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UK's Most Secretive Court Rules GCHQ Mass Internet Surveillance Was Unlawful
Hammeh writes: Today marks the first time in its history that the Investigative Powers Tribunal (IPT), who are responsible for oversight and complaints relating to all of the UK intelligence agencies, upheld a complaint against GCHQ, stating that accessing data provided to them by the NSA was in breach of human rights. The ruling comes as the saga into online privacy continues to unfold. Last year, the same court ruled that internal surveillance of British citizens did not breach human rights. The difference: NSA data is claimed to have sidestepped the protections provided by the UK legal system. The tribunal also noted that although the UK government was willing to admit that Prism and Upstream existed (both NSA programs outed by Edward Snowden), they would not comment on the existence or non-existence of the Tempora program.
They KNEW they were targetting British people, they even had key journalists as targets. Not terrorists, or 'Jihadists' journalists.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-01/20/gchq-journalist-emails
They KNEW they didn't have legal authority to do a full take on our data. The bill to legalize it was repeatedly pushed by Jacqui Smith and Theresa May and neither got the Snoopers Charter passed.
It failed to pass again a few days ago, as traitors to their country pushed it through on an amendment:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-01/27/snoopers-charter-lords-rejected
GCHQ spied on us for a foreign power anyway.
They spied for the NSA on British communications and undermined our democracy. There needs to be f**ing prosecutions.
Every politicians now has an NSA file filled with GCHQ provided information.
Every potential poltician has an NSA file filled with GCHQ provided information.
Every journalist has an NSA file filled with GCHQ provided information.
They undermined us, there needs to be criminal prosecutions and the man who went ahead with this despite the law failing to pass, he needs to be prosecuted as the spy he is. He's a spy just as if he was a Russian spy working for the Russians or a Chinese spy working for the Chinese.
And when the NSA/CIA/US Politicos use that data to leverage UK politicians to keep GCHQ spying on Brits, you GCHQ staff will know you are traitors to Britain. YOU DID THIS. You created those files that let them leverage the UK political machine. Where is the Snowden among you, that had the balls to stand up and tell us of all this illegal activity??
And as for the US, now you can see that General Alexander sent staff to the UK to get around the US laws and spy on Americans using Tempora. He's walked away from this free as a bird, even has a consultancy, he flat out lied about spying on Americans too.
Read this:
http://boingboing.net/2015/02/05/ron-wyden-to-eric-holder-befo.html
Understand that Wyden is telling you that he cannot discuss these secret commercial deals that were struck between US corporations and the NSA to hand over all their private data. US citizens too, and no doubt all of Europes.
So all the 'cookies' nonsense, the EU got stuck with, meanwhile the NSA was cutting financial deals with the Facebook/Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/DropBox/Apple's of this world to get all of the private data. THEY got a business subsidy, and NSA got everyone's private data.
So everyone of you now has a leverage file against you, and we cannot trust our politicians to act for their countries because of it. That goes for US politicians too, because the files will be used to prevent politicians that don't fit the military industrial complex from rising up to rule.
Some links to pages describing Tempora.
I think the fact that UK Defence officials issued a Defence Advisory Notice to the BBC requesting they don't mention certain espionage programs, which may-or-may-not exist, basically confirms that they in fact do exist. It's damn near an official acknowledgement even. Same goes for the US Army restricting personel access to The Guardian website since they started mentionain PRISM and Tempora. Well done chaps!
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
No, this article isn't a question of whether the NSA can spy on the UK (if we have the "national technical means", we can spy, if not, not), it's whether GCHQ can USE the take from NSA spying to get around BRITISH espionage laws. Answer: it CANNOT.
Incorrect. You have to get past the headline & read the article. The ruling was not that using the data was illegal. The ruling was that using the data without telling the public how you obtained it, was illegal. Now that they've explained how they got it, it is back to business as usual.
From the article:
The UK government issued a robust defence of GCHQ on Friday and said the judgment would not alter in any way the work of the monitoring agency. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said: “Overall, the judgment this morning is that the UK’s interception regime is fully lawful. That follows on from the courts clear rejection of accusations of mass surveillance in their December judgment and we welcome that.
emphasis mine.