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UK Security Agencies Unlawfully Collected Data For 17 Years, Court Rules (theguardian.com)
British security agencies have secretly and unlawfully collected massive volumes of confidential personal data, including financial information, on citizens for more than a decade, top judges have ruled. The Guardian adds:The investigatory powers tribunal, which is the only court that hears complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, said the security services operated secret regimes to collect vast amounts of personal communications data, tracking individual phone and web use and large datasets of confidential personal information, without adequate safeguards or supervision for more than 10 years. The ruling said the regime governing the collection of bulk communications data (BCD) -- the who, where, when and what of personal phone and web communications -- failed to comply with article 8 protecting the right to privacy of the European convention of human rights (ECHR) between 1998, when it started, and 4 November 2015, when it was made public. It said the holding of bulk personal datasets (BPD) -- which might include medical and tax records, individual biographical details, commercial and financial activities, communications and travel data -- also failed to comply with article 8 for the decade it was in operation until its public avowal in March 2015.
Secret police were never bound by law in any history book I've read.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And, more importantly, it doesn't say who, how, or when the individuals responsible for the initial collection and later usage of those data will be prosecuted and/or fined for their actions.
So basically this is, "yup, we have your data and you know about it. Tough shit."
Sad.
It has been determined that the admin account for these agencies is james.bond007
This seems to be a uniquely Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. You don't see the leadership of primarily black and brown countries that have the almost pathological need to spy on EVERYONE in their and EVERYONE ELSE'S country.
What is it about the Anglo-Saxon psyche that enables this?
...the penalty is that the taxpayer paid for this investigation. But nothing is going to change.
Laws are for us, not them. The UK has always been a police state even before the police or the UK existed.
England always liked to keep it's citizens under tight control. send in an agent provocateur, hang some subjects let the people know they are always being watched.
The problem is not so much state governments spying on their own people, which this addresses, but them having other states spy on their citizens and then "sharing" the information as "metadata" and treating assumptions as if they were facts, without being subject to critique.
You're all serfs.
Wait.
No.
Serfs have rights.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's similar in the USA: the mass data collection was a violation of the constitution, the highest law in the land.
So... we'll be seeing prosecutions of the people involved in pushing these programs through, right?
And nothing.
"Dreadfully sorry, old chap. Won't happen again." (until after Article 50)
There is no point having laws, if these people are not held accountable to them. As a British citizen, I now expect and require that those guilty of this kind of criminality be brough to justice. Recently it seems that the rich and powerful always somehow manage to escape a long stay in prison. This kind of crime is a major afront to the dying embers of British democracy, and in my opinion, those behind it must be punished in a way that will discourage any repetition. The right to individual privacy is sacrosanct in any functioning democracy. Many people will be watching very closely, in expectation of lengthy sentences for the perpretrators and those who authorised and enabled them.
No worries, the European Convention on Human Rights is a separate treaty than Brexit so GCHQ et al will still be out of compliance for this type of snooping, even after Brexit goes through (whatever that ends up meaning).
Might as well face it I'm addicted to data.
will this even matter?
no EU articles to abide by.
Nice to hear that despite popular opinion the NSA/CIA were never alone in what they've been doing since WW2. There was a LOT of mud slinging at the US as info regarding what our 'secret police' have been doing in our name became available but as we all really understood, it was never just the US, every country has been practicing violating human rights and its' on internal laws in the name of security for a long, long time. While this doesn't make any of it better at least we can do away with the USA bashing and get back to just generic hypocritical government bashing.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
They'll delete all that data they collected, right?
some senior staff will be discplined, and they will be ordered to delete all the data gathered unlawfully. That's how it works, right?
I thought the US was by far the fattest place on the planet, damn I am sorry.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I chose my words poorly. I wasn't implying that bashing the government(s) was hypocritical, but rather that the governments themselves were hypocritical. Here in the land of Freedom, we are routinely required to give up our freedoms so that we can stay the land of the free, and the home of the brave. Speaking of losing battles, I just got my ballot today for the national election and I am considering which losing candidate to vote for. I won't vote Hillary or Trump, and though I am registered Green party I am not sure I like them any better, any last words of advice ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier