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GCHQ Spy Agency Given Illegal Access To Citizens' Data (ft.com)
The British government broke the law by allowing spy agencies to amass data on UK citizens without proper oversight from the Foreign Office, an independent tribunal has ruled. From a report: GCHQ, the UK's electronic surveillance agency, was given vastly increased powers to obtain and analyze citizens' data after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, on the condition that it agreed to strict oversight from the foreign secretary. But according to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, an independent court that was set up by the government to investigate unlawful intrusion by public bodies in the UK, the Foreign Office on several occasions gave GCHQ an effective "carte blanche" to demand data from telecoms and internet companies [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], which could include visited websites, location information and email contacts. In a judgment published on Monday, the tribunal said: "In cases in which ... the foreign secretary made a general direction which applied to all communications through the networks operated by the [communications service provider], there had been an unlawful delegation of the power. "The lack of legal control on the discretion of [GCHQ] is compounded in those cases where the specific requirement was not communicated in writing."
This could get ugly...someone might actually get a warning not to do it again! Or even worse...a verbal dressing down and then a warning not to do it again!
"You can trust us. We're the Government and we're just here to help you."
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Considering how many CCTVs are in London, it's a wonder there isn't an Orwellian book based on the UK.
There is, it was written by George Orwell... "1984" is the title..
Oh wait, you where making sort of a joke, right?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
These kinds of rulings go nowhere, or some token punishment that doesn't matter is given out followed by the agency doing the exact same thing only a new law or slight adjustment makes it "legal".
What do you call a government where only the proles have to obey the "laws?" Totalitarian? Yeah, I think that's it. Can we please now stop pretending our governments are in any way, shape, or form represent the peoplpe?
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The UK listened to the world since radio begun. Their own empire. Then everything into and out of UK, Ireland. Ireland to/from the USA.
The first communications satellites.
The legal powers and collect it all ability was always a given in the UK.
What set the UK system part from the US system was the UK was aware it could never tell anyone.
No lawyers, police, telco, politics, media to talk of methods. The UK stayed secure as its mil never allowed police to see raw product.
That kept anyone outside the UK mil and GCHQ from ever knowing full domestic collection methods for decades.
No amount of cash, cults, faith groups, human rights lawyers, police could ever work their way back to a mil grade domestic collection method in the UK.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
1984 was the book of how to run and keep an empire.
The US had the money to buy computers in the 1950's and for the next decades.
The UK had the global collection methods on land the USA needed after ww2.
The UK did not have the money needed to build its own spy sats, subs, super computers, do collect it all, spy on everything in Ireland, spy on the world. Design and build its own nuclear weapons.
Empire and UK bases got traded for advanced US computing power.
For the GCHQ its was the quality of translators for any new war, the security, global collection, location to collect from.
The other change for the USA was not to have duplication in the way the US Army and Navy did collection into the 1930's.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...the UK has perfected this, and therefore not illegal
If your mother told you that you weren't fucking retarded, she lied... but I'm reasonably sure it was only because she loved you.
Oh wait, you where making sort of a joke, right?
The parent has already demonstrated far too low of a cognitive threshold to even understand what you just typed.