During the royal wedding, the Police arrested republican protestors in central London, moved them out to the edges of London (Cheam, in one example) and then released them, dropping their grounds for arrest[1].
There is no freedom of speech or expression here, when it's a cause the police don't like.
The fact that they are now also revealed to decide which political activists are "domestic terrorists," and include them in terrorism statistics, is preposterous.
Worst thing is that there is so little discussion/coverage of this in the UK.
Other than the Guardian the G20, GCHQ, NSA findings have hardly been covered. I'm most surprised by the BBC, even if they did get a DA-notice I would have expected them to be somewhat impartial.
It's staggering that there's no discussion on this. I remember seeing the newspapers on the day Snowden broke the stuff about GCHQ. The Grauniad was indignant; nobody else even touched the story. Why aren't the government being hauled over the coals for this thing? Cameron's promising an enquiry over the Lawson investigation but his government is still pushing ever broader collection of digital communications.
"UK government puts editor in jail for one of employees spying on a few dozen people. What punishment do they get for spying on a billion?"
The Government are working within the law... the press was not. Also all to combined government computing power in the UK couldn't analyse the amount of data the government would have to work through if it "spied" and analysed everything that went across any network. Classic case of "big data" analysis - parse all the data in motion, pull off the things of interest, discard the rest.
0833
Sir Malcom Rifkind, a former foreign secretary and the current chairman of the commons intelligence and security committee, and Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, analyse allegations that GCHQ has snooped on web information.
> Why aren't the government being hauled over the coals for this thing?
There's no evidence that GCHQ are doing anything illegal, nor anything new. They've been doing this for many years. It's what they say they do. It's what they're set up to do.
GCHQ having a 3 day cache of communication-content data is little different to telecoms companies keeping a similar cache[1] except the laws are clearer about what GCHQ can and can't do with the data.
In terms of privacy violation there are much worse examples than GCHQ slurping everything. Corrupt public officials (eg: police officers) selling off information to newspapers; workers for telecoms companies having unauthorised access; people with access to medical records gossiping.
Note that the broader collection you mention is, at the moment, just "meta data" (routing information), and not content data. I guess while not be acceptable it is less unacceptable than collecting content data. (If that makes sense.)
I don't remember but did the BBC run the story on TV? I don't remember it being discussed but I might not have seen the news that day. My point was that none of the other papers picked this up. There's been a lot of talk online but I don't think that's where the majority of people get their news from.
My parents watch the BBC news religiously, I asked them if they'd heard anything about the NSA story a couple of days after the story broke and they were completely unaware. When I brought their attention to some of the articles online their reaction was outrage. I wonder what the national reaction would have been had the coverage been more thorough. I find it difficult to believe there aren't plenty of journalists out there wishing they could get their teeth into a meaty story like this one, what's holding them back?
They hardly covered it on the news/radio broadcasts I saw, also worth noting that although the BBC Website did have some articles about it they weren't prominent on the main news page at all.
The police have ALWAYS been given the tools to do this kind of thing by the courts and parliament. (in all of Europe, at least.) There are loads of offences still on the books that could mean almost anything, but which can be used as grounds for arrest. The police have ALWAYS used their 48 hours of custody to remove certain troublemakers from certain areas under every type of government. Taking away your ability to shout in the streets for 48 hours is not MUCH of a restriction on freedom of speech. Get a blog and millions can read it, but nobody will. Most people don't have time for politics, and the majority won't until resources are no longer scarce.
People, if you support Pres. Obama you have to go along with statism because he is one. Supporting him because he is the "least worst" even though you hate any statism is stupid. If you don't like a big government, support someone else.
being a UK citizen (sorry, subject), my opinion on Obama is largely immaterial, but since you asked:
I broadly agree with much of Obama's rhetoric, and I imagine much of his policy (although I'm not clued up on the details, what with them hardly affecting me.)
I do disagree with him/his government on a number of issues though, including the International Law around his use of Drones, the fact that Guantanamo Bay has not been packed up and the people detained there tried for offenses or released, and on his surveillance and national security policy.
Insisting that people either support or oppose a politician 100% is ridiculous. Politics has hundreds of variables; you can't insist on a 100% match before you'll "support," or even "vote for," or even "campaign for" someone - or else the US would have 300,000,000 politicians all voting only for themselves.
Just so you know, Obama believes that Guantanamo Bay should be closed. The reason it is not closed is because he is unable to get the funding from congress to close it.
"In the months leading up to the wedding, a series of demonstrations by students, trade unionists and others saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest against government cuts. There were outbreaks of disorder and in one case student demonstrators attacked a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife Camilla." [1]
I might just be being cynical but this sounds like an intelligence led operation to remove people who were at a high risk of commiting public disorder. It seems pretty limited that it was 20 people and they were picked up all across london - the police didn't just swoop in on a group of protesters with anti-monarchy banners, they were specifically targeted. I appreciate although the UK has no "constitution" we have to free protest but from the riots last year I think The Met have every right to be cautious about preventing demonstrations which could spark into something dangerous at one of the biggest public spectacles of the decade, when the entire crowd is made up of families trying to enjoy themselves.
If the cause is so noble, one shouldn't need to use a large public spectacle as a vehicle for it.
That's little comfort: I still get the impression that if I'd been standing next to them I would have been arrested too.
Freedom of expression means being allowed to make a spectacle. Not by attacking Charles & Camilla, but marching up and down shouting in the daytime, sure.
> I might just be being cynical but this sounds like an intelligence led operation to remove people who were at a high risk of commiting public disorder.
You are being cynical. You cannot be preemptively arrested for having a "high risk of committing public disorder", which is what happened. Many people, who actually had no plans to demonstrate or do anything other than spend the day drinking and trying not to watch the ceremony, were subjected to dawn raids for no reason other than that they are on police watchlists (along with thousands and thousands of other peaceful protestors)
It's so incredibly easy to get on a police watchlist now - you merely have to turn up to a protest to get yourself on file. Pensioners have had files for merely walking along a protest route and then going home.
In same way you can be arrested for "going equipped" or banned from near sports stadiums for football hooliganism, it is rarely held up in court but a tool for the police to preempt people who are positioned to commit a crime. There must be reasonable grounds otherwise one has a case for false imprisonment, I am guessing The Met took all reasonable steps to make sure they were targeting the right people using precious resources on what was one of the biggest police operations of the decade.
Oh, they targeted the 'right people' alright. But this was not an operation to 'save the day' from the mean protestors. It was an intimidation campaign. The people who were targeted had committed no crime, had not planned to commit any crime, they were targeted because they were known left-wing activists. This is now cause in itself for the Met to bring you up. Your rose-tinted glasses view of the Met is naive - they are corrupt servants of the ruling class. These operations have one purpose - to shut people up, to present an image of Britain as a united nationalist utopia. We all love the Queen! Look! Nobody even protested!
If they can only do 9000 out of 62 million, that's impressive, and not at all a too large number. Why is it suddenly news when the police (who are subject to full government oversight) do this, but not when MI5 do it, who aren't? Didn't everyone know that MI5/6 do this kind of thing. Yes they did. It moved from the Scargills/Marxists to only the IRA in the 90s, then onto the Islamists almost exclusively, but what a non story.
In theory MI5 / MI6 / GCHQ / etc are also subject to full government oversight and have to obey the laws.
This story is interesting because it shows the police don't obey the law. There are strict rules when using undercover officers and a number of cases show undercover officers flaunting those rules. (To the point where an undercover officer forms a relationship with someone he's watching, and has a child with them, still in his undercover identity.)
The laws are defined in RIPA.
And it's not just MI5 doing it - I'm more alarmed about the private black-listing of individuals. (Which was a driver for data protection laws in the UK; and also a driver to expand those laws to paper based records and not just computer databases).
Whilst I have no particular bones to pick with the security services today, (hi guys!), I am more alarmed by the potential for future abuses; by the possibility that police / MI5 / MI6 / GCHQ will use their powers to cover up scandals, smear people who criticise them, undermine court cases against them, and manipulate politicians and journalists into protecting them and their sources of funding.
Indeed, my concerns are amplified somewhat by recent scandals illustrating improper behaviour on the part of other civil servants: NHS cover ups, covert police smear operations & attempts to undermine the rule of law. When so much is secret, trust must compensate for the lack of information.
I am terribly, terribly afraid that trust is a commodity in desperately short supply. This dearth of trust means that the hackles of suspicion become raised by even seemingly innocuous news. For example, am I the only one to find it (mildly) suspicious that the security services got an extra 100 Million when everybody else got their budgets slashed? What pressure did treasury officials come under? Was it proper, or did something underhand happen?
We will certainly never know the truth, but where the benefit of the doubt may have been given before ... now the supply of trust has been wrung dry.
Unfortunately, thanks to the Leveson Inquiry. Police officers speaking to journalists is already being criminalised so we are far less likely to get a police whistleblower on any of these topics.
Still, it'll help keep Hugh Grant's sex life private so it was well worth it.
The number by itself is not worrying, but you have to understand that this is not (at least not directly) related to the Snowden case, but is to be seen in the context of the other recent police scandals in the UK, such as the allegations that there was a police-coordinated smear campaign against Stephen Lawrence or that criminal private investigators may have been given access to internal police databases, allowing them to bypass the witness protection program and reach and intimidate witnesses.
If you read the Guardian article, you will find that the concerns are not (just) the number of people being observed, but whether the "domestic terrorists" weren't just politically inconvenient people that the police had no business investigating, let alone with the methods that are being alleged.
In short: This is not about spying as such, but about the police allegedly acting outside the law.
There is a key difference between this story and the Snowden case. It is unlikely that the UK government will actively pursue and convict any of the sources of the story. The UK, for now at least, appears less desperate to demonize its citizens.
I actually don't mind this to an extent - I practice amateur rocketry as a hobby (and thus order some things that might be considered suspicious).
I'd rather the police knew exactly what I was doing than just see a small part and assume it was something bad. It's not an ideal situation, but given the whole terrorism excuse, but I'd rather be watched and know that I couldn't be confused with someone who has malicious intent.
Rocketry accepted, this is targeting of people because they're politically active (admittedly in fringe groups, but there's a grey area between fringe and just small.)
Of fit you up as they tried to do to a government minster see plebgate or if your a victim of a disaster at a football ground see the long running Hillsborough disaster.
> They got locked up and then sectioned indefinitely
To expand a bit for international audiences: They got a prison sentence. During that sentence they were sectioned. Even if the sentence finishes they can still be held in hospital against their will, because hospital is for treatment, and not for punishment.
In theory there are protections. People have the right to have advocates and mental health act tribunals and etc etc, but as we've seen from a number of scandals[1] the protections are not nearly as strong as they need to be, especially for the private providers. And, weirdly, providers of medium secure forensic units tend to be private sector providers.
[1] People with severe Asperger's being detained for very long times because staff cause stress and anxiety which shows as aggression; the Cornwall Report (people with learning disorders being chained to beds) and Winterborne View (people with learning disabilities being trapped under chairs or left out in the cold or punched in the face); the CQC faking reports. etc.
Just imagine... Dr. Evil is able to get a list of those 9,000 people, and then able to co-ordinate terrorist acts across the land, using an army of thousands.
9,000 is a hell of a lot of people who think need watching. The IRA had no more than 250 active members outside of '70s and 1916.
Unless of course those 9000 are all peaceful activists, while the truly sinister, especially those able to kill a person in cold blood, are hired the second they gets spotted, either as agents or undercover agents, and are simply tracked by accounting. I mean this is half-tongue in cheek, half serious, and that's sad enough.
This is supposedly subversion eg EDL and Where Football Hooligans shade into supporting the UDA but at least some of the 9000 are people who have pissed the met off eg the Lawrence family.
Apparently the undercover stuff is run by the ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers aka the Union for senior coppers now I am a union man but Trade Unions have no business running a private secret service
The ACPO is also a private company, I believe. Wikipedia tells me that:
In 1997 ACPO was incorporated as a private company limited by guarantee. As a private company, ACPO does not have to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. It is not a staff association, the staff association for senior police officers being a separate body, the Chief Police Officers Staff Association (CPOSA).
I do feel a bit uneasy about ACPO. If it's important, make it a part of the civil service/police force.
42 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 82.2 ms ] threadThere is no freedom of speech or expression here, when it's a cause the police don't like.
The fact that they are now also revealed to decide which political activists are "domestic terrorists," and include them in terrorism statistics, is preposterous.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/28/royal-wedding-prote...
Other than the Guardian the G20, GCHQ, NSA findings have hardly been covered. I'm most surprised by the BBC, even if they did get a DA-notice I would have expected them to be somewhat impartial.
It makes me feel angry and powerless.
"UK government puts editor in jail for one of employees spying on a few dozen people. What punishment do they get for spying on a billion?"
The Government are working within the law... the press was not. Also all to combined government computing power in the UK couldn't analyse the amount of data the government would have to work through if it "spied" and analysed everything that went across any network. Classic case of "big data" analysis - parse all the data in motion, pull off the things of interest, discard the rest.
This is EDIT not correct.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02xxvbr)
0833 Sir Malcom Rifkind, a former foreign secretary and the current chairman of the commons intelligence and security committee, and Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, analyse allegations that GCHQ has snooped on web information.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23059065)(http://www.b...
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23004080)
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23048259)
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23017108)
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23051248)
etc etc etc.
> Why aren't the government being hauled over the coals for this thing?
There's no evidence that GCHQ are doing anything illegal, nor anything new. They've been doing this for many years. It's what they say they do. It's what they're set up to do.
GCHQ having a 3 day cache of communication-content data is little different to telecoms companies keeping a similar cache[1] except the laws are clearer about what GCHQ can and can't do with the data.
In terms of privacy violation there are much worse examples than GCHQ slurping everything. Corrupt public officials (eg: police officers) selling off information to newspapers; workers for telecoms companies having unauthorised access; people with access to medical records gossiping.
Note that the broader collection you mention is, at the moment, just "meta data" (routing information), and not content data. I guess while not be acceptable it is less unacceptable than collecting content data. (If that makes sense.)
People, if you support Pres. Obama you have to go along with statism because he is one. Supporting him because he is the "least worst" even though you hate any statism is stupid. If you don't like a big government, support someone else.
I broadly agree with much of Obama's rhetoric, and I imagine much of his policy (although I'm not clued up on the details, what with them hardly affecting me.)
I do disagree with him/his government on a number of issues though, including the International Law around his use of Drones, the fact that Guantanamo Bay has not been packed up and the people detained there tried for offenses or released, and on his surveillance and national security policy.
Insisting that people either support or oppose a politician 100% is ridiculous. Politics has hundreds of variables; you can't insist on a 100% match before you'll "support," or even "vote for," or even "campaign for" someone - or else the US would have 300,000,000 politicians all voting only for themselves.
I suspect the reasons for not closing Gitmo are less clean and clear than "they won't let me boo-hoo"
Start with a thousand wrongful arrest and torture suits filed against everyone at all positions of government for ten years, and work down.
I might just be being cynical but this sounds like an intelligence led operation to remove people who were at a high risk of commiting public disorder. It seems pretty limited that it was 20 people and they were picked up all across london - the police didn't just swoop in on a group of protesters with anti-monarchy banners, they were specifically targeted. I appreciate although the UK has no "constitution" we have to free protest but from the riots last year I think The Met have every right to be cautious about preventing demonstrations which could spark into something dangerous at one of the biggest public spectacles of the decade, when the entire crowd is made up of families trying to enjoy themselves.
If the cause is so noble, one shouldn't need to use a large public spectacle as a vehicle for it.
[1]http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/27/activists-arrested-...
Freedom of expression means being allowed to make a spectacle. Not by attacking Charles & Camilla, but marching up and down shouting in the daytime, sure.
You are being cynical. You cannot be preemptively arrested for having a "high risk of committing public disorder", which is what happened. Many people, who actually had no plans to demonstrate or do anything other than spend the day drinking and trying not to watch the ceremony, were subjected to dawn raids for no reason other than that they are on police watchlists (along with thousands and thousands of other peaceful protestors)
It's so incredibly easy to get on a police watchlist now - you merely have to turn up to a protest to get yourself on file. Pensioners have had files for merely walking along a protest route and then going home.
This story is interesting because it shows the police don't obey the law. There are strict rules when using undercover officers and a number of cases show undercover officers flaunting those rules. (To the point where an undercover officer forms a relationship with someone he's watching, and has a child with them, still in his undercover identity.)
The laws are defined in RIPA.
And it's not just MI5 doing it - I'm more alarmed about the private black-listing of individuals. (Which was a driver for data protection laws in the UK; and also a driver to expand those laws to paper based records and not just computer databases).
Indeed, my concerns are amplified somewhat by recent scandals illustrating improper behaviour on the part of other civil servants: NHS cover ups, covert police smear operations & attempts to undermine the rule of law. When so much is secret, trust must compensate for the lack of information.
I am terribly, terribly afraid that trust is a commodity in desperately short supply. This dearth of trust means that the hackles of suspicion become raised by even seemingly innocuous news. For example, am I the only one to find it (mildly) suspicious that the security services got an extra 100 Million when everybody else got their budgets slashed? What pressure did treasury officials come under? Was it proper, or did something underhand happen?
We will certainly never know the truth, but where the benefit of the doubt may have been given before ... now the supply of trust has been wrung dry.
Still, it'll help keep Hugh Grant's sex life private so it was well worth it.
No, they flouted the rules.
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/01/flaunting-the-rul...
If you read the Guardian article, you will find that the concerns are not (just) the number of people being observed, but whether the "domestic terrorists" weren't just politically inconvenient people that the police had no business investigating, let alone with the methods that are being alleged.
In short: This is not about spying as such, but about the police allegedly acting outside the law.
I'd rather the police knew exactly what I was doing than just see a small part and assume it was something bad. It's not an ideal situation, but given the whole terrorism excuse, but I'd rather be watched and know that I couldn't be confused with someone who has malicious intent.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/
To expand a bit for international audiences: They got a prison sentence. During that sentence they were sectioned. Even if the sentence finishes they can still be held in hospital against their will, because hospital is for treatment, and not for punishment.
In theory there are protections. People have the right to have advocates and mental health act tribunals and etc etc, but as we've seen from a number of scandals[1] the protections are not nearly as strong as they need to be, especially for the private providers. And, weirdly, providers of medium secure forensic units tend to be private sector providers.
[1] People with severe Asperger's being detained for very long times because staff cause stress and anxiety which shows as aggression; the Cornwall Report (people with learning disorders being chained to beds) and Winterborne View (people with learning disabilities being trapped under chairs or left out in the cold or punched in the face); the CQC faking reports. etc.
9,000 is a hell of a lot of people who think need watching. The IRA had no more than 250 active members outside of '70s and 1916.
Apparently the undercover stuff is run by the ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers aka the Union for senior coppers now I am a union man but Trade Unions have no business running a private secret service
In 1997 ACPO was incorporated as a private company limited by guarantee. As a private company, ACPO does not have to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. It is not a staff association, the staff association for senior police officers being a separate body, the Chief Police Officers Staff Association (CPOSA).
I do feel a bit uneasy about ACPO. If it's important, make it a part of the civil service/police force.