Can we get some of this for the US? Asking for a friend.
UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
131–140 of 191 posts
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#132This 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.
It's actually a means to an end, a tool, a method to achieve the desired outcome.
What people are not at all realizing is that the internet has totally change the nature and character and dynamics of basically all things, including to an extreme extent, what migration means and impact it has.
Just as an example, where migration to the USA was for the purpose of populating a territory that was largely unpopulated in order to retain control and the population was forced to conform to and integrate with the mostly English society that had established the civilization in North America. The internet has both created now migrants that would never have made their way to the USA and are even artificially being introduced and imposed upon people, and it has also turned migrants that used to integrate and conform into a common society, into what are essentially colonists that are introducing instability and non-inconsistency and complication and fragmentation that are inherently volatile and detrimental in the long run.
Regardless of what people want to believe in their heart of hearts, all the scientific research shows that what we refer to as "diversity" invariably increases friction and conflict. I have come to realize that it's because it's not really actual diversity at all, but rather imposition and affront and pollution. If you force things upon each other, especially the more dissimilar or even reactive they are, the more likely you will cause a violent reaction. Actual diversity is NOT destroying cultures and muddling and polluting them all, it is shared and mutual respect for each other's differences. Nothing will be gained when cultures have been eradicated and there is no more France or Germany or Italy, etc because it's just a hodgepodge of mixed master race people with no identity and no common value or aim.
What is being created is a rather dystopian future of animalistic masses of humans, ruled by demigod like elite as it has been illustrated in so many scifi films. Think a lot more Elysium and a lot less Star Trek.
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The french constitutional court does exactly that. Send the law back to parliament.
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#134Brexit, problem solved, everything legal for the UK government.
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#135"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…
Is this perhaps where the monarchy having no real power falls down - Parliament is Her Majesty's, if her Parliament fails to abide by her laws then she should act, she didn't even need to use the courts, she should really just have the relevant persons held "at Her Majesty's pleasure" ... the only problem there is the complete breakdown of democracy and the rule of law ...
The MPs have failed to dutifully carry out her wishes, assuming she wanted the HR laws to be followed, Parliament makes the laws but it is Her Maj that - in our pseudo-democracy actually decides to implement them.
Heads on spikes.
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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" "wha…
By your own admission, the UK is driven by expediency. The state can do essentially whatever they want, as long as they have a Really Important Reason. Get rid of jury trials for northern Ireland for a few years, because it's cheaper than properly protecting juries? No problem!
The American constitution exists to say that there are some things the government ought not do, even if it makes their job harder, and that if you truly must do those things, you have to convince more than 51% of the country that it's okay. Californian cities can take their own people's guns away, but it is not their place to take them away from rural Kansas, where a cop is an hour away at best. You have to have at least minimal evidence that somebody did something before you can ransack their house.
I readily grant that our current practice is to play silly games to say that these lines aren't being crossed when they are (border phone searches, stop and frisk, you name it).
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 in…
In the UK the Queen passes the laws, so there seems no reason she couldn't issue a writ making particular actions of MPs unlawful.
Presumably she doesn't because she rather likes the money and the palaces more than she wants to settle the question as to how you have a parliamentary democracy and monarchy with "you don't".
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#138Earlier 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…
This is still a weak excuse for allowing politicians to break the law. It's like saying we shouldn't go after child molesters because they might kill the police so they can keep molesting children.
>By prosecuting (former) politicians, you're not creating disincentives against abuse of power
Do you think prosecuting people who committed crimes creates a disincentive against crime?
>you're disincentivising loss of power.
The same could be said for (former) leaders of drug cartels and mafia bosses, but we still go after them (as well as the current ones), don't we?
Loss of power is already by default highly disincentivized, which is why people want to hold on to it for as long as they can. It's also why we enforce term limits and have checks and balances. However those checks and balances are quite toothless when you elevate politicians above the law.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." -Aesop
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#139Earlier 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…
Do you think those who gave prosecution (PM May is I've presumably) have enough power to move the UK out of begin a democracy (of sorts) in order to avoid prosecution.
Troops on the streets?
Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful
#140I 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…
By the way, that's not actually Tom Watson in those videos...