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UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

theguardian.com

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Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#11

Post by KwanEsq »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #5
junto wrote: post #3

Whilst I applaud the ruling, I doubt it will make much of difference. The British government simply uses extensions to the "temporary" Terrorism Act 2000 and its modifications in 2001, 2005, 2006 and 2008 and/or RIPA. I'm getting a bit tired of politicians standing up in the House of Common's, stating we need a "temporary" act to reduce liberty and privacy under the guise of terrorism, only to extend the rulings inde…

Conspiracy theorist me says we should expect another "act of terrorism" on the UK mainland. This government needs to bolster its control, as they did in Australia, France and Canada. After every attack, the direct effect is that politicians start looking for ways to spin that into invasions of privacy and liberty. Every god damn time. I appreciate that you prefixed this, but are you really implying that the recent at…

Whilst I am not endorsing the view, I would like to point out that Operation Northwoods–style false‐flag attacks are not a necessary reading of the grandparent's post. It would also be satisfied by the government/security services being aware of a planned attack by actual criminals, and simply letting it happen rather than preventing it as would otherwise be done.

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#12

Post by simi_ »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #5
junto wrote: post #3

Whilst I applaud the ruling, I doubt it will make much of difference. The British government simply uses extensions to the "temporary" Terrorism Act 2000 and its modifications in 2001, 2005, 2006 and 2008 and/or RIPA. I'm getting a bit tired of politicians standing up in the House of Common's, stating we need a "temporary" act to reduce liberty and privacy under the guise of terrorism, only to extend the rulings inde…

Conspiracy theorist me says we should expect another "act of terrorism" on the UK mainland. This government needs to bolster its control, as they did in Australia, France and Canada. After every attack, the direct effect is that politicians start looking for ways to spin that into invasions of privacy and liberty. Every god damn time. I appreciate that you prefixed this, but are you really implying that the recent at…

Conspiracy theories are bullshit 99% of the time, but you must be an idiot to think it's difficult to stage such a thing. Naivety is not a very cute trait in adults (but probably not as dangerous as chemtrail-type stupidity).

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#13

Post by spiritplumber »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #5
junto wrote: post #3

Whilst I applaud the ruling, I doubt it will make much of difference. The British government simply uses extensions to the "temporary" Terrorism Act 2000 and its modifications in 2001, 2005, 2006 and 2008 and/or RIPA. I'm getting a bit tired of politicians standing up in the House of Common's, stating we need a "temporary" act to reduce liberty and privacy under the guise of terrorism, only to extend the rulings inde…

Conspiracy theorist me says we should expect another "act of terrorism" on the UK mainland. This government needs to bolster its control, as they did in Australia, France and Canada. After every attack, the direct effect is that politicians start looking for ways to spin that into invasions of privacy and liberty. Every god damn time. I appreciate that you prefixed this, but are you really implying that the recent at…

A more diluted version of this conspiracy theory is that there is a roughly constant supply of crazies who want to blow stuff up, that most of them are easy to catch, and that on occasion security agencies let one succeed so that they can get favorable-to-them legislation to happen.

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#14

Post by arethuza »

peteretep wrote: post #6
zirkonit wrote: post #2

“was unlawful”, “is unlawful” and “will be unlawful”. It will not stop just because of the court decision. The rule of law is for mere mortals, and not the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies, unfortunately.

The UK has a pretty good track record of nobody being above the law.

Lets see what happens to Tony Blair after the Chilcot inquiry report is published:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/07/tony-bl...

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#15

Post by peteretep »

spiritplumber wrote: post #13
matthewmacleod wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy theorist me says we should expect another "act of terrorism" on the UK mainland. This government needs to bolster its control, as they did in Australia, France and Canada. After every attack, the direct effect is that politicians start looking for ways to spin that into invasions of privacy and liberty. Every god damn time. I appreciate that you prefixed this, but are you really implying that the recent at…

A more diluted version of this conspiracy theory is that there is a roughly constant supply of crazies who want to blow stuff up, that most of them are easy to catch, and that on occasion security agencies let one succeed so that they can get favorable-to-them legislation to happen.

An even more diluted version is that the security services aren't super human, and occasionally make mistakes. Some conspiracy, eh?

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#16

Post by aw3c2 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #5
junto wrote: post #3

Whilst I applaud the ruling, I doubt it will make much of difference. The British government simply uses extensions to the "temporary" Terrorism Act 2000 and its modifications in 2001, 2005, 2006 and 2008 and/or RIPA. I'm getting a bit tired of politicians standing up in the House of Common's, stating we need a "temporary" act to reduce liberty and privacy under the guise of terrorism, only to extend the rulings inde…

Conspiracy theorist me says we should expect another "act of terrorism" on the UK mainland. This government needs to bolster its control, as they did in Australia, France and Canada. After every attack, the direct effect is that politicians start looking for ways to spin that into invasions of privacy and liberty. Every god damn time. I appreciate that you prefixed this, but are you really implying that the recent at…

Maybe not planned, but the idea that they were "tolerated" because they promoted the agenda for a reasonably low cost seems not too far fetched. grabs tinfoil

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#17

Post by peteretep »

arethuza wrote: post #14
peteretep wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has a pretty good track record of nobody being above the law.

Lets see what happens to Tony Blair after the Chilcot inquiry report is published: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/07/tony-bl...

As per the article, I don't see the ICC bringing it (who obviously aren't under the thumb of the UK), and if they don't, I really don't see the CPS coming to the conclusion that there's a reasonable chance of conviction, or that it would be in the public interest. Depends what the report says I guess.

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#18

Post by DanBC »

jackgavigan wrote: post #9

So, one of the key things about this ruling is that it declares "that prior to the disclosures made and referred to in the Tribunal’s Judgment of 5 December 2014, the regime governing the soliciting, receiving, storing and transmitting by UK authorities of private communications of individuals located in the UK, which have been obtained by US authorities pursuant to Prism and/or (on the Claimants’ case) Upstream, con…

I'm curious about the careful wording they used: this is carefully referring to data gathered by Americans[1] and used by GCHQ, and not to data gathered by GCHQ.

I understand that GCHQ, while not admitting to the existence of TEMPORA in public, is being careful with it, providing in-house lawyers for their staff to operate within what they think the law says.

So this ruling only changes the "We spy on your citizens; you spy on ours" work-around to various laws making it hard to spy on your own citizens. Since the English laws are pretty clear and should be easy enough for GCHQ to work with it's not much change on our side.

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#19

Post by fit2rule »

peteretep wrote: post #15
spiritplumber wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more diluted version of this conspiracy theory is that there is a roughly constant supply of crazies who want to blow stuff up, that most of them are easy to catch, and that on occasion security agencies let one succeed so that they can get favorable-to-them legislation to happen.

An even more diluted version is that the security services aren't super human, and occasionally make mistakes. Some conspiracy, eh?

No, they are super-human, and all of this is part of an intentional plot to subvert us in a way that won't cause us to rise up and behead the super-humans currently running the show...

Re: UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

#20

Post by socksy »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #5
junto wrote: post #3

Whilst I applaud the ruling, I doubt it will make much of difference. The British government simply uses extensions to the "temporary" Terrorism Act 2000 and its modifications in 2001, 2005, 2006 and 2008 and/or RIPA. I'm getting a bit tired of politicians standing up in the House of Common's, stating we need a "temporary" act to reduce liberty and privacy under the guise of terrorism, only to extend the rulings inde…

Conspiracy theorist me says we should expect another "act of terrorism" on the UK mainland. This government needs to bolster its control, as they did in Australia, France and Canada. After every attack, the direct effect is that politicians start looking for ways to spin that into invasions of privacy and liberty. Every god damn time. I appreciate that you prefixed this, but are you really implying that the recent at…

It's not so much that such an attack would be created by the government (which if that's what GP is saying, then I utterly agree with you). It's more what's done after the attack — painting it as a terrorist attack in the first place, then arguing that it like all terrorist attacks could have been prevented if intelligence were more powerful, etc.

I found it very interesting recently that the BBC has decided to stop using the word "terrorism" to report these attacks[1], and I hope that this will lead to a more nuanced argument over different events.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-bbc-has-just...

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