"There was [an instance] where a child was going to die of an awful childhood condition before the book came out," he said. "So we did the only thing we could do and referred it to the author to decide how to handle it because it's her story, not ours.
"History doesn't tell the outcome of that sad story, but I'm sure it was a happy one."
I know I wouldn't publicise it - it is rather vulgar to use the death of a child to improve ones public images; publicly granting such a request will also bring the problem of more being made in the future.
There is also the risk to the book to consider. I can completely understand if an author chose not to give anybody special consideration. It is an unfortunate fact that it is impossible to guarantee the security of such a reading.
Not an easy decision, and I think the publisher is speaking out of turn by mentioning that such events have been considered.
This is doublespeak at its absolute finest. A child died at the end of this (article) story, so that'll be your last thought about GCHQ/Harry Potter: children die, and we have to have an exclusive, secret society with self-granted powers in order to stop this, or else. Or else, children will die, unhappy.
I should have clarified, my statement was with tongue planted firmly in cheek. A sibling post described it best when they said it was flippant. It's up there with the Google wiretap post-it note smileys.
Yeah, this is clearly a fluff piece to associate two nice, fluffy British institutions - Harry Potter, and GCHQ - in a way that reminds people its not all about death, destruction, prejudice, using arcane methods to control people against their will, killing those not of your own race/culture, stealing their resources and covering it up so that an ignorant 'sub-class' of people can continue to live their pathetic, un-magical lives, etc.
Oh wait. It actually still is all about that. Just warmer and fluffier.
That is indeed the purpose of this PR, and PR it absolutely is, as they did not prevent the leak of the book - I for one read it as a PDF several days before it was published.
This is up there with the piece they ran a few days ago about how they saved us from shitty smart meters, which were instituted and approved by another department of government (ofgem). They're playing themselves off against themselves in order to make you think of them as GCHQ as better, when the whole is still just as rotten as it ever was.
Do they? There's no reason to think that anything creepy was going on. Surely one of GCHQ's legitimate missions is simple OSINT, and certainly forum trawling. Someone posts a copy of the supposed manuscript to some forum, some GCHQ minion sees it, off-handedly mentions it to a supervisor who is a Harry Potter fan, the supervisor calls the publisher, mentions he's from GCHQ, and 11 years later it's mentioned in a retrospective story.
When I was in the military, I discovered a vulnerability in a website while I was browsing the web bored at work. I did mention I was an airman. If somehow that resulted in a news story, I don't think it would be fair to demand a response from the Air Force. Sure, they were technically paying for me to do that, but it wasn't really the mission.
There's a difference between "organisation helps corporate entity" and "employee of organisation helps corporate entity". One suggests possible altruism existing inside the organisation the other suggests the organisation is prepared to aid corporations either as its mission or views such operations as acceptable use of the organisations resources.
Then it should have been referred to the police. GCHQ is a security and intelligence organisation tasked by Government to protect the nation from threats.
A leaked copy of the Harry Potter novel is not a national security threat in any way, shape or form. GCHQ are not there to enforce copyright.
Is it so terrible that GCHQ referred it to the publisher rather than the police? I'm sure the publisher could have handled contacting the police if it had been legitimate.
It is terrible they saw it at all. It is terrible they acted on the information. As much as I dislike the tea party, I'd rather not have people targeted for auditing based on their (flawed) political affiliation or connections with wealthy donors.
GCHQ is way out of line here. I am very concerned that the agency will eventually use these capabilities to blackmail our elected leaders. As much as I'd like to have leaders who aren't corrupt, we have what we have. I'd still not want our corrupt politicians to be slaves to shadowy organizations.
A leaked copy of the Harry Potter novel is not a national security threat in any way, shape or form.
True. Good thing that GCHQ's mission is (and has always been) much broader than national security. For example, they have an arm which provides Information Security advice[1].
GCHQ are not there to enforce copyright.
Fire departments aren't there cats out of trees. This is a cat.
I've been thinking about this for a bit now. I read up on the Act that details the duties of GCHQ, and whilst I'm pretty uncomfortable about it (also, I'm not a UK citizen) it looks like this was indeed within their purview.
No, but part of their remit is to protect "UK plc", from cybersecurity threats as they relate to economic attack.
J.K. Rowling was (arguably still is), a huge economic force. Billions and billions in revenues over many years, and she pays tax on all of it as a moral obligation: no Panama-led duck-outs into trust funds for her, so far.
So, let's suppose you're one of the 4,000-5,000 estimated staff members at GCHQ. You are looking at a part of the dark web in an effort to understand if its being used to arrange illegal arms deals, trade child pornography or other criminal material that falls within your employer's remit.
You notice a document that reports to be a leak of the publication of this book. It's about 500 pages, and the first page reads OK. You talk to your line manager about it.
You and your manager are going to have to realise that the leak of this book could lead to a loss in tax revenue equivalent to the entire annual operating budget of GCHQ. If genuine, it could be a severe impact on GDP.
Do you want them to do nothing? Or do you think it should be escalated internally and dealt with appropriately, which is to check with the publishers if it has been leaked?
The tricky question becomes what would have happened if the editor had confirmed it was real? What action would they have taken? That's where it gets dark...
Well put. I'd go further to say protecting economic interests of UK is British intelligence's primary goal. Britain has been imperialist nation pulling shit on other countries for economic/political gains and justifying it internally with propaganda. To minimize risk and maximize opportunities, they definitely need a spy agency supporting that. Same as our CIA except maybe more active and effective due to legal differences.
On the side, they might try to stop this or that threat tl people's lives in UK or many eyes alliance. ;)
Noticing that something has been "posted on the internet" isn't an exercise of power. Plucking it out of private correspondence, or offering to help take it down, sure, but intelligence agencies are entitled to access public information, same as everyone else.
Banks have made many decisions about the acceptable level of credit card and identity theft. These essentially come down to - quite a bit is ok. For all you know GCHQ does report such evidence, but if they don't I would expect it to be because nothing will realistically be done about it.
When something unusual, or of a large magnitude, comes along these organisations will talk with each other to help mitigate the damage.
GCHQ does a lot of good work alongside invading our privacy.
I know anecdotal evidence and all that, but I've never received a genuine report from a bank saying that a card has been stolen, but I've gotten a lot of annoying false positives saying my card has been declined because I've traveled more than a 2 hour drive away from home and had the nerve to use it.
That is consistent with a good detector for a rare event - the false positives will outnumber the true positives. This is known as the false positive paradox [0].
Over the years, I've definitely gotten a fair share of calls from my bank asking about genuinely fraudulent charges, and calls notifying me that my card number was reported by law enforcement as compromised and they're replacing it proactively. So yes, it does happen.
(Of course, in the second case, they never tell you how they came to that conclusion, just that "something" was found.)
Once I even had a card start reporting fraudulent transactions before I even had a chance to activate it, which was bizarre.
It's also worth noting that different banks use different fraud detection algorithms, with different levels of sensitivity. Some card companies will call you at the drop of a pin, others are much more relaxed.
I have received genuine reports for two cards - one I'd lost the actual card without realising it and someone was using it in Alaska, the other I don't know how it was compromised but someone bought $400 of shoes in Florida. (I live in Seattle).
I've traveled much farther from home than that, and my card has only ever been declined once, the very first time -- and I was in China then. I had to call them and they reenabled the card.
I've received one report of misuse of my card from the bank, and I was impressed. I had been in Georgia (the US state), stayed in a motel and bought gas for a rental car. All of that happened with no problems. A while later, someone used my information to make a purchase at a convenience store in Georgia (where I no longer was). That got flagged and the bank called me about it.
So in my experience, the bank is amazingly effective at determining which uses of your card are likely to be you and which aren't.
In contrast, the only time in 30 years of having a current account that an attempt was made to use my card fraudulently, it was picked up by the bank and they contacted me.
The main decision banks have made about payment fraud is "make it the consumer's problem".
This is the actual purpose of 3d-secure and contactless payments - if you take the time to read the small print, or if you work on the merchant/retailer side of things, you'll know/find that in both cases liability for fraud is shifted to the consumer for the majority of cases, as by giving you the "secure token" (i.e. a cookie or a card) the only possible reason for any fraud in their reasoning is your own negligence.
I don't think we have enough information to even speculate about what the answer to that question would be. Is there a particular answer that would make you happy?
Almost sounds like an attempt by someone at GCHQ to get a copy of the book before it was released. Given how popular the book was, this would have been a great asset for "trading" with sources.
To protect domestic business, yes. As stated in the article, "GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, is a secret intelligence agency which monitors electronic communication to prevent terrorism and tackle serious and organised crime."
Spy agencies should not help domestic businesses by engaging in serious crime, i.e. industrial espionage, though some nations' intelligence agencies, including France's have done so.
If you're referring to the Airbus example, the NSA exposing Airbus's crimes which benefited a U.S. competitor, I'm okay with that. There's a big difference between exposing crimes, even if only selectively, and sharing non-criminal information. The claims about the CIA spying on Japanese government officials and car manufacturers to benefit the U.S. in trade deals is very different, and wrong.
The logic is that our national security is partly dependent on our economic success. This is the problem with vague definitions, you can extend national security to cover anything really.
"There was [an instance] where a child was going to die
of an awful childhood condition before the book came
out," he said. "So we did the only thing we could do and
referred it to the author to decide how to handle it
because it's her story, not ours.
"History doesn't tell the outcome of that sad story, but
I'm sure it was a happy one."
Poor turn of phrase when talking about "a child about to die of an awful childhood condition". O.o
As a Belgian, i can't wait until the British vote themselves out of the European Union. GCHQ is the prime reason. They and other organizations like them are the cancer of a modern democratic society.
74 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadOuch.
I know I wouldn't publicise it - it is rather vulgar to use the death of a child to improve ones public images; publicly granting such a request will also bring the problem of more being made in the future.
There is also the risk to the book to consider. I can completely understand if an author chose not to give anybody special consideration. It is an unfortunate fact that it is impossible to guarantee the security of such a reading.
Not an easy decision, and I think the publisher is speaking out of turn by mentioning that such events have been considered.
Such events have already been publicly confirmed. Here's two:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Natalie_McDonald
I thought it was to stop terrorism or something like that. Silly me.
I don't care about anything else, I'm just so glad that someone at GCHQ maintains their sense of humour whilst being a spook.
> I don't care about anything else
I suspect that's exactly the intention of this sort of PR.
Oh wait. It actually still is all about that. Just warmer and fluffier.
This is up there with the piece they ran a few days ago about how they saved us from shitty smart meters, which were instituted and approved by another department of government (ofgem). They're playing themselves off against themselves in order to make you think of them as GCHQ as better, when the whole is still just as rotten as it ever was.
When I was in the military, I discovered a vulnerability in a website while I was browsing the web bored at work. I did mention I was an airman. If somehow that resulted in a news story, I don't think it would be fair to demand a response from the Air Force. Sure, they were technically paying for me to do that, but it wasn't really the mission.
a) We don't know which this is
b) An organisation might choose to stand behind its - as you say, altruistic - employee
A leaked copy of the Harry Potter novel is not a national security threat in any way, shape or form. GCHQ are not there to enforce copyright.
GCHQ is way out of line here. I am very concerned that the agency will eventually use these capabilities to blackmail our elected leaders. As much as I'd like to have leaders who aren't corrupt, we have what we have. I'd still not want our corrupt politicians to be slaves to shadowy organizations.
True. Good thing that GCHQ's mission is (and has always been) much broader than national security. For example, they have an arm which provides Information Security advice[1].
GCHQ are not there to enforce copyright.
Fire departments aren't there cats out of trees. This is a cat.
[1] http://www.gchq.gov.uk/what_we_do/Information_Security/Pages...
No, but part of their remit is to protect "UK plc", from cybersecurity threats as they relate to economic attack.
J.K. Rowling was (arguably still is), a huge economic force. Billions and billions in revenues over many years, and she pays tax on all of it as a moral obligation: no Panama-led duck-outs into trust funds for her, so far.
So, let's suppose you're one of the 4,000-5,000 estimated staff members at GCHQ. You are looking at a part of the dark web in an effort to understand if its being used to arrange illegal arms deals, trade child pornography or other criminal material that falls within your employer's remit.
You notice a document that reports to be a leak of the publication of this book. It's about 500 pages, and the first page reads OK. You talk to your line manager about it.
You and your manager are going to have to realise that the leak of this book could lead to a loss in tax revenue equivalent to the entire annual operating budget of GCHQ. If genuine, it could be a severe impact on GDP.
Do you want them to do nothing? Or do you think it should be escalated internally and dealt with appropriately, which is to check with the publishers if it has been leaked?
The tricky question becomes what would have happened if the editor had confirmed it was real? What action would they have taken? That's where it gets dark...
On the side, they might try to stop this or that threat tl people's lives in UK or many eyes alliance. ;)
If GCHQ did want to alert the publisher there are very many ways they'd do this without calling and saying "oh hi semi-secret spy agency here".
PR on a dodgy govt agency that thinks the rules don't apply to them delivered via state web site.
When something unusual, or of a large magnitude, comes along these organisations will talk with each other to help mitigate the damage.
GCHQ does a lot of good work alongside invading our privacy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox
(Of course, in the second case, they never tell you how they came to that conclusion, just that "something" was found.)
Once I even had a card start reporting fraudulent transactions before I even had a chance to activate it, which was bizarre.
It's also worth noting that different banks use different fraud detection algorithms, with different levels of sensitivity. Some card companies will call you at the drop of a pin, others are much more relaxed.
I've received one report of misuse of my card from the bank, and I was impressed. I had been in Georgia (the US state), stayed in a motel and bought gas for a rental car. All of that happened with no problems. A while later, someone used my information to make a purchase at a convenience store in Georgia (where I no longer was). That got flagged and the bank called me about it.
So in my experience, the bank is amazingly effective at determining which uses of your card are likely to be you and which aren't.
This is the actual purpose of 3d-secure and contactless payments - if you take the time to read the small print, or if you work on the merchant/retailer side of things, you'll know/find that in both cases liability for fraud is shifted to the consumer for the majority of cases, as by giving you the "secure token" (i.e. a cookie or a card) the only possible reason for any fraud in their reasoning is your own negligence.
To put things in perspective BAE systems revenue was $25 billion some years ago.
Spy agencies should not help domestic businesses by engaging in serious crime, i.e. industrial espionage, though some nations' intelligence agencies, including France's have done so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Concerns
If the easiest way to make money is to spy then it will happen.
Whoever does it successfully once will be rewarded, and that reward will reshape their behavior.
France: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/new-wikileaks-documents-rev...
Other: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-glaser/america-as-economi...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/04383424450/lates...
> However, after a page was read to an editor, it was determined to be fake.
This is hilarious
There was a lot of crap being put online being named for an upcoming book, usually fanfic (especially at the time of Book 5 and 6)
But it was easy to tell
So someone at GCHQ finds a story someone has wrote pretending to be new Harry Potter, and that warrants them ringing them up ??
Maybe the publisher is lying.
Maybe someone called but lied when they saidthey were from GCHQ.
I'm pretty sure the story didn't happen as the publisher claims.