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UK Government Illegally Spied On Amnesty International
Mark Wilson writes with this excerpt from a story at Beta News: A court has revealed that the UK intelligence agency, GCHQ, illegally spied on human rights organization Amnesty International. It is an allegation that the agency had previously denied, but an email from the Investigatory Powers Tribunal backtracked on a judgement made in June which said no such spying had taken place.
The email was sent to Amnesty International yesterday, and while it conceded that the organization was indeed the subject of surveillance, no explanation has been offered. It is now clear that, for some reason, communications by Amnesty International were illegally intercepted, stored, and examined. What is not clear is when the spying happened, what data was collected and, more importantly, why it happened.
The email was sent to Amnesty International yesterday, and while it conceded that the organization was indeed the subject of surveillance, no explanation has been offered. It is now clear that, for some reason, communications by Amnesty International were illegally intercepted, stored, and examined. What is not clear is when the spying happened, what data was collected and, more importantly, why it happened.
When the government does it, there is no such thing!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
until there has been prison time.
You do know that those human rights people can write bad things about the UK Government also right? Not saying the UK was/is correct in them wanting to spy on every goddamn thing they can, just providing their motives. It's so sad that we have supposedly "free" Governments who are behaving exactly like those evil communists and dictatorships..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Those who fight for human rights are now considered to be on the same side as the terrsts.
Only terrrist want human rights (privacy).
Government just wants you to be safe. You voted them into power after all.
>why it happened
Because they could.
Today’s revelations underscore the urgent need for significant legal reform, including proper pre-judicial authorisation and meaningful oversight of the use of surveillance powers by the UK security services, the organisation said.
Even Amnesty International stated that the surveillance doesn't appear to be illegal under current law.
By 'The British" do you mean GCHQ, or the majority of British people who are appalled by what the agency does?
If they don't get punisched, it is not realy illegal. It is like those crazy old laws that exists where you can not walk a pig on sunday during a storm.
The laws still exist, but nobody actually will be prosecuted or punnished if they do it. It is just too much of an issue to remove these laws.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It must be embarrassing to admit to being a government agent now days. Way to fall down people. You no longer have anywhere near the value you used to have.
There are a lot of organizations, human rights organizations are one of those, that really should consider encrypting all their email. Setup TLS on your mail server, download Thunderbird/Enigmail/GPG and go.
Every second NGO is a front. While they're non-government their humanitarian causes provide legitimate reasons to go about town, get involved with policy makers and do whatever is needed - issue bribes to influence decisions, gather information, collect dirt, etc. Both the USA and Britain use this tactic all the time, so its not surprising they're also spying on other government organizations, which could be up to the same thing. I'm not saying that Amnesty International is, but it would be worth it for them to check.
Now every government says that every other government conducts in spying and that its a necessary evil. The real problem is that its not just spying. Because under the radar operations are not answerable to the people, this makes the already blurry line that separates defense from offense a whole lot fuzzier. The cogs of war are always turning.
Take the example of Afghanistan. The CIA used NGOs extensively there as a base to start funding 'moderate rebels' (terrorists) in order to drive out Soviet Influence. When extra funds were needed, everyone's favorite kingdom Saudi Arabia were happy to help finance operations as well. Speaking of which, Wikileaks just released a report on how Saudi Arabia have extensive operations in every country, to promote their interests.
We're screwed. While covert surveillance is necessary for defense, there's nothing to stop it being corrupted and used for offense, and the policy decisions that lead to war are all conducted in secret. Things are already well underway by the time the media propaganda machine fires up and puts it to the people for 'popular vote'.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
So I guess I should be irrationally afraid of that organization, and send my SAS death squads to give them a little extra judicial punishment. Or I can just spy on them and figure out what they are up to.
Or neither.
Good troll though. Ridiculous, but not incoherent.
I'm guessing there was concern at GCHQ that Amnesty International may discover some dirty little truths about the conditions and placement of captives by other English agencies or their allies that would be impalatable for the English public.
No future, no future,
No future for you!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It is very simple as to why they did this. Amnesty was pestering some bad people. These bad people were doing a deal with the UK government that would come under the umbrella of "realpolitik" in order to smooth this deal the home office was asked to help out with some information that would interfere with Amnesty's work. All the little spy drones would say things like "These orders came from the highest level"
So if you were to ask almost everyone at almost every level if this was a good or a bad thing that they have done they would pretty much all agree that it was in the greater interest of the UK. Thus they did bad things to us for our own good.
What they never seem to ask themselves is what the average person in the UK would think about dealing with these very bad people. Most people would quickly say things like the ends not justifying the means.
If you look at the former prime minister TB and his dealing with Libya's madman leader then you know that these people will pursue their own interests, their career interests, and the interests of their friends and supporters long before they would even give a shrug about the interests of the citizenry.
Also when it comes to these people, I don't see the whole "a few bad apples." because if they know that this is going on and do nothing then they are just as bad as the rest. It is no different than if I know my neighbour is murdering people and I just buy earplugs to not hear the screaming. I might not be guilty of murder but it doesn't make me a good apple.
haha.... yep.... that just about covers it!
Which isn't to say that they shouldn't necessarily have dealings with terrorists, but they don't always do a great job at keeping them at arm's length (like the ACLU generally manages to do when they defend people like the Ku Klux Klan), particularly in their dealings with Moazzam Begg.
But even if they were doing a better job of maintaining their moral clarity (a moral clarity built on fighting against arbitrary indefinite detention and torture, which is of course extremely important) in their dealings with extremists, they still might be legitimate surveillance targets simply because they are dealing with a significant number of people who, by any sane definition, we can reasonably suspect to be engaged in terrorism.
I'm one of the strongest opponents out there of mass surveillance, but it seems reasonably likely that this is targeted, and correctly targeted at that. This isn't a defense of unlawful imprisonment or torture. Amnesty should be able to meet with suspected extremists as frequently as they want, and intelligence services should (provided they are obeying the letter and spirit of their charter) be able to keep an eye on anyone who voluntarily goes to meet with (reasonably) suspected extremists... and particularly after Amnesty goes on to forge some ties with a rather nasty jihadi group. If we give them too hard of a time with targeted surveillance... well, we already know what the alternative is.
To who does the future belong?
Johnny Rotten...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”