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British Spies Are Free To Target Lawyers and Journalists
Advocatus Diaboli writes British spies have been granted the authority to secretly eavesdrop on legally privileged attorney-client communications, according to newly released documents. On Thursday, a series of previously classified policies confirmed for the first time that the U.K.'s top surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters has advised its employees: "You may in principle target the communications of lawyers." The country's other major security and intelligence agencies—MI5 and MI6—have adopted similar policies, the documents show. The guidelines also appear to permit surveillance of journalists and others deemed to work in "sensitive professions."
Anybody at all?
The purpose of a government under crony capitalism is to ease the flow of cash toward those prepared to offer kick-backs.
People who are highly talented in very narrow fields - thus unable to analyse the bigger picture - are employed as civil servants to facilitate this.
Whence GCHQ, NSA, etc.
Hardly anyone will notice one right removed at a time.
There can be no defense of this. This is the government engaging in totalitarianism as standard practice. There cannot possibly be a moral or ethical defense of this practice.
Seriously? After all the wide spread surveillance operations blown open this year, how is this surprising?
Here is my predicted response:
Public outcry
Politician wagles finger at agency,
agency waggles finger at signed blessing from politician,
politician shrugs at public
public, licks KFC grease off lips
nothing happens
Welcome to your new system of government.
It is difficult not to see these revelations as the last gasp of privacy for the once proud British people.
When the law is compromised to it's very roots as it now appears, then the only law that matters is that of breaking down and rebuilding...
The part concerned by these news in bold. Everything else left uncut because Sun Tzu.
The Use Of Spies
1. Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State.
The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways.
As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.
2. Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.
3. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present help to his sovereign, no master of victory.
4. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.
6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.
7. Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies.
8. When these five kinds of spy are all at work, none can discover the secret system. This is called "divine manipulation of the threads." It is the sovereign's most precious faculty.
9. Having local spies means employing the services of the inhabitants of a district.
10. Having inward spies, making use of officials of the enemy.
11. Having converted spies, getting hold of the enemy's spies and using them for our own purposes.
12. Having doomed spies, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception, and allowing our spies to know of them and report them to the enemy.
13. Surviving spies, finally, are those who bring back news from the enemy's camp.
14. Hence it is that which none in the whole army are more intimate relations to be maintained than with spies.
None should be more liberally rewarded. In no other business should greater secrecy be preserved.
15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.
16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.
17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports.
18. Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business.
19. If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told.
20. Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants, the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these.
21. The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.
22. It is through the information brought by the converted spy that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies.
23. It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.
24. Lastly, it is by his information that the surviving spy can be used on appointed occasions.
25. The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy.
Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.
26. Of old, the rise of
FTFY.
Spies should listen in to whatever they need to listen in to.
Spies should respect laws and constitutions, at the very least those of their own country. If they don't, everyone - including those who ordered the illegal spying - should be punished severely. We already know this is not happening.
Freedom is far more important than a spy's ability to do whatever they "need" to do.
That's what they're there for. Nations spy on other nations. It's not pretty, but it's reality.
Murderers murder people. It's not pretty, but it's reality.
What an amazing defense.
The lawyers themselves turn all the sensitive information to the government, no need to spy on them.
The worrying aspect is that they're collecting the data at all. If they have the data, it will be misused; that is a historical guarantee. Privacy is violated through the mere collection of data. Mass surveillance should not be permitted. Targeted, legal surveillance at best. This is not what is happening.
The government were explicitly required to comment on this very aspect of the matter. Although they said they did not routinely keep data that would allow them to put a number on the number of trials that might potentially have been "tainted" by the transfer of data to prosecutors, they did confirm that they knew of "at least one" but refused to identify it.
In other words, the government are aware of a mistrial and are conspiring to pervert the course of justice and are prepared to admit as much.
Everyone spies on everyone else, but clearly countries like the US are pushing beyond the boundaries of acceptable behavior when some of the deepest most invasion spying is against supposed friends or their own people. Not to mention spies are not supposed to be above the law!
Spies should respect laws and constitutions, at the very least those of their own country.
No argument from me there, but how do we balance this against other nations or groups that don't play by the same rules? (However limited or flawed the home laws might currently be).
Well, there is: it's called security.
Start by not using fax, unencrypted email, or ordinary phone-calls.
Of course, GCHQ can probably still just demand information, but at least you know about it in that case.
You don't; you try to be the better man/country. Have some standards (Maybe not spy on completely random people?) and principles rather than just adopting a "They do it so I can too!" attitude.
...you might as well spy on everybody. Seriously, who ever thought there were rules to warfare? Spying is warfare by the way. You either win, or you lose. There is no inbetween.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It's a nice thought but I don't think that works in the imperfect world we live in. We don't only spy because everyone else does (though I dare say there's an element of that). There has to be some way of letting the security services in their various forms do what they need to do. And to be clear: I think "need" here means what we the people as a democratic majority agree they need to do. (We the people also need to be realistic about the world we live in in doing so). Slightly changing tack as well: It's good and healthy that everyone's angry if someone abuses a position of responsibility and power. We just need to channel that productively so we make sure we don't throw the baby out with the bath water when we fix the problem. I also think that engineering a culture in our intelligence agencies that shies away from any abusive practices. You want people to avoid abusing power because they think that's right, not just because it's against a law or rule of some kind. My gut instinct is that the culture is probably well intentioned. Caveat the road to hell etc...
I'll wager that big foot is found before any nation allows free speech. How is it that people have any faith in the notion of rights when nonsense like spying on lawyers and journalists is tolerated?
Orwell, Englishman, wasn't writing about USSR when he made 1984. It was about UK.
It's a nice thought but I don't think that works in the imperfect world we live in.
The notion of not being immoral scumbags doesn't work in this imperfect world? Having principles and morality isn't something reserved for perfect worlds.
There has to be some way of letting the security services in their various forms do what they need to do.
Okay. If there's reason to suspect that someone is doing something, they can get a warrant (if it's a citizen) by an actual judge, or get some other form of acceptance that involves more than just spying on people for no reason.
Mass surveillance should never be tolerated.
You want people to avoid abusing power because they think that's right, not just because it's against a law or rule of some kind.
Good luck with that. In the mean time, I'll endeavor to not be completely ignorant of history or of what's happening in the present: Illegal surveillance. They can't even follow the laws!
I'll gladly throw out this 'baby'; it's not a baby, but a piece of garbage. I'd take a less 'safe' world without this type of immoral surveillance over their surveillance 'paradise.'
Sadly, democracy is dead. We no longer have a government that represents the people. We no longer have a state that adheres to the principles that guided our ascent from feudal rule. Another system will come but first these hegemonists will create a world in which they believe we will cling to their heels as they rape us by night. Instead they will multiply fear and inequity until they too become powerless. As has happened before, we'll slowly pick up the pieces. Or, maybe we'll wake up first...
You miss the point. This is carte-blanche powers to spy on everyone in their own country for any reason. You can bet your life they'll use it to bring down anyone that the govt (or civil servants) consider an inconvenience via public humiliation through setups. It's far easier than leaving whistle-blowers dead under a bush.
... for those that still had some doubts. GCHQ is a totalitarian institution, and an enemy of freedom and common decency. This is no surprise, any government agency will always grab all power it can get and use it. Governments need to be kept under control by the citizens, or they always devolve into totalitarianism. That is one of the reasons secret laws _must_ be avoided at all cost. Sadly, the UK population is deeply asleep at the wheel. They will pay an excessively high price for their failure.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Totalitarianism is a much greater threat than terrorism. So, it's not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it's that your henhouse is better off alone than guarded by foxes.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Data collection by intelligence agencies Isn't pushing the boundaries, it is what they must do. It is the sharing of that information to Law enforcement agencies which may be pushing boundaries, but much depends on the country, who is doing the Data Collection & who is targeted:
US agencies collecting data on French Citizens: Unacceptable! Beyond the pale claimed the French Politicians & Press.
French agencies collecting data on French Citizens: French Politicians state "we have a law that authorized that". Press says nothing.
US agencies collecting data on German Politicians: Unacceptable! Beyond the pale claimed the German Politicians & Press.
German agencies collecting data on US Politicians: German Politicians: Shhhhhhh... Press says nothing.
See a pattern?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Because there's never any intelligence value in those communications! Terrorists are always foreigners operating outside of the country in the public!
Bottom of the page:
"History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions." -- Ted Koppel
I am certain that most of those guys are ISIS sleeper agents! They need to spy on all of them heavily!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Murderers murder people. It's not pretty, but it's reality.
What an amazing defense.
Soldiers kill people. It's not pretty, but it's reality.
There is a difference between a soldier and a criminal. There is also a difference betweeen a spy and a criminal.
Both soldiers and spies are ultimately accountable to the law. Just as a soldier can't just shoot anyone he feels like for the sake of it, so a spy has to be able to justify his actions.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Letting any member of government ignore the reasonable constraints placed on them by their society because they might do what's right for their country instead of what promotes their own career is like letting a rabid dog free in a shopping mall because it might bite a shoplifter.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Yet on the other I don't see why, if you were trying to stop a serious threat
What serious threat are you stopping by spying on the communications of journalists and lawyers? We protect the professional actions of those groups for VERY good reasons. Reasons which far outweigh any information that might be gleaned from violating their confidential relationship. If a client cannot trust their communications to be confidential between themselves and their lawyer then there is no possible way for them to have a fair trial.
1/ If the information gathered by spying was specifically barred from being used in court
You don't need to involve a court to ruin someone's life. See Guantanamo Bay. Plenty of evidence there that would be inadmissible but the government is keeping people locked up indefinitely without charge or any opportunity to seek redress.
2/ If additional authority had to be granted by the judiciary for the act
Which results in a rubber stamp kangaroo court like the FISA court.
3/ If there were clear checks and balances in place to deal with abuse.
Checks and balances require a separate party with equal power. No such entity exists if actions like these are perfectly legal.
Then it isn't very good at its stated purpose.
Soldiers kill people. It's not pretty, but it's reality.
There is a difference between a soldier and a criminal. There is also a difference betweeen a spy and a criminal.
Don't you think it's better to give an actual explanation that amounts to more than just "Group X does Y. It's not pretty, but it's reality."
The point is to do whatever it is in a moral, legal (if we're talking about restricting government powers) fashion. Handwaving the problem away by saying that spies spy only lets them get away with their misdeeds.
so a spy has to be able to justify his actions.
If only.
So when London or insert your European capital or major city here, has 30 or 40 Boston style bombings in month will you still be saying this? What if you are harmed by this attack? You're all for privacy until your legs get blown off. They will most likely not do another 911 attach but a death of a thousand cuts type.
Stupid people are stupid.
Our governments are hypocrites. That doesn't mean they aren't correct in what they say when they are outraged.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Data collection by intelligence agencies Isn't pushing the boundaries
The only way to determine that is by analyzing the response to a few questions: Who is having their data collected? Why?
If the answers are anything like "everyone" or "because we need to see if they're terrorists/enemies" then there is a problem, and it doesn't matter how many people do it; that's a ridiculous excuse.
If you violate lawyer client privilege you remove someone's ability to get a fair trial.
If you violate doctor patient privilege you endanger public health as well as potentially the health of that person.
If you violate journalist source relationships you enable corruption by the state.
We protect these relationships because any minor benefit to the state achieved by violating the sanctity and trust in these relationships has follow on consequences that endanger the well being of a democratic society. Public health, fair trials, government accountability. All these things are kept in check in large part because we protect certain relationships between professionals and the groups they work with.
I'm earfully waiting to see lots of earless solicitors and journalists walking near Old Bailey and Fleet Street. Poor chaps and lasses!
There was never real freedom and security or privacy. It always was an illusion, Western Governments always had the ability to crush any individual they considered as bothersome.
The 2 key differences now is:
#1 Due to new technology, it has becomes easier for the government to monitor EVERYBODY vs having limited resources and having to wisely pick and choose who you monitor like they did in the past.
#2 They are slowly slowly, dropping the pretense. Where as in the past they would put on an entire show and dance if abuses like this surfaced (and there was many abuses such as the red scare in the US in the 1950's for example) and then return back to business when their propaganda machines called the news monetized the "scandal" to death and moved on to other trending topics...At worst if it was real serious and people insisted on justice, they would simply jail the low level patsy they had on stand by.
So when London or insert your European capital or major city here, has 30 or 40 Boston style bombings in month will you still be saying this?
I'll say the same as I said on 9/11: There's no such thing as perfect safety, and the very idea is terrifying. I rejected the TSA, the Patriot Act, and all the nonsense that followed, because I actually have principles and understand the concept of probability to a far greater extent than so many fools who, if they were truly rational, wouldn't get into a car. Freedom is more important for safety. If you feel otherwise, North Korea may be right up your alley.
But hey, let's using this stupid logic in an alternate scenario. If you were a murderer who was caught murdering someone, would you still be saying there should be laws against murdering? I'm going to assume the answer would be "No." Why? Because I can. And because I assumed that, your arguments for why there should be laws against murder are somehow invalid. And if that's not the sort of point you intended to convey, then why bring up that stupid nonsense about how I supposedly might believe differently if X happened? It serves no useful purpose.
And do you think the government should have unlimited power in the name of safety? Is it so problematic to recognize that freedom and restrictions on government are what's important in truly free countries?
What if we are invaded by unicorns and Godzilla at the same time? An unchecked government is a bigger threat than terrorism. In fact, the overreaction of the government is most often an essential part of the terrorist plans, so giving in to fear is part of how 'the terrorists win.' If we were cold, perfectly rational beings, terrorism would be highly ineffective.
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What do you believe spying is, exactly?
Exactly.
If you are so terrified of such an attack then lock yourself in a box and bury it deep. It's the only real way to be safe.
In the meantime I would rather live free and happy right up until the blast.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Kilmarnock Football.Club
Surely they should only target lawyers if the lawyers themselves were criminals ... oh wait!
Yes. By all means do that. Become a person of interest. Become an unemployable martyr. Encrypt all you like, they'll order you to surrender the keys. Refuse to do it, or play smartass and pretend to having forgotten, you will go to jail. When are you going to understand that IT'S OVER? The game has ended, and the powerful have won.
If you violate lawyer client privilege you remove someone's ability to get a fair trial.
If you violate doctor patient privilege you endanger public health as well as potentially the health of that person.
If you violate journalist source relationships you enable corruption by the state.
All of those are features, not bugs for the government.
Whine all you want, but telling the government "if you do this, you are tilting the table towards yourself, violating your job contract" is not going to cause them to change anything. Because it's intentional. The only remedy is going to the court. Not the court of public opinion, but a court of law. Without anybody going to jail, the erosion of rights will just continue.
If a lawyer or journalist needs protection, they need to run for public office. Or do they spy on politicians over there too?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Start by not using fax, unencrypted email, or ordinary phone-calls.
Of course, GCHQ can probably still just demand information, but at least you know about it in that case.
Burner phones? Hard to tap a moving target, and there wouldn't be any way to get the content of the phone call, unless the telecos are preserving all phone audio. Best case, they'd have metadata.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This assumes you're unique. If you're one of millions of people using default/secure communication from the likes of Apple and Google, that will tend to mask any additional encryption you bring to the table. Then, you're not a person of interest for using encryption, and you only have to avoid becoming a person of interest the old fashioned way.
You forgot to mention that we can't even do a proper revolution now because the government took all our guns away.
Guns aren't required for a revolution to occur. India kicked out the British largely without guns. The Civil Rights movement in the 1960s-70s was accomplished without guns. The USSR fell apart without civil war. If enough of the citizenry decides to force a change then change will happen no matter what weapons the government happens to have. Certainly you can have a revolution with guns but the notion that your little peashooter is what is keeping the most powerful military on the planet in check is pretty much laughable.
Why do people like you continue to propagate this fantasy that British spies should be spying on _every_ British citizen illegally, then give it a thumbs up because the law gets stealth changed so that it's no longer illegal? I'll be fair, people in the US have done the same thing, as have people in Germany.
People that are against this activity don't cry foul because spies are spying on Iran, or DPRK, or Turkey, etc... they are outraged because the spies have turned inward and worry more about people having a negative opinion of their home governments activities. People against this realize the measurable effect this has had on Free Speech, apologists don't want debate and dialogue. People against this activity can make parallels in history to other countries that have done the same thing and where it took the populations, apologists ignore history and seem to believe that being an apologist will make them immune to persecution.
Trying to conflate the jobs of law enforcement and "spying" to be the same thing is simply wrong. Law enforcement is supposed to follow the law when collecting evidence, there is a paper trail (or should be) to ensure that the people claiming to uphold the law are upholding the law. Warrants ensure oversight, Judges are supposed to stop abuses of power with the authority to issue a warrant. The whole system has been circumvented at this point, and there is no accountability or oversight.
Just like in the US, the UK has been spending billions of pounds every year for alleged "domestic terrorism" with no visible or measurable results. What can be viewed and measured is that people don't gather to show discontent with how their tax money is being spent very often. When they do there is a large police force waiting to ambush them and beat them into submission. This is the Government you live in, and complacency won't fix it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I'm surprised to have not found a reference to the "five eyes" network (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes) or the trick of using foreign intel to glean info on nationals. None of our reporters are safe!
As for lawyers, they can fend for themselves as these legal gladiators are in a sub-human class all their own.
Let's see if the white vans and black helis show up today...
They can link your burner phone to you by using the meta-data to map your movements and comparing to historical records of where you went (how many people spend nights at your house and days at your work?). We can assume they are recording all phone calls, not just meta-data.
All of those are features, not bugs for the government.
Untrue. If you remove the protections of those relationships then the government will eventually pay the price. The government that is strongest is the one that is trusted by the people. A government removes that trust at its own peril.
The only remedy is going to the court. Not the court of public opinion, but a court of law.
Disagree. Vox populi, vox Dei. If the citizens are sufficiently outraged then they will remove the leaders from office. A courtroom might help but a ballot box can fix the problem far more effectively than a jury box.
And, of course, just writing a memo makes it all legally okay.
AC
Then encryption not approved by the government is banned and anyone caught using it - and they WILL catch you, don't be naive - will get fined. Heavily. The numbers will start dwindling fast after that. There is nothing you can do, get over your movie-fueled fantasies.
Our allies can legally spy on your meeting with your lawyer, and then they can tell the relevant government what they learned. Same as with spying on the general population, we can't do it but our allies can do it and tell us all about it.
At some point maybe we should start being concerned that the government is treating the Constitution as a hostile document to be worked around.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Mass surveillance should never be tolerated
I agree and that's not what I said and not what TFS or TFA is about - they're about targeted surveillance of lawyers. Which is always wrong, with a few possible but very rare exceptions. Targeting lawyers of people who criticise the government is clearly wrong and a blatant abuse of power.
I'll endeavor to not be completely ignorant of history
I don't think I'm completely ignorant of history (although I wouldn't would I), but I might disagree with you about how we solve the problem. And as I said above, there is clearly a problem that needs fixing.
FTFY
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
they can't tell where I drive....I didn't install the license plate!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
In those days, we did not wet our knickers and give up our privacy (much), and carried on regardless with a stiff upper lip.
I don't know what went wrong, but this is just as small part of it. personally, I blame cheap hard disks.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Then we may, "in principle" target the communications of government spies. It is the only way we can level the playing field. Since we have no privacy, let's take away theirs.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm actually surprised, because I thought the only rule for intelligence agencies was :
"Do what the fuck you want, but don't get caught."
It's pretty obvious they target everybody, especially people holding potentially sensitive information (e.g. lawyers and journalists).
I don't understand the need for such a policy, and I understand even less the need to disclose it.
I honestly don't see anything wrong with this. The point here is multi-fold:
1. There is a distinction between targetting individuals who are lawyers, and targetting lawyer-client communications. Lawyers are human beings, and not everything they do is a client communication. Lawyers do not become uniquely immune from appropriate investigation, just because they are lawyers. Otherwise that's a pretty gigantic loophole.
2. It's clear that the approval 'in principle' is bound by rules and caveats. Spies don't actually have the authority to spy on their own in this case, they "must" escalate to someone else to grant them that authority. The rule of thumb is given on page 90, point number 5: "there must be evidence of criminal activity by the lawyer". Even then the information is to be kept from anyone involved in the trial.
https://www.documentcloud.org/...
Spies should respect laws and constitutions...
Oh come now! The very essence of spying is clandestine. The law doesn't apply. Only the rules of their superiors matter.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Bears have been granted perpetual licenses to take a dump in the woods.
Requiem for the American Dream
I thought by definition spies did illegal things. Or is that just the James Bond definition? The whole bit about "if you are caught or captured the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your existence" and they have a suicide pill, or they can try to escape as long as they don't divulge any information or whatever.
Unfortunately the "rules" to warfare seem to get ignored more and more as the decades pass. And we wonder why people hide their guns in hospitals when we bomb anywhere else with impunity. But by far the worst was that bit where they sent vaccination workers* to try to find Osama. Might as well just take a giant steaming shit on the Geneva Convention.
*I thought they were specifically Red Cross but can't seem to find a citation that explicitly says so.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
they *weren't* doing this before? color me shocked.
Congraulations, you're a coward.
Spies should respect laws and constitutions, at the very least those of their own country. If they don't, everyone - including those who ordered the illegal spying - should be punished severely. We already know this is not happening.
Freedom is far more important than a spy's ability to do whatever they "need" to do.
But now the NSA and GCHQ have positioned themselves as apex predators at the top of the information food chain. They can spy on anyone, but no one is allowed to spy on them. There might be some king of notional "oversight" commitee for window dressing. So who might potentially be able to investigate the security services and hold them to account? That would be journalists and lawyers.....
Says the deluded fool. When are you going to admit that The Matrix is only a movie? Gun nuts cannot challenge the Army with their puny weapons and you can't challenge the Government with your puny computers. What they don't break by technological superiority they break by adjusting the laws. You can't fight City Hall, much less the State. If being realist is being a coward in your testosterone-overdosed world then I'm happy to be a coward. You want to trade punches with a grizzly bear, it's your funeral. But I strongly doubt you will actually dare. In the end, you will cave in. Brave words != brave deeds, and yours aren't even brave words. Just shrill and desperate.
It's very simple.
During WW2 the security services took the right to act extra-judicially. It made sense then - when you are fighting a war to the death and are close to being invaded you can't be fussing around with the niceties.
After WW2 most of the military services disbanded. But the spies kept going - they had the Cold War to fight, and they kept their 'James Bond' attitude to the law going in the old way. But it didn't matter to the general public - this was a secret game going on between the Eastern Bloc and the West, played by not very many people, none of whom were going to go to a court.
Then the Berlin Wall came down. And suddenly the security services had no job justification any more. They panicked, and started looking for other work - terrorism (which they never did before), drug barons, anything they could find. They moved in onto the Police's territory. AND THEY TOOK THEIR MO WITH THEM.
It ought to be obvious that a country should only drop constitutional rules of law if it is in extremis - in clear and present danger of no longer existing as a sovereign state. ALL OTHER situations should be dealt with by a police force, working under laws and answerable to the courts.
But it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle now...
so we wait for our corporate overlords to cover us from government shenanigans... if only we could do something about the government, like vote or something. (mostly targeting the poor voter turnout in US)
Personally, I think the poor voter turn out in the US happened because gridlock worked for the Republicans. The Republican voters counted stopping the Democrats as accomplishing something, but the Democrat voters felt that they derived no benefit from having voted for the Democrats the last time, so they stayed home.
However, I can't even get people who generally agree with me on most voting related stuff to bother using Enigmail, so even with good voter turnout, I think it'll be quite a long time before voters ever force a quorum of politicians in USA to place the interest of the public ahead of the self interest of the government when it comes to online privacy.
After a fashion, we really owe the nudie thieves a debt of gratitude, because if they hadn't made a big stink, the corporate entities might not have done as much as they're doing now. I'm not sure how it came to pass that stealing photos of famous women (when there's plenty of prettier ones available for free) got better results than the rest of the spying, but I reckon I'll take the results and be glad they're available. Who knows, maybe someday a psychohistorian will show that it was inevitable.
I think we can all agree to that one.
Anyone else find it ironic that we bitch about other countries spying on journalists and rigging elections (i.e. Russia, China, etc) and complain about civil rights records but yet, our government does the *EXACT SAME THING*?
Lulz, it's ok, they've redefined the word "collecting" to mean "using data for nefarious purposes" and so they can say all day they're not "collecting" anything on the general public and only have targeted "collecting".
Liberty.
If that happens then it is more justification against it. Since clearly giving them a bigger haystack causes them to miss all of the obvious threats out there if they have scores of Boston bombings.
Their is a massive difference between your own government monitoring you and a foreign government invasively monitoring you. I am not surprised they were justifiably offended by the US's breaches of trust. But your second statements are bullshit, both French and German government spying also caused uproar.
Well there is one easy way to solve this but it is very messy. A Stalin-style purge of the intelligence services would actually be perfectly justified given their history. They have been out of control for decades and wreaked havoc. As a rogue state within a state the only solution to them is to destroy them utterly and leave anyone depraved enough to consider starting another one cowering in terror.
Uproar? No. Criticism by a few, yes but without the weight of government and given that press criticism in both counter examples was magnitudes less.
Besides which, you're wrong. In the case of French monitoring, it was the government (the DGSE) monitoring it's own citizens. When the interior minister was queried on it in parliament, his answer was "yes we do the same data collection as the U.S., but given that France has no law against it, it's legal. The resulting 2 lines in the newspaper & lack of criticism by the press & lack of follow up prove my case.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Yes they are hypocrites, which means that their right to spy on everyone is justified & the outrage on being sped upon is fake. You cannot have it both ways.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I'm not asking to have it both ways. The spying is not justified, but outrage over spying is justified.
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Ah, so you're one of the fuzzy bunny crowd, criticizing those who are protecting him from the cruel reality he refuses to admit exists. There can be no useful debate with people of your ilk unable or on willing to live in the real world.
Neckbeard indeed...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
No, I'm far more cynical than that, and I don't trust the people that claim that they 'protect' us. The reality is that our TLAs and our military are not the good guys.
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Because ISIS, Putin, the London tube bombers & co are all so cute & cuddly.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Cuddly they are not, but aside from perhaps Putin, they are actually less deadly statistically than plenty of cute and cuddly things. Just because you suck at math doesn't mean we have to give up our freedoms over something less dangerous to the average American than bathtubs.
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Good thinking. Maybe wear a hockey mask for your day-to-day activities, too. Only way to avoid unwanted attention!
You have to be abysmally ignorant to think that England's courts have anything to do with America (I'll assume the USA because the ignorant often conflate the two terms) but that's neck beards for you...
As for thinking that ISIS isn't a clear and present dangerous threat, well yet again you display ignorance. The influx of people with western passports (that being the UK, France & even the USA For the ignorant) being trained by ISIS who then return (or are sent back) to the west are the most dangerous threats inside our countries. The USA has been lucky up to now to have avoided attacks on this vector. France, where I live, hasn't, nor has the UK.
I was in Paris during the series of bombings in the Metro in 1995 & my future wife was close enough to the Champs-Élysées bomb to feel the shockwave. I was in the UK during the Tube bombings in 2005. I remember the disruptions to normal life. Even though I, like most people never felt enough sense of personal danger to change how we lived our lives, the shutdown of services like the metro/tube/busses will effect you.
You, on the other hand, cower behind those who are attempting to protect you and are well enough protected by them to ignorantly criticize the work of authorities in countries far away. Your theoretical statistics mean nothing to people with something you do not possess: experience.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
The risks to Americans and Britons to terrorists is going to be pretty close. I'm not sure about their risk to bathtubs, though. Bees are about on par with them, though.
No, there are plenty of more dangerous mundane threats than terrorists. Basically anything you would expect might kill you, and half of the things that you think couldn't possibly kill you,
Those are actual statistics, and while I'm sure your experiences make it hard to grasp the reality. I'm not sure how saying that they aren't a threat is a criticism of authorities other than the authorities trying to grasp power by preying on public fear, for which they obviously deserve criticism.
Also, how am I cowering? The FBI, CIA, and NSA haven't protected me from terrorists. In fact, the US government has arguably had some role in creating just about every terrorist or terrorist group that has attacked domestically. They are a net negative on my susceptibility to terrorist attacks.
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The risks to Americans and Britons to terrorists is going to be pretty close. I'm not sure about their risk to bathtubs, though. Bees are about on par with them, though.
Woosh. You have absolutely no idea whatsoever how different the UK terrorism risk is to that of the US. You've never visited the UK, never studied the risks, have no idea what the populations at risk are or how many UK/French/American citizens are fighting for ISIS at present but you'll just pull theoretical fuzzy risk evaluations out ouf your ass.
The subject is UK Justice & terrorism risks. You have no knowledge of the subject & nothing intelligent to say so just shut up.
No, there are plenty of more dangerous mundane threats than terrorists. Basically anything you would expect might kill you, and half of the things that you think couldn't possibly kill you,
None of your mundane threats are shutting down public transport, causing massive disruptions in public life or getting politicians scared enough for their reelection that they completely reorient government policy. Again, you have no idea what you are talking about & nothing intelligent to say.
Those are actual statistics, and while I'm sure your experiences make it hard to grasp the reality. I'm not sure how saying that they aren't a threat is a criticism of authorities other than the authorities trying to grasp power by preying on public fear, for which they obviously deserve criticism.
What "figures"? "Figures" you pull out of your ass are only "real" to you; boy-child. No references, no reality.
Before denigrating public fear, you need to experience some. I suggest trying to council rape victims. Given your track record here, you're bound to say something like "I've never been raped but I've read statistics that say that...". Their reaction to your drivel will at last give you an idea how stupid your arguing from ignorance is & how debilitating public fear can be.
Also, how am I cowering? The FBI, CIA, and NSA haven't protected me from terrorists. In fact, the US government has arguably had some role in creating just about every terrorist or terrorist group that has attacked domestically. They are a net negative on my susceptibility to terrorist attacks.
You know this how, oh ignorant one? Yeah, that's right, you don't, all you know is how to fart while exclaiming "smells like roses".
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Airports are closed by snow, and I easily found a BBC reference to a single storm that killed 4 people. You do have a unique position on the reaction of politicians. That's the goal of terrorism, so if you react out of fear, then the terrorists have accomplished their goal.
Fear is not something easily worked through, but that doesn't mean that we should let fear control us. There's a reason for limits to government power and the justice system, and undermining them is a far greater threat than rapists, murderers, or terrorists. That's why a judge has to let a defendant go when evidence is gathered improperly.
By studying history. With Muslim extremists, we end up arming/training one group, and they end up fighting us. Timothy Mcveigh was ex-military (thus trained by the US) and set off by Waco and Ruby Ridge. The Boston marathon bombers have been alleged to be double agents, which may have been why we ignored Russia when they said to look out for these guys.
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Then why don't you post this spiel from a real account? AC rants are almost universally trolls here.