MI5's 2000 terror suspects

[fela fan]

I ought to add, did you think i was being rational or irrational in the post you quoted me on? The maths is sound, so is it really true that MI5 can have so many people working for it? Assuming the 2000 is correct.

I know the CIA employ loads of people 'part-time' who are in 'ordinary' jobs. If MI5 do the same, then i can begin to accept such a large figure.

Just asking someone who i expect will be able to clarify!

 

[zoltan]

Just cos 2000 are suspected, it doesnt mean they all get top priority surv.

It could be just Phone taps or mail interception - a low key and routine task.

They do prioritise depending upon how they categorise a suspect - When I say maybe 40 fellows may be involved - thats frint end through to logistics and such a high level really isnt that common - usually only reserved for odds on bad puppies and when in the percieved "final stages"

And remember that MI5 work so closely with teh Polis, many operations may be mostly coppers with a few key MI5 in the mix somewhere.Work on the Turkish Skag inmporters in the UK are mostly Coppers with some MI5 involved.

 

[fela fan]

Oh, okay. Ta for that!

But will continue to shake my head at the direction britain continues to take on foreign policy. It's downright dangerous for those in other countries, and for britons when the revenge attacks come our way.

 

[detective-boy]

Here you go in to your perceived understandings of other posters ...

Er ... if this:

Regarding 'experts' i refuse to just take their word for it.

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=5941493&postcount=3668

doesn't mean that you, er, don't believe experts, what the fuck does it mean?

 

[fela fan]

Er ... if this:

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=5941493&postcount=3668

doesn't mean that you, er, don't believe experts, what the fuck does it mean?

Bloody hell, a detective who can't get to grips with his first language. That is somewhat worrying for those who come to court as a result of your work. Let's try and help you understand english...

Firstly the full quote: "Regarding 'experts' i refuse to just take their word for it. Now ksyer you may deduce this is somewhat different to 'doesn't believe' them." is what i said.

I refuse to just take their word for it. This means that i may take their word for it, but only upon my own investigation and work to verify what they are saying. "Just take" is the key to understanding the thrust of the meaning.

I don't believe experts, which i've never said, is quite another thing.

Your english language and reading skills are pretty bloody poor mate. Evening school for you i'm afraid.

 

[detective-boy]

I refuse to just take their word for it. This means that i may take their word for it, but only upon my own investigation and work to verify what they are saying. "Just take" is the key to understanding the thrust of the meaning.

I don't believe experts, which i've never said, is quite another thing.

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....................

You ARE Tony Bliar and I claim my £5 ...........

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Why shouldn't they go there for a holiday?? Indeed...

"However, the head of Pakistan's National Crisis Management Centre, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, said anyone "who spends a lot of money and travels to Pakistan...[is] already motivated for a particular reason"."

I don't think he's talking about holidays.

I went to Pakistan a few years ago. I was motivated for a particular reason: attending a friend's wedding.

I guess that means I'm on some suspect list now.

 

[slaar]

I went to Pakistan a few years ago. I was motivated for a particular reason: attending a friend's wedding.

I guess that means I'm on some suspect list now.

It makes sense to watch an average Pakistan flight list more closely then one to, say, Argentina. Just as it makes sense to pick out more young Asian men for searches than it does old British women. Just as flights from Jamaica are searched more heavily for drugs, and from West Africa for imported bush meat.

 

[fela fan]

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....................

You ARE Tony Bliar and I claim my £5 ...........

You asked me what the fuck it meant, and i told you what the fuck it meant. Then you fell asleep before waking up to some weird illusion that tony blair is now living in thailand posting on urban75, and wanting some money for having this illusion.

And you were a detective...

 

[detective-boy]

You asked me what the fuck it meant, and i told you what the fuck it meant. Then you fell asleep before waking up to some weird illusion that tony blair is now living in thailand posting on urban75, and wanting some money for having this illusion.

And you were a detective...

I was commenting on your shared ability to spin and twist words and phrases to mean the exact opposite of what they mean to the rest of the world ...

And you pose as the conscience of those who really know ...

 

[fela fan]

I was commenting on your shared ability to spin and twist words and phrases to mean the exact opposite of what they mean to the rest of the world ...

And you pose as the conscience of those who really know ...

Actually i know nothing, believe nothing, and am nobody.

So i certainly don't pose.

But you appear to know what words and phrases mean, not just to yourself, but also for "the rest of the world".

Quite some spokesman you are DB, speaking for the whole of humanity apart from fela fan. I should be grateful you're not speaking for me, all that rubbish and guff you come out with...

 

[detective-boy]

Actually i know nothing, believe nothing, and am nobody.

So i certainly don't pose.

But you appear to know what words and phrases mean, not just to yourself, but also for "the rest of the world".

You really don't get sarcasm, do you?

 

[fela fan]

You really don't get sarcasm, do you?

Often not, no.

 

[laptop]

listening to hours and hours of phone intercept material; reading billions of e-mails and text messages .... ).

Only for those identified as key targets.

And database technology will help a lot in identifying them: all that acadademic research on the maths of networks, "small world theory" and so on, has an application.

The communications of the rest only need to be stored. Then, periodically or when a question arises, check the archive to see whether there's a case for upgrading the person.

The makes-a-good-story version of the evidence for this is from Duncan Campbell (not nice Duncan, the other one) observing that immediately after the Birmingham pub bombings Menwith Hill went from sleepy golf-playing outpost to lights blazing 24/7. They were going back through the archive of calls between the Republic and the UK...

And I think I've interviewed the CEO of the company that supplies their search technology, and very interesting it is, too

Of course, this process of identifying key nodes in networks isn't perfect, simply because horrible things like 7/7 can be done with frightening ease by people who aren't key nodes

 

[Dhimmi]

Well MI5 used to monitor CND members, very little potential harm there typically being pacifists, anti-war or similarly non-aggressive but simply united in their opposition to nuclear weaponry.

 

[detective-boy]

Only for those identified as key targets.

I know that ... but the point was fela fan, surveillance guru par excellence was arguing that surveillance only needed a couple of people per target, partially because technical surveillance automatically did the rest ... I was pointing out that whilst technical surveillance identified possible communication of interest there was a lot of people / work needed to turn that into useful intelligence. And the haystack is just as big whether you are looking for 1, 10, 100 or even 1000 needles.

 

[zoltan]

Well MI5 used to monitor CND members, very little potential harm there typically being pacifists, anti-war or similarly non-aggressive but simply united in their opposition to nuclear weaponry.

They also watched lefty Book shops and the like ( still Do AFAIK - assuming they can find a decent lefty bookshop these days.....)

 

[likesfish]

but say an organization like crusie watch who wanted to follow military convoys you'd expect the state to take an interest etc
personally i want an organization like MI5 to be full of borderline paranoids

 

[fela fan]

Laptop, what's your job?

 

[kyser_soze]

Funny, how do MI5 know they have 2000 potential terrorists?

And how did you know that 20,000 islamic citizens in the uk support armed struggle, and furthermore how did you know/predict that about 10% 'might do something'?

Are you in the MI5 kyser??!! Just joking there, but it don't square somehow with 'NO ONE KNOWS.'

fela, if you bothered reading, you'd see that my numbers were taken from several polls carried out among self-identifying muslims across all demographic groups across the UK about a year ago; the main one was for a channel 4 doc on Islam in the UK, but there were several others which delivered statistically comparable results - to within 1 or 2% on similar questions.

And it's quite easy to extrapolate numbers based on the Muslim population in the UK and the % results of those surveys.

And when I said 'No one knows' I was referring, as you should have got from the context, to the press, media etc, not MI5 or 6. Journalists, even those with access, can only take what they're given and what they want to write - hell, MI5s use of the word 'operative' could mean something completely different and specific, and not what the FT writer wanted it to be.

 

[kyser_soze]

Bloody hell, a detective who can't get to grips with his first language. That is somewhat worrying for those who come to court as a result of your work. Let's try and help you understand english...

Firstly the full quote: "Regarding 'experts' i refuse to just take their word for it. Now ksyer you may deduce this is somewhat different to 'doesn't believe' them." is what i said.

I refuse to just take their word for it. This means that i may take their word for it, but only upon my own investigation and work to verify what they are saying. "Just take" is the key to understanding the thrust of the meaning.

I don't believe experts, which i've never said, is quite another thing.

Your english language and reading skills are pretty bloody poor mate. Evening school for you i'm afraid.

The thing is fela you never do. You also exhibit very little common sense about the subjects you are discussing - your comment about heavy surveillance on all 2000 suspects for example. Shows you're not really thinking about this stuff, simply responding to each post as it comes.

I thought MI5 was about watching those who potentially could harm the country, not about taking care of public figures who might be harmed.

Why don't you go and look on MI5's website and find out from them what their mission is? Would probably be a good place to start...

On Echelon...all these 'trigger' systems, for phone and PC related tracking, will require combinations of keywords, repeated several times by specific subjects before the systems flag it up for human assessment. They are there and they do work, but they are NO omniscient supercomputers that are able to ascribe meaning to what they record/read - as far as I know no one has managed to get a computer to do that anywhere in the world! They simply carry out instructions to look for certain words and phrases, and if they pop up a recording is made, noted and then left. It's when they notice a pattern against a single phone number, emails address or similar that humans will be bought in to investigate what's happening.

 

[zoltan]

The Securitate and to a lesser extent teh Stati recorded most of the calls made in Romanian & the GDR during the '80s - thats Most of ALL calls made in their countries telephone network.........

They were labelled and stored away. never to be used again.

the problem isnt getting the raw data, it sorting through it to get some sense out of it. Computers cant do that as well as humans.

 

[detective-boy]

They were labelled and stored away. never to be used again.

Absolutely.

A key part of any competent intelligence gathering operation concerns being selective about what you gather. The holy grail is getting EVERY bit that IS important and NONE of what ISN'T. Otherwise you simply increase the size of the haystack in which you have to look for needles.

This consideration, and the compexities of watching / listening to / reading vast amounts of raw information, and analysing it, cross-referencing it, researching it, etc., all escapes the "sleepwalking into a surveillance society" paranoids. Whilst improved technology has some of the answers, it does not have them all by any means.

There ARE issues which merit debate and there ARE valid concerns ... but they are usually significant less than the scaremongers would have us believe.

 

[untethered]

Absolutely.

A key part of any competent intelligence gathering operation concerns being selective about what you gather. The holy grail is getting EVERY bit that IS important and NONE of what ISN'T. Otherwise you simply increase the size of the haystack in which you have to look for needles.

This consideration, and the compexities of watching / listening to / reading vast amounts of raw information, and analysing it, cross-referencing it, researching it, etc., all escapes the "sleepwalking into a surveillance society" paranoids. Whilst improved technology has some of the answers, it does not have them all by any means.

There ARE issues which merit debate and there ARE valid concerns ... but they are usually significant less than the scaremongers would have us believe.

Improvements in technology will eventually lead to the point where it is cheaper and easier to keep everything than to be selective. It's a very different situation already from the 1980s.

I don't dispute that having a vast mine of raw data still requires significant human interpretation in which the economies of scale are negligible, but that does not apply to the storage of the raw data itself. Thus it is far easier to search for data about someone that subsequently becomes a suspect because eventually, everything about everyone will be permanently stored.

 

[detective-boy]

I don't dispute that having a vast mine of raw data still requires significant human interpretation in which the economies of scale are negligible, but that does not apply to the storage of the raw data itself. Thus it is far easier to search for data about someone that subsequently becomes a suspect because eventually, everything about everyone will be permanently stored.

I agree - the storage issues are resolvable, whereas the interpretation / analysis issues (or many of them, at least) are not so far as current technology is concerned.

 

[zoltan]

..I must add however that maybe the Securitate/Stasi example isnt a good comparison for MI5 ...seeing as the Romanian & GDR citizens automatically assumed that because their calls were recorded, then the authorities were tracking their every move ( which they werent - esp in neo-chaotic Romania )- the de facto effect was utter paranoia and fear amongst the citizens and kept most people in line and meant that the securioty services didnt have to do much of the old skool " breaking down doors and dragging suspects off into the night, never to be seen again " routine.

MI5 dont keep files for this purpose I must add.Publicly anyway

 

[kyser_soze]

Plus of course I would imagine you had to be pretty privileged to actually have a phone in the first place, so the volume of data would be a trickle compared to the billions of SMS, phone calls and emails we make daily...

 

[zoltan]

Plus of course I would imagine you had to be pretty privileged to actually have a phone in the first place, so the volume of data would be a trickle compared to the billions of SMS, phone calls and emails we make daily...

Oh yes - Trusted Pary members got Phones and the chance of jumping the queue for a new Trabi or a Dacia- getting it in a 5 rather than 12 years

 

[likesfish]

they probably had to remove kill tony blair from echelon any way

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Thus it is far easier to search for data about someone that subsequently becomes a suspect because eventually, everything about everyone will be permanently stored.

Not a chance

The amount of data being transfered daily is incomprehensible. The network connections to store it would be stunning, let alone the hard drive arrays capable of that much bitrate, then you'd need to reconsolidate the data, considering you'd be capturing it at different points the only practical way to do that would be to ship the hardware or with dedicated lines the size of transatlantic cables...

To reconsolidate the data would need some serrious, serrious hardware too. It'd have to be done in real time to be of any use and you're talking about hundreds of super computers for that alone...