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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."
How can they be the ruling class if they're lumped in with the proles? There aught a be a law!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It seems like surveillance is a big deal after all. When they are the ones being spied on at least!
First, they spied on the peons
Then, they spy on the MPs
Dear Queen Elizabeth, they will spy on you, next !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
How can they be the ruling class if they're lumped in with the proles? There aught a be a law!
This isn't about the ruling class. This is about everyone else. If GCHQ gets to spy on people who make decisions about how extensive their operations are, then they get to blackmail those people. This is the problem with government surveillance--not what most people do with it, but what happens if someone in a position of power within the surveillance system takes advantage of it to manipulate government decisions rather than to defend the nation or its people under the auspices of and within the constraints of the law.
With scandal after scandal, the same parties stay in power. It's the same everywhere.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
See also this from back in July:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/24/the_wilson_doctrine_is_dead_your_mps_must_be_spied_on_says_qc/
I think they miss the bigger picture here:
GCHQ spied on every Brit, and gave that data to the NSA. They told themselves it was for 'terrorism' purposes, but people will tell themselves all kind of shit to live with their choices.
GCHQ knew that NSA was tapping all of the major US service providers via PRISM. It knew that British businesses, British politicians, British campaigners, journalists, lawyers judges and their families were all being spied on. It chose to keep that secret from the UK, even keeping MPs in the dark, while keeping NSA and US President fully aware of UK surveillance activities.
GCHQ knew the smartphones were tapped and tracked, and that included every significant UK citizen, and they chose their sides, and their side was the NSA. Not the USA, because none of this mass surveillance was ever approved or discussed with voters, the NSA.
They are Stasi, they don't quite call themselves it, or fully believe it, but they are the big threat to the UK sovereignty. They created an surveillance regime that means that every up coming MP, politicians political campaigner has a US and GCHQ surveillance file on them.
Then there's this leak today:
https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-life-and-death-of-objective-peckham/
Britain REMOVED the citizenship of a British person, which then enabled his killing by drone strike when he left the country. They could have arrested him, they could have charged him, but that's messy, with evidence and discussion and checks and balances. So instead, they withdrew citizenship, killed him using his cellphone to drone target him, boom. Perhaps he was who they say he way, some major recruiter for Somalian rebels or whatever. Now history is written as though he was, and no court will ever get to see the evidence and see if they were lying.
How is it different from Putin assassinations? Its deadlier than polonium, kills a bunch of people, whom are immediately labelled as enemy combatants.
The MPs think they're special, but there is a big file on them and their families with the NSA, and GCHQ helped compile that file. If it becomes necessary that will be shared with the UK government, or perhaps you'll do something the US doesn't like and your kids embarrassing secrets will be leaked to the press.
But for the moment, they still have their citizenship, and won't be drone targeted. But they shouldn't kid themselves that GCHQ or the British government or military is protecting them, the only thing that protects them is the bad press that would result.
The Bill of Rights 1689 (since amended both in written and unwritten law) is definitely British law.
That really illustrates how it works. So you did this:
"For example, there's Jeremy Corbyn, who hates his own country's culture and history and is sympathetic to communist ideals and showing a steadfast refusal to condemn Putin, whilst condemning his own country and it's allies for doing the exact same thing who is now leader of the main parliamentary opposition. "
The basic red scare stuff. The belief that your thinking is the right one, and Corbyns/Farage etc, are the wrong ones. Cite some tenuous claim to justify that.
"An independent security service can be as important in keeping democracy safe"
Safe from Farage? From Corbyn? What if we want to vote for them? You see how dangerous such thinking is.
Its really no different that Stasi keeping Eastern Germany safe under Eric Honnicker styles leaders. Working with their KGB partners to watch their country for radicals and extremists!
They probably commit more crime than the average brit too.
Don't think the GCHQ will prosecute them for it though.
More likely they give the information to Cameron who can use it to blackmail or release it when it serves his political goals.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
William Hague told us that the innocent have nothing to fear and that they're only collecting meta data etc. Successors to him have repeated that they work within a robust legal framework, must be necessary and proportionate, yadda yadda yadda.
Surely, with all these protections and assurances they can't be worried can they?
The thing that annoys me more than any of this story alone is that none of the Home Secretaries that spouted this utter bullshit will face any sort of recrimination. Tossers the lot of 'em*.
* Any MP that wants to convince me that they're not a tosser is welcome to explain themselves. I even invited my MP to demonstrate he wasn't a tosser, and all he could manage was a letter back to say he "worked very hard", thus re-inforcing my view of him.
Maybe it's about time these lawmakers who say it's perfectly OK to spy on us finally became valid targets themselves? Because as long as these self-important clowns think they're immune from this, and spying is for the little people, they'll continue to make decisions knowing they're not included in them.
When the lawmakers start realizing the extend of this surveillance and the like, maybe they'll start making intelligent policies.
That they're suddenly crying foul says they've mostly been able to be outside of it, which means they're not looking at the issue the same as the rest of us. Make this shit real to them, and then see the kind of decisions they make.
So to lawmakers and people who have previously been exempt from spying who suddenly are shocked they're included: boo fucking hoo.
Don't come to the rest of us for any damned sympathy.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
and reveals the true hypocracy of those making the rules.
We must have access to all communications ! No encryption ! We must keep you all safe from $badguys !
Wait a minute. . . you can't spy on me too ! These rules are for the peasants, not the nobles. . . .
WATCH how fast these people work to ensure their own privacy remains intact whilst they continue to allow surveillance on pretty much everyone else.
C'mon guys, you know the saying !
" What's good for the goose. . . is good for the gander. "
Corporations are international - if they can do it anywhere, they can do it everywhere - and there is plenty of history (recent history) of corporations engaging in paramilitary activity to protect profits. Not so long ago Coca-Cola actually opened fire on striking workers at a plant in South America.
Even more recently London Based LonMin pulled another favourite trick: getting the police to do their dirty work for them, and killed 38 striking miners here in South Africa.
The amazing thing is that in the ongoing investigations which have yet to yield any restitution for the survivors or justice against those who pulled the triggers, the ministers who authorised force or anybody else... nobody has so much as questioned the complicity of the lonmin executives.
The reality is that if they can do it anywhere, the effects are felt everywhere - and the laws intended to prevent that are sadly not well enforced.
The US has had a law making it illegal to import goods made with child-labour since 2001. Yet child-labour remains rampant throughout the developing world - and the factories doing it almost exclusively manufacture goods for US corporations that sell it domestically. If the law was properly enforced, the biggest market would disapear, corporations wouldn't dare buy from any factory if there is even the whiff of a risk of child labour being used - and that would destroy the viability of child labour as a business model - and do a great deal to improve the quality of life of the entire developing world. There is literally no single intervention that can do as much good as to get the children out of the factories and into schools.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *