Did The UK Police Hire Foreigners To Hack Hundreds of Activists? (bbc.co.uk)

Big Hairy Ian shared this story from the BBC: Undercover counter-extremism officers used hackers in India to access the emails of journalists and environmental activists, it has been claimed... The Independent Police Complaints Commission said it had received an anonymous letter, which alleged covert officers from the Metropolitan Police's National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit contacted Indian police officers for help to enlist hackers. The letter alleges the hackers accessed the email accounts of hundreds of people, including members of political and environmental pressure groups and journalists.
"The letter said the monitoring included the 'email accounts of radical journalists who reported on activist protests (as well as sympathetic photographers) including at least two employed by the Guardian newspaper,'" the Guardian reports, adding that the letter provided the names of 10 campaigners -- and the passwords for their accounts.

Comments

It's only illegal if your countrymen do it.

[DatbeDank]

This sort of "outsourcing" of illegal information gathering activities has been going on for years. GCHQ has the NSA spying on the Brits. GCHQ spies on the Yankees. The Cannucks are spying on the Aussies and the Aussies are spying on the Cannucks. Meanwhile the Kiwis are all pissed because no one gives a shit about what goes on in New Zealand.

For a country like America who gave the crown a fat middle finger, the level of coziness today should unnerve everyone.

Re: It's only illegal if your countrymen do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't give the crown a middle finger though. The French gave the British Crown the middle finger and the colonists were merely along for the ride. Most of them (2/3rds by all accounts) either supported the crown or didn't care who won.
You don't even know your own history.

Re:What???

[rtb61]

The NSA can only be used by the American government for political spying, the British conservatives can not use the NSA or 5 eyes collectively for politically based spying. Basically this is just conservative politics law enforcers using their power for political purposes. The real warning, how far will they go to target the most effective political campaigners, a murderous arrest, they had to be safe, targeted law enforcements attacks against the whole family of the targeted political campaigner, fabrication of false evidence (reinforcement chairs become caltrops, empty bottles and a can of lawn mower fuel become a molotov cocktail fabrication facility, water recycling becomes biological weapons production), repeatedly violently targeting the specific individuals at protests, ensuring the unemployability for security reasons including their entire family.

It is crap to defend criminal politically based behaviour by law enforcers because that does lead to assassination by law enforcers during false arrests, that is exactly where politically based law enforcement spying leads. A sure sign of an extremely corrupt government.