Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 191 posts

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#151

Post by turc1656 »

PJDK wrote: post #148
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…

What you're asking for is nothing like what this process is designed to be. The Human Rights Act is designed as a way to allow courts to push back on certain kinds of legislation - this ruling is a normal part of the legislative process not any indication of criminal wrong doing by anyone.

I am not a UK citizen so I can't say with any level of certainty what the process was designed to be. However, a few things seem pretty obvious. 1) The judges said this was "inconsistent with EU law". That means it is illegal because it goes against the (higher) EU law. This is equivalent to how Federal law trumps State laws in the US and State law trumps local/municipal law. If it is inconsistent with EU law, then it is a violation of that law, plain and simple. 2) The judges also held the ruling in #1 based on lack of "prior review by a court or independent administrative authority". That's the US equivalent to what we call due process. So rights were being violated without due process. That's pretty serious.

I think you are making the water murkier by trying to imagine what you think the process is/should be. The fact remains that the law has been violated on a mass scale, by government, and this has now been adjudicated in a court of law.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#152

Post by turc1656 »

dmix wrote: post #65
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.

I disagree. The judges held that it was "inconsistent with EU law". That means it is illegal because it goes against the (higher) EU law. They held that the reason it was inconsistent was because it lacked "prior review by a court or independent administrative authority" - basically, due process. It seems clear from the language of the judges that rights were violated without due process. That's no minor offense.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#153

Post by PJDK »

turc1656 wrote: post #151
PJDK wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're asking for is nothing like what this process is designed to be. The Human Rights Act is designed as a way to allow courts to push back on certain kinds of legislation - this ruling is a normal part of the legislative process not any indication of criminal wrong doing by anyone.

I am not a UK citizen so I can't say with any level of certainty what the process was designed to be. However, a few things seem pretty obvious. 1) The judges said this was "inconsistent with EU law". That means it is illegal because it goes against the (higher) EU law. This is equivalent to how Federal law trumps State laws in the US and State law trumps local/municipal law. If it is inconsistent with EU law, then i…

What is happening is that the court has decided law X is not consistent with law Y.

In the UK system, when this happens the courts can order Parliament to review law X to make amendments so the laws are consistent. The Government can choose to appeal this to a higher court or they can choose to amend the law. (Incidentally this differs from the US system in that the court doesn't say what the new law should be - but rather says that a section of the law is invalid in a certain way and must be changed - a job then left to the politicians).

No law has been disobeyed at all here - rather two perfectly valid laws have been created that are in disagreement, and the court is ordering that the disagreement be resolved in favour of one.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#154

Post by waqf »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #136
richmarr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

The other advantage of the UK system is that when the government comes up with some dumb new idea to abrogate human rights for people born on Tuesdays or whatever, the public debate is couched as "is this really a good idea?"

In the US it gets hung up on "is this constitutional?", which sort of misses an important point.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#155

Post by Accacin »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #136
richmarr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

The fact is both types of constitution have positives and negatives. Neither the British or American system is perfect and both are open to abuse.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#156

Post by DanBC »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #136
richmarr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

>Get rid of jury trials for northern Ireland for a few years, because it's cheaper than properly protecting juries? No problem!

Handily ignoring the fact that juries are suboptimal, and that at least these people had trials, unlike eg guantanomo etc etc.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#157

Post by lucozade »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #136
richmarr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

> Get rid of jury trials for northern Ireland for a few years

I believe we still have Diplock courts. They were actually put in place because internment without trial was considered too draconian. The kind of thing that would never occur with a constitution (give me a G...)

> Californian cities can take their own people's guns away

How does that work? Is California accepting that the 2nd amendment put in the bit about a militia for a reason or something else? I mean, the US Constitution isn't meant to be a state by state menu is it?

> You have to have at least minimal evidence that somebody did something before you can ransack their house.

I believe you have to have reasonable cause. You don't actually need any evidence. And, as you point out, you've all had a few years to drum up some excuses when it becomes inconvenient.

I'm sure having a constitution is comforting and all but, in reality, you're in exactly the same boat as the UK and for exactly the same reasons. We have checks and balances too.

And when the state, in its infinite wisdom, chooses to bend them, we sometimes get quite annoyed (the UK version of angry).

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#158

Post by improbable22 »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #136
richmarr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

America has plenty rules which aren't written down, too. You just lack a good word for them, having decided to use constitution to mean a particular bit of paper, which is periodically found to contain rights unknown to its authors.

A nice example is the slowly shifting norms around executive orders.

A bigger example: didn't both Liberia and Mexico basically xerox the US constitution? The bit of paper, I mean. For clearly the unwritten "ways we do things" in everyones heads were very different.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#159

Post by Nition »

etiam wrote: post #24
skrause wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...

In principle that's a nice start. I call male bovine excrement on the assessment of Sweden though. Full take collection, installed by and heavily integrated with FVEY, is the gist of it. Describing it as "Little or none" seems like a cynical joke.

It says there was no collection as of 2009. Has it started since then? The page probably just needs someone to update it.

Re: UK mass digital surveillance regime ruled unlawful

#160

Post by jlgaddis »

ninkendo wrote: post #54
skrause wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...

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…

> There’s internet censorship and there’s China. Nobody else is in the same league.

Give the U.S. time. We're trying to catch up to China as quickly as we can.

Post reply on HN