So GCHQ is already spying on behalf of the copyright industry.

Originally shared by Rick Falkvinge

So GCHQ is already spying on behalf of the copyright industry. Why isn't there an outcry over this change of mission? New column on Privacy News.

In what’s almost a joke story, the BBC reports that the GCHQ tracked down what looked like a leak of a Harry Potter book somewhere on the Internet and alerted the publisher to it. It turned out to be a fake version. Still, media turns the entire story into a joke and a laughing opportunity, with the GCHQ spokesperson commenting thus: “We don’t comment on our defence against the dark arts.”

This is not a joke. Not at all.

We know since earlier that the copyright industry has been extremely, extremely, hostile to privacy. Throughout Europe, that industry were adamant for the need for the hated Data Retention Directive, which was later nuked from orbit by the European Supreme Court, citing fundamental human privacy rights. The copyright industry knows that its obsolete distribution model cannot survive in the face of sustained civil liberties – specifically, the right to communicate anonymously in private – so the industry is doing all it can to erode and dismantle that fundamental civil right.

And now it turns out, in the “laughingstock” section of mass media, that there has been a change of mission of the anti-terror surveillance agencies to also spy invasively on behalf of the copyright industry, to prevent ordinary people from sharing interesting things outside of the intended distribution monopoly. Why isn’t there a public outcry and outrage over the shock and repulsiveness of this mission creep?

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/04/gchq-already-spying-behalf-copyright-industry-isnt-outcry-change-mission/ ⟲

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/04/gchq-already-spying-behalf-copyright-industry-isnt-outcry-change-mission ⟲