Privacy and the State

[scottycelt]

Can you explain to us poor Guardian readers how spying on Angela Merkel keeps me safe?

As I keep saying, not being in American Intelligence, I really dunno ... but are all you poor Guardian readers really that paranoid that Angela might be after you... ?

[french frank]

Can you explain to us poor Guardian readers how spying on Angela Merkel keeps me safe?

And Pope Francis.

[Richard Barrett]

As I keep saying, not being in American Intelligence, I really dunno ... but are all you poor Guardian readers really that paranoid that Angela might be after you... ?

No. It was you who said: "all countries need spies in an effort to keep their citizens as safe as is practically possible." But then I bring up an example and you "really dunno." So what is it that makes you think it's necessary? or is it just a vague feeling? or do you think we should just believe the officials who tell us not to worry?

[Mr Pee]

Can you explain to us poor Guardian readers how spying on Angela Merkel keeps me safe?

Read Jacob Rees-Mogg's article that I linked to earlier.

As you well know, there is spying that keeps us safe from Islamist nut-jobs who wish to blow us sky high on a tube train, and then there is spying that helps to safeguard the UK's political and economic interests, which contribute, in their own way, to keeping us safe.

And you can be sure that the Germans and indeed pretty much any other country you care to name will have been doing exactly the same.

[Richard Barrett]

Thank you for that, but I was actually asking scottycelt because it was he who claimed that "all countries need spies in an effort to keep their citizens as safe as is practically possible" and was unable to account for tapping Angela Merkel's mobile phone under that rubric. Which, as you and Jacob Rees-Mogg point out, it has nothing to do with.

Although what spying on the pope has to do with either terrorism or ecoomic secrets is not at all clear to me.

[Mr Pee]

Thank you for that, but I was actually asking scottycelt because it was he who claimed that "all countries need spies in an effort to keep their citizens as safe as is practically possible" and was unable to account for tapping Angela Merkel's mobile phone under that rubric. Which, as you and Jacob Rees-Mogg point out, it has nothing to do with.

On the contrary, both I and Mr. Rees-Mogg say that it has plenty to do with it.

Let me remind you, since you seem to have a very short attention span:-

As you well know, there is spying that keeps us safe from Islamist nut-jobs who wish to blow us sky high on a tube train, and then there is spying that helps to safeguard the UK's political and economic interests, which contribute, in their own way, to keeping us safe.

Got it?

[Richard Barrett]

Got it?

Not in the least. How does gaining some kind of economic advantage over Germany keep British citizens "safe"? Safe from what? Being run over because there are too many BMWs on the roads?

[An_Inspector_Calls]

Can you explain to us poor Guardian readers how spying on Angela Merkel keeps me safe?

irresistible:

Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then.

Tom Lehrer

[Pabmusic]

I don't think any of the facts on Wiki have been disputed, Pabs ... I've merely provided the link to these facts and revealed that much of your story was a deliberate hoax and is now on the official list of known hoaxes! You were being 'selective' by ignoring that the alleged remarks by the Australian SA official had immediately been publicly disowned by the SA itself which lends a wholly different aspect to the story than the one you gave.

Certainly, when it comes to the truth about Hitler, even Wiki is a somewhat more reliable source than Herr Goebbels, I'd have thought ... ?

Firstly, the Salvation Army. This was not the repetition of a deliberate hoax, whatever any website you have found may say. This link includes a recording of the original broadcast:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1628135.html

This is the link I originally posted (a long time ago - I can't find it now) and I note that it quotes the SA apology:

http://tgvnews.com/2013/06/salvation...-put-to-death/

[Note: When you say: "You were being 'selective' by ignoring that the alleged remarks by the Australian SA official had immediately been publicly disowned by the SA itself" that's clearly not right, is it?. It must have been a slip of your memory.]

I have acknowledged that I got the nationality and rank of the speaker wrong in that original post, and I have commented on it thus in post 1245:

"...nothing I said was seriously altered by your revelations that the person who made the objectionable comments was Australian rather than American, nor that he was not the head of the SA in the US. He was in fact a senior official of the SA in Australia being interviewed in his official capacity".

So what's left? A senior Salvation Army figure (a Media Director) said gays deserve death and that that was the policy of the SA. Also quoted was an SA manual which repeated parts of the bible that say similar things. The SA distance themselves quickly from the comments (though not from the manual, I notice).

That is neither 'tosh' nor is it a hoax.

Now, Hitler's religion. Since you attached a link to Wikipedia, I'll attach this. It's from some sort of blog, but the writer gives sources for all the quotes (which are of course in English translations). I'm not very interested in Nazis and have very little possibility of checking any of the source material, but I'm sure you will be able to if you wish:

http://ahquotes.tripod.com

The first quotation ("I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so") is actually from a 1941 letter to General Gerd Engel.

I'll also add this one from Albert Speer:

"Around 1937, when Hitler heard that at the instigation of the party and the SS vast numbers of his followers had left the church because it was obstinately opposing his plans, he nevertheless ordered his chief associates, above all Goering and Gobbels, to remain members of the church. He too would remain a member of the Catholic Church, he said, although he had no real attachment to it. And in fact he remained in the church until his suicide." [Inside the Third Reich, pp. 95-96]

And before you interpret this as my view that Hitler was a devout Catholic, let me remind you of what I said in post 1238, though it's only my opinion:

"I think that Hitler was an arch-opportunist, who used religion when he thought it was useful."

I've not included several quotations in which Hitler talks of destroying atheism, because that would be to change the subject.

[ahinton]

Read Jacob Rees-Mogg's article that I linked to earlier.

As you well know, there is spying that keeps us safe from Islamist nut-jobs who wish to blow us sky high on a tube train, and then there is spying that helps to safeguard the UK's political and economic interests, which contribute, in their own way, to keeping us safe.

And you can be sure that the Germans and indeed pretty much any other country you care to name will have been doing exactly the same.

Sky is clearly one of your obsessions, but when has anyone blown people "sky high" on a tube train? And how does industrial espianoge help to safeguard UK political and economic interests and how and to what extent might any safeguarding of such interests undermined by other nations spying on Britain in what they claim to be their political and economic interets?

More importantly, though, yes, I have little doubt that many other countries do the same as US even if on a vastly smaller scale because thet don't throw anything like the amount of funding at it as the Americans do - but how does that make you feel any safer? If the Iranian, Syrian, Somalian, Sudanese, Israeli, Russian, North Korean, Venezuelan security services were spying on you, would you feel more comfortable that you otherwise would in the knowledge that they're doing it?

[ahinton]

As I keep saying, not being in American Intelligence, I really dunno

For someone who self-confessedly doesn't know about such things, you seem to have an awful lot to say on a subject about which you seek to persuade members here that you do know!

[ahinton]

An alternative and balanced view as opposed to the Guardian's lefty paranoia:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10414790/MI6-and-the-CIA-are-spying-on-foreign-leaders-Thank-God.html

And did anyone catch the debate today? In particular Sir Malcolm Rifkind's contribution, in which he gave a little detail that has been obscured by the ridiculous exaggerations from the usual quarters. For example, the surveillance programs used at GCHQ use algorithms to sift emails for certain words. All but 0.01% are discarded, and the contents of the rest can only be inspected with the authority of the Home Secretary. So this idea that the spooks are reading all our emails and monitoring our every move on the web is pure bunkum.

Ah, well, if Sir Malcolm Rifkind says something, it must be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, must it not?! If indeed "the surveillance programs used at GCHQ use algorithms to sift emails for certain words" I would feel very unsafe about that; what words? - who decides on those words? - what gets done when they're found in emails? Should I be worried when writing something about Sorabji because I mention Iran? As one wit remarked on the Sorabji forum yesterday in a context of some banter about GCHQ monitoring its activities, "thank goodness that they weren't around in Busoni's day, what with his piano concerto's hymn in praise of Allah!"

Seriously - how babyish is that kind of thing as an example of standard security procedure?

What's more worrying still, however, is Sir Malcolm's reference (I presume that you were still quoting him in this) to "all but 0.01%" of monitored emails being discarded - for two reasons. Firstly, the figure itself sounds conveniently cited so as to make it sound as low as possible - would "0.0253*%" sound quite as persuasive to some? (it seems to me to be on a par with prices like "£199.99" for a suit or "£995,000" for a city apartment). Secondly, and far worse, even if the figure of 0.01% is to be believed, discarding all but that amount means keeping one email in every ten thousand; has it occured to you just how many must therefore not be discarded? How many emails are sent every second to and from UK email addresses?

As the saying goes, if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear.

And boy, doesn't it go! I cannot even hear it now without thinking of you, Mr Pee, doubtless because you raise it more often than most! But the point is that I do have much to fear. "Having nothing to hide" literally means the abandonment of all personal privacy and the wilful sharing of every fact and figure and nook and cranny of one's life - and I doubt that even you'd want to do that, Mr Pee - but not only that, the phrase really should read "if no one, including (or pehaps especially) those who might spy on you think that you've done or thought or written something wrong, you have everyhing to fear.

Never mind - that doesn't bother you, obviously - so I can only hope that if an "enemy" nation's security services poke their unwelcome noses into your communications, you will be able to maintain your supine and smug complanceny in the face of it.

[scottycelt]

Pabs, there is no point in going around in circles here. You confirm that the head of the SA in the US did NOT say any of those words about gays. That was a story that is now on the list of a hoax-reporting website which many of us (including myself) already use to identify those suspicious e-mails we get from time to time. In short, the story you gave is, as previously described, tosh. I have already acknowledged this separate story involving a Australian official of the SA and how the SA itself quickly distanced itself from the remarks. As far as I can see nobody, including yourself, is disputing these facts.

As for Hitler, any Catholic knows that anyone who stops going to Mass and receiving the Sacraments is at the very least a 'lapsed Catholic'. However, Hitler went further than that and was actively hostile to the Church. It is well-documented that Hitler got most of his initial
support from non-Catholic regions of Germany. Centre Parties were the natural home for Catholics and most voted accordingly, that not being surprising as in those days in Europe these were mainly guided by Catholic Social Principles!

Of course it could be argued that if one is baptised he/she cannot be de-baptised so in that sense Hitler died a Catholic, Stalin went to the grave a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Professor Dawkins, no doubt to his utter horror, remains an Anglican to this day! I doubt many people would take such claims that seriously, preferring to take others at face-value, listening to what they say they believe, and how they live their lives.

Your links tend to be 'gay' websites and those with other axes to grind. I'm content to again point you to Wiki where any unsubstantiated info can be challenged and we tend to end up with more reliable information mercifully devoid of any obvious (and sometimes hysterical) misrepresentation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_Nazi_Germany

Finally, Pab, I agree entirely with the view that AH, like many a politician, was very much an opportunist when it suited his book!

[ahinton]

Pabs, there is no point in going around in circles here.

Then please do us all a favour and spare us yet another wearisome round of it scotty style!

I agree entirely with the view that AH, like many a politician, was very much an opportunist when it suited his book!

Oi! Leave me out of this! I am not in any case a politician, I am certainly no opportunist and, like Richard Barrett, I have not written a book!...

[french frank]

Well, this does look like an admission of 'inappropriate' spying: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24768717