Tempora program

Posted by: jfritzen on 22 June 2013

The Guardian has a story about a spy program against the British people, named "Tempora". 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2...d-communications-nsa

 

The program is massive and stores huge amount of data for 30 days from all kinds of electronic communication passing British territory, e.g. email, voip, and apparently not only the metadata (from and to) but also the content as it seems. Collection of data is authorized by the government to the GCHQ by a carte blanche and happens without discrimination if there is a concrete investigation or not, i.e. there are no judges involved. Almost a million persons are working for the GCHQ and have access to the collected data. The ISPs were forced to keep silent about it by threating to revoke their operating licenses.

 

Apart from the Guardian, there does not seem to be much media coverage in the UK, as a blogger found out:

 

http://www.jonworth.eu/for-spi...-press-stays-silent/

 

So, what do you think?

Posted on: 22 June 2013 by Tony Lockhart
Less than 7,000 employees at GCHQ, I think.
Posted on: 23 June 2013 by jfritzen

But more than 800000 working for the NSA and subcontractors, which also have access to the collected data.

Posted on: 23 June 2013 by Sniper

Wot Tony said

 

Posted on: 23 June 2013 by Donuk

I think we would be naive not to think that this sort of thing goes on all over the world by all governments, to the limit of their technical abilities.

The presence of cameras in nearly every city where our every physical move can be monitored seems to have crept upon us, and is generally accepted.  (Where are the demonstrations?  Where are the political parties promising to get rid of them?)

The fact that all our written and spoken activities are also no longer private should not be surprising.

Should we be upset about this?  Some folk will argue they have nothing to hide, "if it keeps us safe.....".  Others will speak of their rights to privacy.

I find this a difficult one;  it is easier to make a strong argument on either side, IMHO.

 

Don, sporadically sunny downtown York