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Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

politico.eu

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Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#41

Post by Teever »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #25
avidiax wrote: post #15

> Private intelligence firms claim that illegally obtained information is routinely submitted to courts in the U.K., with the third industry figure telling POLITICO there are “ludicrous cover stories put in front of judges” where people are trying to “launder stolen information into court proceedings.” This sounds like "parallel construction" with fewer steps.

Outsourced parallel construction. The world seems to be moving away from long-established (and established slowly over a long time) rules and regulations around law and due process due to it feeling slow and inconvenient. Haven't crime rates been declining in the West for quite a while now?

Violent crime, sure, but white collar crime and blatant corruption of our institutions hasn't abated and our inability to grapple with it is the fundamental cause of all of the other issues in our society today.

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#42

Post by roryirvine »

nradov wrote: post #39
croes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any source for that? Many say the opposite. Crimes are more often reported especially if suspects have a „specific skin color“.

There's really no way to know so it's silly to ask for a source. The only crime statistic that's fairly reliable (at least in developed countries) is murder because it's hard to hide a body. Lesser crimes are heavily under reported but no one knows by how much, and the reporting rates vary widely by location and time. In many places the police actively discourage victims from reporting minor crimes because it creates…

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (formerly the British Crime Survey) should provide some insight, since it's based on interviewing a random sample of the general public.

It suggests that around a third of violent crimes are not recorded by police - but, contrary to the gp's assertion, that proportion doesn't seem to have changed significantly since the BCS began in 1982.

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#43

Post by BLKNSLVR »

Teever wrote: post #41
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outsourced parallel construction. The world seems to be moving away from long-established (and established slowly over a long time) rules and regulations around law and due process due to it feeling slow and inconvenient. Haven't crime rates been declining in the West for quite a while now?

Violent crime, sure, but white collar crime and blatant corruption of our institutions hasn't abated and our inability to grapple with it is the fundamental cause of all of the other issues in our society today.

... and yet don't seem to be much of a priority.

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#44

Post by matthewdgreen »

tc313 wrote: post #26
matthewdgreen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t say that ChatGPT said. I said I used ChatGPT as a search engine because it’s incredibly easy and slightly better than Google. And then I visited the links it gave me to see the primary and secondary sources. Again, the only reason we’re having this conversation as though there’s a debate here is that people have decided to believe in one inaccurate version of the world instead of using the extensive tools av…

HN is a place where you typically post links to sources that support your claim. We could all Google it (or ChatGPT it), but we may not come out with the same results. Why not post your sources so that we can discuss a common set of evidence?

HN is also a place that is intended to be a place that promotes intellectual curiosity rather than argument. When the evidence is this extensive and easily accessible, the decision to argue about it reflects intransigence and an unwillingness to be curious.

I genuinely don’t care about being right on the Internet or HN karma, I would be genuinely happy if one reader/participant in this argument came out of it thinking “huh, I can actually do better than this.”

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#45

Post by LatteLazy »

avidiax wrote: post #15

> Private intelligence firms claim that illegally obtained information is routinely submitted to courts in the U.K., with the third industry figure telling POLITICO there are “ludicrous cover stories put in front of judges” where people are trying to “launder stolen information into court proceedings.” This sounds like "parallel construction" with fewer steps.

The UK has only very limited restrictions on illegally gathered evidence. Poison Tree doctorine is not a thing here. So yes.

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#46

Post by matthewdgreen »

zdragnar wrote: post #28
matthewdgreen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t say that ChatGPT said. I said I used ChatGPT as a search engine because it’s incredibly easy and slightly better than Google. And then I visited the links it gave me to see the primary and secondary sources. Again, the only reason we’re having this conversation as though there’s a debate here is that people have decided to believe in one inaccurate version of the world instead of using the extensive tools av…

You'll have to forgive me that this line: > so I visited ChatGPT and asked if there are documented cases in the UK where these things have happened, and I was met with a deluge of well-documented cases does indeed sound exactly like you were using chatGPT as a primary source rather than a search engine, and thus are being met with cynicism.

I urge you to re-read the original unedited post to see if there are any words in it about the fact that I checked those sources. :)

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#47

Post by [deleted] »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #44
tc313 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is a place where you typically post links to sources that support your claim. We could all Google it (or ChatGPT it), but we may not come out with the same results. Why not post your sources so that we can discuss a common set of evidence?

HN is also a place that is intended to be a place that promotes intellectual curiosity rather than argument. When the evidence is this extensive and easily accessible, the decision to argue about it reflects intransigence and an unwillingness to be curious. I genuinely don’t care about being right on the Internet or HN karma, I would be genuinely happy if one reader/participant in this argument came out of it thinkin…

[deleted]

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#48

Post by rendaw »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #36
matthewdgreen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how regulated “the rest of us are.” This brush-off does not convince me that private spying is good, or that regulations are sufficient to stop it. In fact, the existence of an article in Politico makes me strongly suspect this is part of a discussion in which someone argues for more regulation. Fortunately I don’t live in the UK. Unfortunately I’m not convinced that is a barrier. ETA: the argument “wh…

I don't buy that it's work traditionally reserved for governments, or that it's all bad. There are people offering their services to find kidnapped children, I struggle to see that as a bad thing. Private investigatory work has a long history in the country of Sherlock Holmes (or at least Dr Joseph Bell). You have figures as far back as Harry Philby flirting with foreign governments after their time within the UK gov…

> Black Cube ... its staff had snooped on journalists and adopted false identities to obtain information about film mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse accusers

That sounds like more or less the opposite of finding kidnapped children.

> Providing home addresses to Russian oligarchs who have a history of topping people — particularly journalists

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#49

Post by twic »

There's some funny square bracketing in here.

> “We don’t do things like that here at all. So, Vauxhall [MI6] will almost never outsource meaningful intelligence work to the private sector,” they said.

That one explains that "Vauxhall" is a metonym for MI6, whose headquarters is in Vauxhall.

> Still, trading in knowledge is commonplace. The same person added that there is a “lot of frustration from both sides of the river [Thames] that the old boys’ network was getting a bit too informal, with people telling their clients that they can call their old buddies.”

That one completely fails to explain that "both sides of the river" means MI6 and MI5 (whose headquarters are on different sides of the Thames).

Re: Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

#50

Post by rufus_foreman »

neuroelectron wrote: post #37
criddell wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High treason in Britain is mostly about attacks on the monarchy.

Treason in America is interrupting narrative/consensus construction.

Interrupting narrative/consensus construction must be exceedingly rare in America then, since there hasn't been a conviction for treason in the US since the 1950's.
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