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UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

theguardian.com

121–130 of 191 posts

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#121

This is going to be interesting. I am sure this will not be popular here, but reality and the truth far more often are so than not. The "elite", power brokers, wealthy ... however you want to refer to those who actuate the levers of power ... have been working diligently to shatter and fracture democracy by importing and imposing foreigners upon their populations that are inherently incompatible and introduce conflic…

This does not explain homogenous societies ruled by autocracies of various descriptions.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... These are the (large) cracks in rule of law that no one has ever managed to close entirely. It's dangerous to criminalise political tier decisions and actions, just like it's dangerous to prosecute former politicians. It harms the ability to preserve peaceful transitions. Criminals or not. First, it opens a door to political purging. Also incentives to use power in order to remain free is just too big.

> It's dangerous to criminalise political tier decisions and actions Politicians should not be above the law. On the contrary, the public figures are supposed to be more transparent and held accountable more readily than private citizens.

Morally, I agree with you. My former prime minister is in jail for graft, theft essentially. He will spend less time in prison (though fortunately he is at least serving some) than a common thief even though the damage he has done is imesurably greater.

The reason I argue the opposite (OP) is for practical rather than moral reasons. Morals are a luxury. Systemic stability is at stake and is a requisite for any rule of law.

That said, prosecuting legislators and/or political executives for ilegal legislation is far too dangerous, essentially merging all branches of government.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#123

This is going to be interesting. I am sure this will not be popular here, but reality and the truth far more often are so than not. The "elite", power brokers, wealthy ... however you want to refer to those who actuate the levers of power ... have been working diligently to shatter and fracture democracy by importing and imposing foreigners upon their populations that are inherently incompatible and introduce conflic…

occam's razor: you don't need to introduce migrants to create deep fractures.

look at the US. we're still fighting political battles along (roughly) the lines of the civil war. there's genuine animosity before you introduce any migrants.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... These are the (large) cracks in rule of law that no one has ever managed to close entirely. It's dangerous to criminalise political tier decisions and actions, just like it's dangerous to prosecute former politicians. It harms the ability to preserve peaceful transitions. Criminals or not. First, it opens a door to political purging. Also incentives to use power in order to remain free is just too big.

> It's dangerous to criminalise political tier decisions and actions Politicians should not be above the law. On the contrary, the public figures are supposed to be more transparent and held accountable more readily than private citizens.

The law is the output of politicians so in a certain sense they can collectively always pass legislation that protects themselves anyway so there’s not much point in compelling them into doing so by prosecuting them.

Parliamentary immunity also exists in many countries to ensure that parliamentarians cannot be prosecuted for acts they undertook whilst in office (or other acts, so they that they cannot be compelled into anything).

You’re never going to get a body politic to pass a law that places them all at risk, and if somehow one got through, they’d pretty quickly pass another one to repeal it.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#125

"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…

> Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful Except that's not what happened. Not legally anyway. What happened is that the Court of Appeal ruled that a Parliamentary Act did not contain sufficient safeguards to be compliant with the Human Rights Act. So there's, at least, 2 problems you've got. One is that it's not, technically, government legislation. It's the Crown's…

> Of course, if it turns out that anyone was actually affected by the legislation as it stands then that should be dealt with as a matter of urgency.

How do you decide whether "anyone was actually affected" by ISPs storing as much browsing data as they can? Doesn't that affect either everyone or noone depending on whether you think it matters? And if it matters, does it not affect everyone? What can you possibly do about that retroactively?

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#126
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Corbyn is unfortunately unassailable at the moment But... Why? I don't have a horse in this race at all, but Corbyn just doesn't seem to be able to win. He seems so uncharismatic. The last election wasn't so much him gaining seats as it was May losing them. With a minority government, May's days are numbered. It feels to me like the time to replace Corbyn is now, before the next election.

> But... Why?

It's because Corbyn was attacked excessively at the start. That allowed him to circle the wagons, and Labour is still in the grip of that siege mentality.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#127

This is going to be interesting. I am sure this will not be popular here, but reality and the truth far more often are so than not. The "elite", power brokers, wealthy ... however you want to refer to those who actuate the levers of power ... have been working diligently to shatter and fracture democracy by importing and imposing foreigners upon their populations that are inherently incompatible and introduce conflic…

This does not explain homogenous societies ruled by autocracies of various descriptions.

Actually, when you realize that the end goal is full control of society the same way that the very autocracies you mention have retained, it very much explains it. What I described is a method and/or technique for shattering and fracturing the current state where the middle class holds exceptional control over the elite that, let's be honest, has been an anomaly in human history at this point.

What you are describing is a state that those very "homogenous societies ruled by autocracies of various description" you are referring to have no need to enact or reestablished. As you point out, they already have control of such a condition. What I was describing is a means to an end, not the end itself. The elite don't care today any more about whether the population they desire to lord over is diverse or not, any more than they did in the past, when, e.g., Europe was little more than an extremely high stakes game of Survivor or business gamesmanship.

The autocratic regimes already have autocratic control over their societies in a way that the globalist elite desire more than anything. They have no need to enact creative strategies in order to fragment and shatter the impediment to their reinstatement of their desired end state of elite control again.

Reality is that the elite see an opportunity to arrest control from that dastardly middle class that has kept them from their desired state of full control akin to those very elite all throughout the rest of the world. They are at a point where they will have none of it anymore ... especially as they see the elite of those very autocratic regimes blow past them in wealth and power and control, while they have to scrape their wealth together by earning it from the middle class.

For thousands of years, the elite of all societies have ruled with impunity and only the American Revolution imposed a stunning blow that set off a cycle and state of decline of that condition, which has persisted to this point to some degree. The state of modern democracy for the last ~250 years and only in a few countries, is merely a blip in the overall history of human society that has overwhelmingly been not democratic at all for thousands of years.

If you look closely, past the propaganda and into the pragmatics and practical issues, you will start realizing that what things like "immigration" and "diversity" really are, is an invalidation and fracturing and deconstruction of democracy itself, the control of the government by the governed to enact self-determination and liberty and control over their own lives. If the citizens of a country are not able to even be prioritized over those who are not citizens, let alone enact principles of democracy under self-governance, then what is it, because it is not democracy and not even a legitimate government on those terms.

We are being led into an era that is arresting control from the vast majority of humanity. I dread the anguish that will come when a generation in the near future starts realizing what this generation did as they were being led around by the nose to their own detriment.

It's quite lamentable, even more so when you realize that the governed are acting against democracy out of an unawareness that they are being lured and conned with promises of socialist/communist/free candy for all, head long into elite/powerful control.

Unfortunately for humanity, once you have given away control over your life, it will only be regained through extreme suffering and sacrifice, if at all. The conditions leading up to and surrounding the American Revolution make it a rather unique set of circumstances. It seems unlikely that such conditions could ever be recreated again unless it were on some other planet and under conditions that weaken the otherwise overwhelming power long enough for a democracy to sufficiently strengthen itself.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#128
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful Except that's not what happened. Not legally anyway. What happened is that the Court of Appeal ruled that a Parliamentary Act did not contain sufficient safeguards to be compliant with the Human Rights Act. So there's, at least, 2 problems you've got. One is that it's not, technically, government legislation. It's the Crown's…

The ECJ has ruled less awful laws than this to be invalid under the fundamental charter of rights. I wouldn't be worried about them. It's the UK courts you have to worry about when deciding such cases, especially when the UK doesn't even have a constitution and they kind of play it by ear.

Not sure a constitution necessarily helps. In this case, the Human Rights legislation is acting like a constitution in the sense that it's a benchmark that laws are being held to.

A constitution can sometimes be a fairly negative thing. You regularly see US decisions being made against the Constitution where it blatantly isn't applicable. You rarely (ever?) see SCOTUS saying that the Constitution doesn't apply so it needs to go back to Congress for a more applicable law. In other words a Constitution starts to resemble a religious document that has the answer to every conceivable problem if only a priest can interpret it.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears your argument against prosecuting criminal politicians boils down to being afraid of their power and what would happen if you did? Seems like a weak argument from authority.

"Argument from authority" means something entirely different, although your use here is somewhat amusing. You're also misunderstanding the argument: It's not the powerful politicians that are frightening, it's the powerless . By prosecuting (former) politicians, you're not creating disincentives against abuse of power, you're disincentivising loss of power. That's the hard-to-accept logic behind the mostly deferentia…

Exactly my meaning, just stated more clearly :)

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#130
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful Except that's not what happened. Not legally anyway. What happened is that the Court of Appeal ruled that a Parliamentary Act did not contain sufficient safeguards to be compliant with the Human Rights Act. So there's, at least, 2 problems you've got. One is that it's not, technically, government legislation. It's the Crown's…

The ECJ has ruled less awful laws than this to be invalid under the fundamental charter of rights. I wouldn't be worried about them. It's the UK courts you have to worry about when deciding such cases, especially when the UK doesn't even have a constitution and they kind of play it by ear.

> especially when the UK doesn't even have a constitution

Yeah we do. British Constitution is ace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Constitution_(solitair...

Oh, if you meant the government thingy no, we kinda accept that stuff changes... which I think is more useful than holding any one thing as particularly holy and untouchable. The US has got its knickers in a proper twist with all that "money is speech" "what the framers intended was" stuff. It's fetishised. Your 21st amendment even repeals the 18th amendment, what's the point?

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