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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.
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.
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.
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...
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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