Who is Watching Who? 57

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It is interesting that those who have no qualms at all about extreme surveillance of citizens by the state, are outraged at the idea that citizens may monitor the state in the conduct of its election.

Severin Carrell is of course under instructions to come up with a “crazed violent Scottish nationalists threaten Scotalypse” story. But the best he can come up with is the story that a very small group are planning peacefully and legally to try to follow, so far as they can, their own ballot paper within the process to ensure it is counted fairly.

But really instructive in that Guardian article are the howls from Labour supporters that dominate the comments section. They are absolutely frothing at the mouth with rage at the idea that citizens may wish peacefully to check on the activity of the state. But these Labour supporters are perfectly OK with the fact that GCHQ collects millions of communications of ordinary citizens, including a database of tens of thousands of perfectly law-abiding individuals taking part in online sex chats with their partners. They had no problem at all at lengthy detention without charge, or the murder of Jean Charles De Menezes for looking a bit Middle Eastern . They had no problem with bombing children to pieces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. They have no problem with CCTV continually monitoring them as they go about their daily lives.

But a Scotsman with a mobile phone following a ballot box? That is an outrageous threat to society.

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57 thoughts on “Who is Watching Who?”

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  • JimmyGiro

    By the ‘golden rule’, if our State decrees that it is OK to monitor us, then that State has essentially acquiesced to our response in kind.

    And if that doesn’t get you out of the cells, then you can always insist that you were recording yourself… for training purposes.

  • Porkfright

    Tell you what. Newspaper comments on election matters are being monitored like hell at present (Definitely not probably) and the likes and dislikes are being fiddled by persons unknown-or not, as the case may be.

  • YouKnowMyName

    Craig, at least one Nation State has digitally attacked my computer following recent reading and posting on your website; this could be seen as conjecture had I not been running a successful digital Honeypot on my correspondence. This revealed the exact quantity and un-obfuscated origin of the ‘digital spooks’, just 22 from one Nation State and 4 from another Nation. I shared this info with security colleagues and I was highly amused to see the spooks subsequently ‘followed me’ after this apparently from addresses in Ukraine & Syria, but that was *further* confirmation of their games.

    Their secret budgets may be big, but the “GCHQ-type” manpower isn’t that impressive, I think there is room for citizens to ask honest questions and expect honest answers.

  • ------------·´`·.¸¸.¸¸.··.¸¸Node

    A word of warning.

    On Friday 8th May THERE WILL BE YouTube videos claiming to prove vote fraud at counting stations. THERE WILL BE accounts from people claiming to have have witnessed fraudulent activity. THERE WILL BE those claiming their ballot paper was dodgy.

    Some of those claims may be genuine.

    Some of them will be disinformation : false claims which can later be proved to be false, or to have an innocent explanation. They will be planted to discredit genuine claims, to “poison the well”.

    Please think twice before linking to or reposting claims of voting fraud. If the claims are genuine, they will stand up to scrutiny and there will be plenty of time to publicise them. If you spread claims which later turn out to be false, you will have helped those who gain by ridiculing the possibility of fraud.

    One more time: THERE WILL BE attempts to dupe you into spreading false claims of voting fraud. Be patient. Be discriminating. Don’t be a dupe.

  • lysias

    The CIA has been using that technique of poisoning the well at least since the JFK assassination, when various highly implausible theories of what had happened began to appear, so that all “conspiracy theories” (a term the CIA started the use of then, in the 1960’s) could be denounced as unreasonable.

    The U.S. government has made even greater use of that technique with respect to 9/11.

  • Robert Crawford

    YouKnowMyName.

    Funny thing, I could not access Craig’s site for quite a while to-day from my “free software”.

    I could access from Mozilla Firefox.

    I wonder why?

  • Summerhead

    So Craig, you really think Jean Charles de Menezes was silenced forever simply for looking a bit middle eastern? Where was this electrician working before he was murdered?

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    “It is interesting that those who have no qualms at all about extreme surveillance of citizens by the state, are outraged at the idea that citizens may monitor the state in the conduct of its election.”
    ___________________

    That is somewhat absolutist, isn’t it?

    I submit it goes too far to say that those who have no qualms about extreme surveillance of citizens are all outraged at the idea of citizens peacefully monitoring the conduct of tomorrow’s election. Perhaps you would place me in the first category but I can assure you that I would not be outraged at all by such monitoring.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Lysias’s post at 17h11 shows that conspiracy theorists can’t really lose.

    If the conspiracy theory turns out to be correct, then the conspiracy theorists weren’t conspiracy theorists at all, they were truth-tellers.

    But if the conspiracy theory turns out to be a load of cock, then the lone changes to say that it wasn’t genuine but merely an invention concocted and broadcast by the secret services in order to “poison the well”.

    Lamentable.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Node

    On the assumption that you are serious then I agree with you (for once).

  • lysias

    If the conspiracy theory turns out to be correct, that doesn’t mean that its adherents were not conspiracy theorists. It merely demonstrates the obvious truth that there’s nothing about conspiracy theories that makes them necessarily false.

  • Ruth

    The real threat is from the postal votes. The intelligence service can easily sneak in to the centres overnight and change the boxes. The postal votes need to be counted separately to check they marry up with the other votes.

  • Roderick Russell

    NOT JUST EXTREME SURVEILLANE – IT IS FAR WORSE THAN THAT

    GCHQ and other Spy agencies are involved not just in “extreme surveillance” but in a full persecution program against some innocent citizens that includes character assassination, intimidation, harassment and threats. These filthy Zersetzen persecution programs are designed to “poison every aspect of their victim’s life”. But don’t take my word for it. Look at the GCHQ training slides and see for yourself.

    The Edward Snowden revelations included training slides from GCHQ (beyond those published in the MSM) that proves that they are training at least some of their Operatives in a Stasi-style “Zersetzen” persecution program. Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself. Below is the 2nd part of a Video presentation that I recently made – the GCHQ training slides come after 8 minutes into this Video.

    https://youtu.be/M_epvKEq-eo

    You will note that one of the stated objectives of this Snowden leaked GCHQ training program is to cause Physiological, Cognitive and Affective Stress in their targeted victim – this gestapo style program goes far beyond just extreme surveillance.

    Anyone who wants to examine the source URLs for these disclosures, should just email me. I have included my email on a Web site that also includes my full VIDEO on Zersetzen for anyone who wants to look at it. This Site can be accessed by clicking on my name.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    I agree. But this talk about certain conspiracy theories being attempts to “poison the well” is still a very convenient way of explaining – excusing – conspiracy theories which turned out to be a load of cock.

  • lysias

    The CIA Document 1035-960 that started the pejorative use of the phrase “conspiracy theory” illustrates the technique of attacking one theory to discredit “conspiracy theories” in general:

    In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein’s theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane’s book is much less convincing that Epstein’s and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)

    The Mark Lane book, by the way, Rush to Judgment, despite the early date of its appearance (1966), remains quite persuasive on the whole, although later books bring forward a lot more evidence that Lane could not have known at that time. No wonder the CIA wanted to divert attention from it.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Ruth

    “The postal votes need to be counted separately to check they marry up with the other votes.”

    _____________

    What do you mean by “marry up”?

  • lysias

    The “Epstein” cited in that CIA document is Edward Jay Epstein, whom many have accused of working for the CIA. About him, there is this to be read on one CIA Web site:

    Edward Jay Epstein, Legend and Deception.16

    Epstein, a journalist and currently a columnist for Slate, became Angleton’s most prolific ally in his post-dismissal, behind-the-scenes campaign for vindication. In Legend, Epstein first publicized the clashes inside CIA over the bona fides of Yuri Nosenko and drew attention to the deception and penetration theories of Angleton and his prize source, Anatoli Golitsyn. Angleton and like-minded former Agency and FBI officers provided Epstein with much unsourced, still-classified information for Legend. He acknowledged their assistance in Deception, published two years after Angleton died in 1987. In later articles, Epstein continued with most of the same apologetic themes but did become more skeptical of the Angleton-Golitsyn interpretation of Soviet foreign policy. Most recently, he noted that the observation of Aldrich Ames’s KGB handler that Angleton’s suspicions about a mole inside CIA “has the exquisite irony of a stalker following his victim in order to tell him he is not being followed.”

    So Epstein’s early book on the JFK assassination, Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (also from 1966), may in fact be an early example of the CIA’s using that technique of poisoning the well.

  • fedup

    Tell you what. Newspaper comments on election matters are being monitored like hell at present (Definitely not probably) and the likes and dislikes are being fiddled by persons unknown-or not, as the case may be.

    You bet, included the provincial rags, which are evidently rated to be more “honest” than their national opposites.

    Just read some of the comments sections of the provincial rags, and soon you will get the measure of the degrees of bollox getting injected from without.

    ==============

    YouKnowMyName

    I really don’t know your name;

    Can you please point my nose in this direction for the sake of hell of it;

    running a successful digital Honeypot on my correspondence

  • Becky Cohen

    “It is interesting that those who have no qualms at all about extreme surveillance of citizens by the state, are outraged at the idea that citizens may monitor the state in the conduct of its election.”

    They’re always reminding us that if you’ve got nothing to hide then why should we be afraid yet seemingly when we’d like some transparency from them and their dealings they close ranks and whack D Notices on things. Is it true that the results of the inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly back during the Blair government will be secret for the next 100 years?

  • fool

    Still undecided on the voting front. None of them seem to appeal or deserve even my one little x. You Scots seem to be having an easy time of it in making your minds up(for now – though that will surely change).

    I shall trundle off to the lonely voting booth in the morning, consult my conscience (if I can locate it) and place my x wherever it (or a whim) guides me – like many others I suspect.

    Perhaps a year without a government will turn out to be a blessing – less aimless kneejerk poorly drafted legislation, which new rules and laws few know about and fewer understand.

    Anyway – enjoy the election everyone.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Quite right, Lysias, about the spooks poisoning the well when it comes to true conspiracies, but if one persists in making claims about them, it will poison (kill) persons who continue to make them, as all kinds of whistleblowers have belatedly learned, many of them killed in the process.

  • Mary

    This would be a turn up for the books.

    General Election 2015: Jeremy Hunt could lose seat to GP after bookies slash odds on top doctor
    5 May 2015
    Dr Louise Irvine, of the National Health Action Party, is now 12/1 to take the Health Secretary’s set in his South West Surrey constituency

    This is a side effect of this foul up by the LD candidate.

    Election 2015: ‘Electoral mess’ in South West Surrey after Liberal Democrat candidate Patrick Haveron suspended
    5 May 2015
    Electoral law means Mr Haveron will remain as a candidate for the party on election ballot papers
    http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/election-2015-electoral-mess-south-9183107

    So Unt could lose his seat but LD voters in the SW Surrey constituency are disenfranchised.

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