article. That is a pretty vague term and I couldn't find any clear-cut definition on a UK government website (and "matadata" to me means something very different from what they are talking about here). That is probably intentional since law enforcement agencies do not want to restrict what they have access to as technology quickly grows. From what I can find this is what governments consider "metadata" in general: Telephone numbers The time and length of phone calls The internet protocol addresses (IP addresses) of computers from which messages are received or sent Location of parties making phone calls To and from email addresses on emails Logs of visitors to chat rooms online Status of chat sites – whether they are active and how many people are participating Chat aliases or identifiers (the name a person uses in a chat room online) Start and finish times of internet sessions The location of an individual involved in communications The name of the application someone uses online and when, where and for how long used That's a pretty f'n broad definition and a search warrant should be required to obtain almost any of that information on an individual....and should be destroyed after it's use. Even if they aren't using it for nefarious purposes the government has had a few problems keeping secrets secret. It probably wouldn't be good if some @ss-hat hacker got his hands on all the information listed above for every single person who has used a phone or the internet in the past couple years. Also, while I don't feel there is such a person calling shots today, could you imagine how useful this information would have been to someone like Hitler, Stalin.....or would be to Donald Trump? It doesn't take much or very long for a government to go from badly managed (almost all governments) to total douchebaggery (Nazi Germany, Communist Russia....United Trump Properties of America). "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." - John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton First time I've seen that second part of that quote and I have to say that it seems to be spot on.....certainly when speaking of politicians.
