Slashdot Mirror
Could Slashdot (Or Other Private Entity) Sue a Spy Agency Like GCHQ Or NSA?
Nerval's Lobster writes "When the GCHQ agency (Britain's equivalent of the National Security Agency) reportedly decided to infiltrate the IT network of Belgian telecommunications firm Belgacom, it relied on a sophisticated version of a man-in-the-middle attack, in which it directed its targets' computers to fake, malware-riddled versions of Slashdot and LinkedIn. If the attack could be proven without a doubt, would the GCHQ—or any similar spy agency engaging in the same sort of behavior—be liable for violating trademarks or copyrights, since a key part of its attack would necessitate the appropriation of intellectual property such as logos and content? We asked someone from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about that, and received a somewhat dispiriting answer. "From a trademark perspective, if a company uses another company's marks/logos to deceive, there may be a trademark claim," said Corynne McSherry, the EFF's Intellectual Property Director. "But it's complicated a bit by two problems: (1) the fact that while there may be confusion, it's not necessarily related to the actual purchase of any goods and services; and (2) multiple TM laws are in play here—for example UK trademark law may have different exceptions and limitations." McSherry also addressed other issues, including governments' doctrine of sovereign immunity."
FYI ciderbrew is referring to an actual event, albeit speculatively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams
BUT - governments are special; essentially you can't sue them unless they agree to allow it. Neither US nor UK governments would allow such a suit to proceed, even if all the facts were publicly known, they would invoke "state secrets" and quash any civil action. The only hope of proceeding in court is to show they violated a law, and even then you'll have a long drawn out battle to prove that you have standing to sue, and to find a judge who would allow the suit to proceed. Lots of people with much stronger cases demonstrating actual harm have had, so far, little or no success in getting the NSA into court and I doubt very much that the UK government is any less skilled at this sort of manipulation of the courts. In then end I doubt anything short of a revolution, or at least the credible threat of one will get any noticeable reform. There are a handful of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic trying to reign these agencies in, sadly they are a minority and unlikely to succeed unless a large wave of public outrage forces a majority of the political class to care about this issue. The best hope is that brave whistle blowers like Snowden will continue to expose the shenanigans of these agencies and that the reporting will be honest enough to get the public to wake up to the profound dangers they pose to all our freedom.
Not if the second "anybody" is the government. Unless the government consents to being sued (in othe words, there is a law allowing citzens to sue the government over that particular injury) the government will merely plead sovereign immunity and the suit will the thrown out of court.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"In the United States, the federal government has sovereign immunity and may not be sued unless it has waived its immunity or consented to suit. The United States has waived sovereign immunity to a limited extent, mainly through the Federal Tort Claims Act, which waives the immunity if a tortious act of a federal employee causes damage, and the Tucker Act, which waives the immunity over claims arising out of contracts to which the federal government is a party."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity#United_States)\
Did you REALLY think there would be another answer?
-Styopa
Better protected? We are worse off.. :(
Well, you have a lot of faith in British law enforcement and security.
No, you'll suddenly decide to kill yourself just before you're going to present important information, like David Kelly. Or you'll commit a minor infraction like jumping a ticket barrier and be shot a few times for "oh he was totally about to set off a bomb", a la Jean Charles de Menezes. Or you'll have a heart attack after being lightly handled by a police officer during a protest, like Ian Tomlinson.
Surely, there is a very simple method to do something about it.
When the state oversteps its boundary, it is time to replace the state. If not in orderly fashion, then with force. It is called revolution.
Welcome to the NSA watch list.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Yeah whatever. How about the State Secrets Doctrine which really took hold after the widows of some RCA engineers sued the USAF after the plane their husbands were on crashed (they were testing some equipment). The widows wanted the crash report, the USAF said it contained secrets. No judge, not even any on the Supreme Court, ever checked to see if the USAF was flat out lying. Which they were as it turns out. 40 years later when the accident report was declassified, it contained no national security level secrets. It did contain information that the USAF neglected to maintain the plane properly and neglected to install heat shields in the engines -- a manufacturer recommended modification to prevent engine fires. The plane that killed the geeks on board suffered engine fires exactly like those the modification was designed to prevent.
So yeah, the Feds have waived SI to some extent, but that won't stop them from lying to everyone and anyone, even the Supreme Court, in order to cover up malfeasance and negligence.
http://www.dcbar.org/for_lawyers/resources/publications/washington_lawyer/october_2008/books.cfm
The State Secrets Doctrine has been used by the Feds to get away with all kinds of crap, most recently of course, with a focus telecommunications masspionage, preventing people who were innocent and tortured from seeking redress, and so forth. As for the 4th Amendment -- it's a joke because of the Third Party Doctrine which equates "reasonable expectation of privacy" to "complete and total secrecy." Anything that is not absolutely secret has no 4th Amendment protection, and if you think about, barely anything in modern life does not include third parties in some way. The whole fucking post 9/11 debacle has the Feds using the State Secrets Doctrine and the Third Party Doctrine as a bulldozer to burry every American ideal we've pretended to revere for centuries.
So again, whatever. If a Fed. agent dings your bumper, the Feds will pay out, but the sovereign immunity waiver is only for such trivial things. If it matters, the Feds will fuck you over till Christmas, and then kick you in the teeth before taking a crap on you.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
That has been in the news again recently.
MI6 Spy in a bag Gareth Williams 'probably locked himself inside it'
Two experts, working for the coroner, tried 400 times to lock themselves into the North Face bag and one claimed even Harry Houdini “would have struggled” to squeeze himself inside.
But days after the inquest a retired Army sergeant showed that it was possible and now police believe it was possible to do so. Mr Williams, a fitness fanatic, had an interest in escapology and confined spaces, visiting little known websites on the internet.
Spy In Bag: MI6 Man Probably Locked Himself In