UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful • Hacker News Board

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#61

Post by psergeant » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:31 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #13

mabbo wrote: post #6

I know of very few British MPs, being a Canadian who watches occasionally British panel shows, but I do hear about Tom Watson fairly frequently and almost always for things I am in favor of. Now here he is championing the fight against mass surveillance as well. British folks: is this guy eventually going to replace Corbyn? He seems likeable enough to. And he has a sense of humor- the first time I heard of him was wh…

Tom Watson has agreeable views in a number of areas, but he's unlikely to be a candidate for the leadership any time soon. Quite aside from anything, Corbyn is unfortunately unassailable at the moment.

I think as it becomes clearer to young people that Corbyn is — at best — lacklustre about repealing Brexit, his assailability will grow

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#62

Post by coldtea » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #51

turc1656 wrote: post #42

"Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful. This judgement tells ministers in crystal clear terms that they are breaching the public’s human rights." So the question then remains...where are the handcuffs?! I ask this question constantly when it comes to government wrongdoing and there is almost never anyone charged with anything. If the government has been acting in a…

You kinda hint at the answer in your post already - you keep referring to "the government", but who? Is there one or a few people responsible for directing others to perform the unlawful surveillance? Or are they too protected by some mechanic? The legal state being "unclear" probably also means that those people can't face judgment for continuing doing it while the judges were still out.

>You kinda hint at the answer in your post already - you keep referring to "the government", but who? Is there one or a few people responsible for directing others to perform the unlawful surveillance?

Yes. Those that signed related orders. It doesn't even matter if they get them all, just some high enough would be enough to deter others.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#63

Post by dangerlibrary » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #42

"Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful. This judgement tells ministers in crystal clear terms that they are breaching the public’s human rights." So the question then remains...where are the handcuffs?! I ask this question constantly when it comes to government wrongdoing and there is almost never anyone charged with anything. If the government has been acting in a…

In the case of the Flint water debacle, there were several indictments. It's been a really positive change at the state and local level. It empowers the career experts to say to the political appointees and elected officials: "no, I'm not going to jail over this."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/us/flint-water-crisis-man...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-...

http://michiganradio.org/post/3-years-later-flint-water-cris...

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#64

Post by maze-le » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

olavk wrote: post #7

mrtksn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, Europe relies on US to spy on it's people so technically they are not spying on their own people. Personally, I find it unrealistic to expect that such huge opportunity(almost by the second log of citizens activities and opinions as well as precise control of who sees and hears what) will arise and the people in power will not exploit it. China is taking a more direct route but in general it…

> Europe relies on US to spy on it's people so technically they are not spying on their own people. Where on earth did you get this idea? Are you suggesting European countries does not have police or intelligence agencies performing surveillance?

It is not so far fetched as it sounds. We had a parlamentary inquiry after the Snowden relevations. The result of 4 Years work is a lenghty document detailing[0] (among other things) How BND and NSA work together on analysis and raw data processing. That does not mean that BND needs the NSA to bend the law (that one they can do very well on their own), but the cooperation between the 2 organisations is such that the bulk of analysis is done in data centers in the US, simply because the german intelligence services do not have the nessessary processing power.

One of the results is that the german intelligence services will get more resources to do analysis on their own in the near future.

[0]: https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/06/1812850-ungesc... (page 484 ff.)

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#65

Post by dmix » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #42

"Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful. This judgement tells ministers in crystal clear terms that they are breaching the public’s human rights." So the question then remains...where are the handcuffs?! I ask this question constantly when it comes to government wrongdoing and there is almost never anyone charged with anything. If the government has been acting in a…

The courts didn't technically rule that it violated a particular persons rights, only that the law lacked safeguards to prevent such an abuse. That quote was by a Labour minister not the judge.

But otherwise I agree with holding politicians accountable, as this has no doubt already broken at least a few peoples rights.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#66

Post by f_allwein » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:33 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #42

"Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful. This judgement tells ministers in crystal clear terms that they are breaching the public’s human rights." So the question then remains...where are the handcuffs?! I ask this question constantly when it comes to government wrongdoing and there is almost never anyone charged with anything. If the government has been acting in a…

For what it's worth, the state government of Bavaria was recently fined 4.000 Euro by a Bavarian court for failing to take action on air quality: [DE] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/oberbayern/inhalt/deutsche-umw... . Apparently, if they don't pay, the minister for the environment may be arrested...

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#67

Post by turc1656 » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #51

turc1656 wrote: post #42

"Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful. This judgement tells ministers in crystal clear terms that they are breaching the public’s human rights." So the question then remains...where are the handcuffs?! I ask this question constantly when it comes to government wrongdoing and there is almost never anyone charged with anything. If the government has been acting in a…

You kinda hint at the answer in your post already - you keep referring to "the government", but who? Is there one or a few people responsible for directing others to perform the unlawful surveillance? Or are they too protected by some mechanic? The legal state being "unclear" probably also means that those people can't face judgment for continuing doing it while the judges were still out.

At minimum, it should be the architects of these programs in the intelligence community. I'm not sure of the UK case, but in the US and many other countries the intelligence agencies just kind of took it upon themselves to do these things "for national security" whether it was lawful or not. Sometimes they retroactively had laws passed to attempt to make it legal. The situation is probably the same in the UK. Now we know for sure that it was not legal in the UK to do this. So those that designed these programs should be held to account. That means the top brass at these agencies. They have a ton of resources that they could have used to know this was probably illegal or at least might have been deemed illegal. They chose to either ignore those warnings or never sought out council in the first place because they never thought 1) they would be caught doing what they are doing or 2) that even if they were caught it wouldn't be found illegal and if it was nothing would ever happen to them because they would be protected.

There are arguments to be made in their defense, sure. Most likely regarding intent and what a reasonable person could/should have known. And that's what a court is for. But they should absolutely at least be charged so a case can be made. If the people of the UK accept that they were acting in good faith, then fine. But to me, all of this stuff looks like an intentional screw job that they tried to make legal after the fact, which has now failed. And the fact remains that we know for sure now that they have been violating the law. If we know this with certainty, cases should be brought.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#68

Post by ninkendo » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #58

ninkendo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took one look at that article and the fact that the U.S. is literally painted the same color as China as having an equal amount of internet censorship would be hilarious if it weren’t so egregiously misleading. There’s internet censorship and there’s China. Nobody else is in the same league. The only explanation I can think of is if censorship and surveillance are just being casually lumped together, but people und…

They are closely related though. Mass surveillance, and/or the loss of privacy online, has a chilling effect - effectively censorship. Either your government blocks / censors your er, controversial statements, or you're afraid to post your controversial statements because the government is watching you. Same effect.

Stop creating a false equivalency.

China blocks access to anything on the internet that disagrees with their ruling party. They block any VPN or SSH. Like, not just for avoiding filters, just at all. They degrade any encrypted traffic by just doing compression analysis and dropping packets if your traffic looks encrypted.

This is not the same thing as the NSA’s dragnet surveillance or anything the UK is doing. China is already at the endgame you are hypothesizing, and you’re creating a false equivalency through a slippery slope. A slope where the bottom is where China is today.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#69

Post by ChrisSD » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #57

nkkollaw wrote: post #36

What is the real reason behind surveillance? The government(s)'s excuse is terrorism, but terrorism in Europe doesn't kill a big enough amount of people to justify these drastic measures. I would argue also that no one has proven that it's efficient at preventing terrorist attacks. There must be a reason, I don't get it. Is it just because governments can, so they do it? It is to create the basis for some initiative…

> I would argue also that no one has proven that it's efficient at preventing terrorist attacks. What if arrests in terrorist investigations are kept under wraps though? If the public would hear of thwarted terrorist attacks on a regular basis, either they'd feel more and more unsafe - that is, the terrorists win - or the terrorists find out about other cells and find ways to circumvent detection.

So arrests but no trials? Or are the trials secret too?

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#70

Post by notahacker » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

Asdfbla wrote: post #35

beaconstudios wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you say that like undermining Corbyn is an objectively bad thing. He's an extremely divisive element of the current Labour party and the primary reason why I (and I consider myself a liberal first and foremost) cannot support the current Labour leadership. Labour's always been a mix of liberals and socialists but in my opinion Corbyn is too far to the latter to ever unify the party behind his ideas.

Yet Corbyn's somewhat populist rhetoric seems to have made Labour competitive again, or were their good election results just a coincidence and had nothing to do with Corbyn? Just curious, since I'm not British and probably only have a very superficial understanding of the politics.

The election result was likely considerably more influenced by the government unwisely deciding to base their entire election campaign around empty slogans about a Brexit nearly half the population had voted against including most of the typical swing voters, allowing Corbyn to position himself more as the reasonable candidate whose manifesto actually offered tangible promises. The populist rhetoric came before the manifesto, and - along with widespread opposition to it from within his own party - appeared to have the opposite net effect on voters. Besides which, gaining some seats and weakening the government was far better than expected, but not an especially wonderful achievement for a party that had been in power for more of the previous couple of decades than it had been out of it.

Corbyn has an adoring fanbase and a massively increased party membership but he also still often finishes behind or level with a PM virtually nobody has a good word to say about in "who would make the best Prime Minister" polls.