UK MPs Hold Emergency Debate After Court Makes It Legal For GCHQ To Spy On Them (westerndailypress.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: After decades of a gentleman's agreement to exempt them from surveillance, UK MPs have discovered that GCHQ now deems them as legitimate targets of surveillance. Consequently, members of the UK Parliament have called for an emergency debate on domestic surveillance. Shadow Commons leader Chris Bryant said: "To all intents and purposes, it means that the Wilson doctrine is dead. It is the cornerstone of the bill of rights and it is one of the most ancient freedoms of this country. In another era, before the existence of telephones and emails it meant that MPs and peers, even in war, had a right for their written correspondence not to be intercepted or be interfered with."

Comments

Re:But wait...

[AmiMoJo]

There was a law, but GCHQ doesn't obey laws. They simply employ people to find legal arguments to bypass them, or if that doesn't work they just ignore them and hope no-one finds out.

MPs must be extremely stupid if they think that they were not being spied on even when their gentleman's agreement was supposedly being enforced. Having to somehow avoid MP's correspondence when doing a full take capture of internet traffic is impossible. I pointed this out to my MP, but she was too dumb to understand it and appeared willing to take GCHQ's word for it that they would never break the law, despite me including copies of their documents detailing how to break the law.

Now she wants to be the next Prime Minister.

Re:Why are they worried?

[bill_mcgonigle]

With scandal after scandal, the same parties stay in power. It's the same everywhere.

That's because the parties are only an illusion of choice, perpetuated to placate the masses. Strike the root.