Slashdot Mirror
UK Authorities Accused of Inciting Illegal Protest
jarran writes "Questions are being asked about the tactics being employed by UK authorities to monitor and control protest groups. Schnews reports on evidence that government IP addresses are posting messages to sites like indymedia, attempting to provoke activists into taking illegal direct action. Evidence has emerged recently that the police consider sex to be a legitimate tool for extracting information from targets, and senior police have been accused of lying to parliament about the deployment of undercover agents at protests."
Agent provocateur
Actually, the police officer that made the post is now part of a conspiracy to commit a crime. No need to even come up with new laws to properly convict these idiot police.
If the police tell you to do something, it should be legal for you because the police officer is an authority figure relative to you. That doesn't mean that the officer wouldn't go to jail for giving the order.
In a similar fashion, if a police captain orders an officer to kill someone illegally, then the captain should go to jail, not the officer (unless the officer should have had reason to reject the order).
My country had a mandatory military service, so I've been a soldier for some time. As soldiers, we were legally obliged to deny direct orders if they were unlawful. So even if we were ordered by military authority, we'd go in jail for shooting some random civilian (the one who gave the order would probably be jailed, too). And that is a GOOD thing, because it requires the soldiers to keep thinking about their own actions. And it's the same for civilians. If you do something illegal, you are responsible for that action. If somebody else told you to do so, he may be held responsible too, but that does not change the fact that you are responsible for your own actions.
I am not a soldier either, though I play one on TV. I've been under fire in Iraq. Soldiers, in practice, can't refuse orders. It's not a conspiracy: it's just that no one gives an order that is prima facie illegal. Therefore, if the soldier perceives it as such, there will be disciplinary action and it's unlikely that the situation will be unwound for 2-5 years. During which time, said soldier probably spent some serious military prison time as well as every waking moment defending against charges. Soldiers know this; they are unwilling to disobey orders for this reason.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.