GCHQ statement on "Mastering the Internet"

[Ian Batten]

On 4 May 2009, at 10:58, Richard Lamont wrote:

> David Hansen wrote:
>> "GCHQ - the Government's secret electronic eavesdropping agency - has
>> issued a rare public statement to deny it is pressing ahead with  
>> plans
>> to monitor all internet use and telephone calls in the UK."
>
> The GCHQ press release is here (HTML and PDF respectively):
>
> http://www.gchq.gov.uk/prelease.html
> http://www.gchq.gov.uk/gchq_prelease.pdf

Taken at face value, our heroes in the West Country are only guilty of  
having macho project names.  What they meant was ``Mastering IP'' or  
``Mastering Internet Technologies'' --- mastering as in ``I am trying  
to master the electric guitar'' or ``sat behind me as I type my wife  
is helping my daughter master the events of the reformation''.    
Unfortunately they bigged it up to ``Mastering the Internet'' which  
can be read as in ``The British government of 1880 spent a lot of  
effort on mastering India''.

Of course, that's taking the press release at face value...

ian

Revision has moved on.  It's the English Civil War now.