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Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

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Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#111

Post by wiz21c »

anqh4 wrote: post #82
andy_ppp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound as if the article was written by a journalist, not a person who had been leaked to and is a part of the story. Anyway, that whistle blower and the leaker could both get 14 years under proposed anti-whistleblower laws: The Guardian failed to point out in its report that new legislation proposed by the Law Commission would make the author of the anonymous letter, Jones herself, and the journalists at…

>that whistle blower and the leaker could both get 14 years under proposed anti-whistleblower laws Why do we have to consider what essentially is treason to a nation to be ok? You have to go to the electorate and tell them "you see, this guy just leaked these documents which put our nation's security at risk. Shall we just set him free?". I'm sure that'll go well... you have Snowden/Assange to see how it went.

So you may have some comparisons... How many people were actually killed by the military operations uncovered by snowden/Assange versus how many people were killed by the disclosure itself...

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#112

Post by anqh4 »

sambe wrote: post #104
lithos wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Anyone who works in a classified/borderline field signs multiple documents that skirt around this, limit rights, and especially allow some form of nonjudicial prosecution. As for that being right or wrong on either side, that is a long and frustrating argument.

Not really. There can be whistleblower protections that supercede other laws and contracts. There can be illegal contracts, which are not valid regardless of whether you sign them. Do you believe every issue is governed by a single law that is set in stone for eternity?

Are laws set in stone for eternity? No.

Must acts that are committed now be judged by the laws that exist now? Yes.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#113

Post by ikurei »

ak4g wrote: post #44
cies wrote: post #38

> police hacking of journalists and protestors Because they are the real terrorists. I seriously think they had dissidents in mind when pushing for all those "anti-terror" surveillance laws.

If this was illegal surveillance, then obviously it wasn't within the scope of what's allowed by said anti-terror laws. This doesn't add up for me yet, because I don't understand what the supposed motive is. Do the police have much interest in journalists accounts? I mean really, what's the thinking here? Are London police ignoring murders of journalists? The UK is hardly an autocracy. Frankly we should wait to see w…

> This doesn't add up for me yet, because I don't understand what the supposed motive is.

Journalists may have information that the state may want to know. For instance, you'd want to know if a new Snowden is leaking info to more Guardian journalists. It's wrong and worrisome, of course, but I'm not surprised in the least.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#114

Post by effie »

ak4g wrote: post #50
SubiculumCode wrote: post #19

Outrageous. I worry we in the USA are going this direction too.

My siblings in this thread need to learn about the reforms that were done post-Watergate. The rule of law governs everyone, especially law enforcement, in the USA. If you don't believe that, why do you think lawmakers bother with getting laws passed to allow surveillance in the first place? You can't have it both ways. Either LEO follow the letter of the law and we're not in some 1984 scenario (because there are , in…

Rule of law guarantees law will be applied, not that people rights and freedom will be upheld.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#116

Post by sambe »

anqh4 wrote: post #112
sambe wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There can be whistleblower protections that supercede other laws and contracts. There can be illegal contracts, which are not valid regardless of whether you sign them. Do you believe every issue is governed by a single law that is set in stone for eternity?

Are laws set in stone for eternity? No. Must acts that are committed now be judged by the laws that exist now? Yes.

How do laws change? Are the changes ever retroactive? Do laws ever exist on the books longer than they are enforced or considered moral? Seems like everything is black and white for you, but reality rather disagrees.

Anyway, there already are whistleblower protection laws in many places.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#117

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

sien wrote: post #21
Darthy wrote: post #7

This is utterly unacceptable. Time for the electorate to put their foot down and set an example by disbanding the entire force and replace it with a new one. But guess what the electorate will say? "They only came for the Socialists. I'm not a Socialist". Sad times.

The intelligence services have been doing this forever in most countries. If you don't know about it you're not paying attention. Here is PJ O'Rourke writing about this in the 1960s in the US. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WEmN1ZKrYpsC&lpg=PA238&... People don't just don't care that much. It is worth worrying about though. With the NSA and computer surviellance we've created a 'turn-key tyranny'. And people ha…

> People don't just don't care that much.

While I concur that many people have the "but I'm not doing anything wrong" mentality, even if you do care, you have no influence on the situation. Both of our 2 parties are apparently happy to let the intelligence agencies trample the 4th Amendment. It takes an odd duck like Ron Paul (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-11/ron-paul-warns-elec...) to actually stand up to such things. We need more of these kinds of voices in our political system, which is why I vote Libertarian in any race I can.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#118

Post by yAnonymous »

ak4g wrote: post #56
acd wrote: post #49

Its an issue when you self censor opinions which deviate from the mass. It also an issue of freedom of press. The government know who you talk to through metadata collection even if you use encryption.

I find myself self-censoring on topics like this, not because of what I (don't) fear is being done by authorities, but because I can't help but to note that we're not, in fact, living in some Orwellian dystopia, and that seemingly the surveillance that is being done is promulgating a safe and stable society, but not toeing the sky-is-falling line doesn't do much for those numbers by my username. Meanwhile, there are…

>We have a society where we can air discussions about topics like this

If anything, cases like this demonstrate how quickly that can change when you soften surveillance and free speech laws. Look at Turkey. Turning a democracy into a dictatorship took only a few years.

The German government, too, is working on establishing a massive censorship complex. How can you tell it's censorship? They don't bother going after the people who make supposedly illegal statements. Instead, they pressure social networks directly to make the statements disappear without any legal process.

Right now, many people are cheering, because it works in their favor, but they're too shortsighted to realize that it'll eventually be used against them, too.

Note that I'm not even saying that certain statements shouldn't be punishable, but in a democracy, there must be a legal process for each and every case. When opinions or money decide what should be censored, it stops being a democratic process.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#119

Post by th4dv »

Ntrails wrote: post #45
dirtbox wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The camera surveillance stuff hasn't been true since the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 when much of it was scrapped. I'm not sure I've never heard of surveillance vans on every block though, that's certainly not true.

There are a lot of fucking cameras in London - they didn't get taken down in 2012. Of course I'm fine with the cameras so ymmv. Also, plenty of police vans with ANPR systems to check on cars etc as they drive about. As for the rest, sometimes I wonder if people on HN have forgotten what the real world is like. Is encryption evil? Clearly not. Does it being prevalent cause issues with intercepting terrorist/criminal c…

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" - just sayin'

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#120

Post by [deleted] »

Ntrails wrote: post #45
dirtbox wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The camera surveillance stuff hasn't been true since the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 when much of it was scrapped. I'm not sure I've never heard of surveillance vans on every block though, that's certainly not true.

There are a lot of fucking cameras in London - they didn't get taken down in 2012. Of course I'm fine with the cameras so ymmv. Also, plenty of police vans with ANPR systems to check on cars etc as they drive about. As for the rest, sometimes I wonder if people on HN have forgotten what the real world is like. Is encryption evil? Clearly not. Does it being prevalent cause issues with intercepting terrorist/criminal c…

[deleted]
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