Panopticon of global surveillance

[David Guyatt]

Kafka lives!

UK Government Refuses To Confirm Or Deny If Your Pronunciation Of Its Massive Surveillance Program 'Tempora' Is Correct

from the oh,-come-on,-stop-being-tiresome dept

A few weeks back, we reported that some digital rights groups were challenging GCHQ's spying at the UK's secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). As Wired UK reports, a first hearing has now taken place, dealing with preliminary matters before the main case in July. Here's one ridiculous problem that had to be addressed:

while the Prism programme has been officially acknowledged, the UK government will not acknowledge the existence of the operation named Tempora, as detailed in the documents released by Edward Snowden. Mr Justice Burton suggested that it might be wise to define the operation in other terms, so that it could be discussed as a factual hypothetical, rather than deal with the inevitable roadblocks that will consistently be encountered if it is called by its code name. Tempora, he said, could be referred to as the "fibre-optic interception programme" for presentational purposes.

This isn't the UK government being purely bloody-minded. By refusing to confirm or deny Tempora's existence, even though there are numerous leaked documents attesting to it, it is trying to persuade the IPT to hold a closed hearing, so as to stop the British public learning anything about what's really going on here. But as the Wired UK report reveals, it's taking this "neither confirm nor deny" policy to absurd lengths:

There was also some jovial discussion in the hearing over the pronunciation of Tempora and whether the emphasis should be on the "Tem" or the "por". When called on to advise as to whether they were pronouncing the code name correctly, government counsel could neither confirm nor deny.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/2014021...rect.shtml

Secrecy taken to the point of absurdity.

But then the UK has always been prone to treat secrecy that way. Until just a few years ago it would neither confirm or deny we had MI5 or SIS, although both were regularly featured in the press -- and the name of the director of either org was absolutely sacrosanct.

In my view, the more things a nation and its pols wants to hide, the more reason the smelly sewers need to be opened to public scrutiny.