GCHQ Follows NSA Into Paranoia -- Just As Julian Assange Predicted

[bemildred]

One of the knock-on effects of Snowden's leaks is that the NSA is terrified there might be more whistleblowers, and has taken extreme action in an attempt to reduce the risk of that happening by stripping 100,000 people of their security clearances. In other words, it no longer trusts huge swathes of the people it works with -- hardly a healthy situation. Now it seems that GCHQ has succumbed to a similar paranoia about its employees:

GCHQ is sponsoring ways of identifying disgruntled employees and those who might go on to be a security threat through their use of language in things like office emails.

The article in the Gloucestershire Echo -- the English county where GCHQ is located -- explains how potential whistleblowers will be identified:

"research will investigate the use of techniques from the field of natural language processing to detect the early indicators of an insider’s threat."

That means changes in the way a person communicates can give a clue that they are unhappy and perhaps prepared to do something to harm the organisation.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141209/09591629371/gchq-follows-nsa-into-paranoia-just-as-julian-assange-predicted.shtml

[Vincardog]

1. Can the thought police be far behind?

[Ghost Dog]

2. Otherwise 'innocent' suspects selected in this way

will then presumably be subjected to such treatment that they will definitely become "unhappy and perhaps prepared to do something to harm the organisation."