Law changed to allow GCHQ hacking ... just as GCHQ hauled into court for hacking Government legislation to exempt GCHQ from prosecution on charges of illegal hacking has been passed and come into effect – apparently torpedoing an ongoing claim against the surveillance agency being heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. Last July, a coalition of internet service providers and international …
The thing about "rights" is they are not actually rights at all. They are government dont's.
This provision is basically the equivalent of legalising burglary, if you're a rozzer.
Given that our parliament is too supine to exercise proper oversight, we need the courts to protect us.
The much maligned Article 8 (the one that the Daily Mail hates so much) as well as protecting your right to family life, protects your home and your privacy.
There may well be a strong argument that the exemption introduced is incompatible with Article 8.
If you get rid of human rights, you are trusting your government.
People who are disenfranchised will create their own legal solutions. And there is no getting them back. What eventually happens is that prisons have to swell to accommodate them but sooner or later people just get used to being outlaws. Easier to live with now that Australia has its' version of a dem...oh...wait
Colonel Panic wrote:
The much maligned Article 8 (the one that the Daily Mail hates so much) as well as protecting your right to family life, protects your home and your privacy.There may well be a strong argument that the exemption introduced is incompatible with Article 8.
You might want to actually read it, and take note of the comprehensive list of exceptions to the rights.
Right to respect for private and family life1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
The Tories have a track record of changing the law
Just for balance, Labour were just as bad (remember the double jeopardy law they changed so they could re-try the suspected Lawrence murderers). It was also Labour who introduced most of the surveillance legislation in the first place.
Broken electoral system or not (and I tend to agree) I reckon this would have happened if Labour had won.
I should point out that I have no love for Labour and I'm entirely sure they would have come up with their own way of weaselling out of this...
Then why make it party specific in the first place? This would only matter if there were any significant objections from what can now rightly be called the shadow side, and as far as I can tell there have been none.
What matters is the retrospective excusing of something that was wrong at the time when it took place. To me, that publicly declares transparency and accountability as dead and buried, which is a significant portion of why you can call a nation democratic. From a privacy perspective, this effectively puts the UK on a list of places not to be.
> Then why make it party specific in the first place?
Because they were the ones I was thinking of at the time, for instance with IDS getting the law retroactively changed to stop people sueing the Government for illegallly forcing them to work for free at Poundland etc.
What matters is the retrospective excusing of something that was wrong at the time when it took place.
This is precisely the main issue I have with this matter. Never mind whether you think this law change is right or wrong.
All legal action should be conducted under the law as it stood when the event took place. Laws should never apply to events before they came into force.
To make an example: Today, it is illegal for me to drive without insurance. Say I did so anyway, but tomorrow that law was changed. I should still be prosecuted, as I broke the law. It does not matter that it is no longer illegal. The fact is that I broke the law.
Similarly, today it is legal for me to drive with a certain level of alcohol in my blood. If I was pulled over, and found to have a BAC just under that limit, but then the law was changed tomorrow to zero tolerance, I should not be prosecuted as I did not break the law at the time.
What matters is the law at the time.
... because if they do have something to hide they won't be in a position to deliver on their manifesto (as if they gave a toss anyway).
On the bright side it looks like Dave & Theresa have saved me bother of wasting 10 minutes voting in ~4-5 years time.
The election was the 7th.
big things on the 3rd were
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-32572838
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-32578038
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-32572408
but he was probably referring to this
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/royal-baby-born-recap-wait-5628278
I think that at least in this case, the intent was that the public would definitely NOT be able to keep up with this particular legislative change.
Instead, how about a nice lengthy, public debate on whether traditional fox-hunting should be allowed? Or perhaps whether bangers and mash should be designated as the official comfort food of the United Kingdom? Maybe a long discussion on an act honoring Britain's Roman heritage through the return of bread and circuses for the masses?
... if our spies spent more time spying on the baddies instead of pissing around creating ever more elaborate mass surveillance programmes for domestic use.
The next James Bond film is going to be really boring as our hero, bathed in the glare of a monitor, hacks into yet another thousand home routers in Cornwall. Gasp at Q's exploding iPad and the souped up Google BMW on autopilot running off the road when some light drizzle buggers up its sensors.
Cheers
Jon
"... if our spies spent more time spying on the baddies instead of pissing around creating ever more elaborate mass surveillance programmes for domestic use."
But that would be against their current charter, after all - the 'baddies' aren't the enemy - the public is. None of the 'baddies' can remove their power, and they are doing their damnedest to ensure the public cannot either.
Do I hear the tones of an operatic female vocal indicating substantial body mass?
Surely the suspected criminals here are no less guilty if the law is changed after the fact ? They broke the law AT THE TIME. That's what makes the act criminal. What it is now is irrelevant.
The government might, in the same way they did for Alan Turing, offer a post-trial and perhaps post-mortem pardon if they judge the criminal acts to be non-criminal in the light of later laws. But the point is, the civil servants deliberately flouted the law as they knew it, and, unlike Turing, in the course of their work. That's what makes them, and their managers, unfit for office. They can't be trusted.
UK law does actually allow for the laws to be changed retroactively. Whether they should take advantage of that is another issue entirely, but if they can get it through Parliament then it can both criminalise (yes, you can do something legal and then it suddenly becomes illegal after the fact) and de-criminalise past behaviour
Here in the Northern Colony, our government is in the midst of passing legislation which will retroactively shield the RCMP from impending charges. Our government says our national police force works for the government. I always thought they worked for the citizens but it appears the times are changing.
“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'. It's often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that's helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.
“This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach."
And those quotes, even though they came from David Cameron could have been from either of the political parties in the UK (no, there's no such thing as Lib Dem any more, UKIP are about to implode and SNP hmm, OK, three parties)
“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone...'
Exactly, the public should be utterly outraged at this abuse of the law and be completely intolerant of Cameron/May's (further) attempts to erode our rights.
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What's good for the goose is good for the gander. No one rules and has command and control of cyberspace ...... although it is increasingly being realised the space to be in command and control of for power down on Earth.
It is though an irregular and unconventional place which does not suffer from a lack of intelligence in agents/state and non state actors at their work, rest and play.
https://youtu.be/s6VaeFCxta8 - A-HA, Hunting High And Low + @ 2:42
Would one argue that the song and its visible voilee dress is full of some kind of enchanting beauty?
"This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear" - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_(Tarot_card)
To keep one's shark away of arrows would be a well and quite understandably excusing temporary decision and an intelligent step forward until it's not perfectly clear what to do. T = K90 C already, and rising, we've missed the lucky fall. Well, LOVE*, one's sunglasses, are enough well silver-plated to worry about some weird extra quantum passing by (-:
just cheer one up bro if
https://youtu.be/ssx5yHwiEOs , Camouflage (Naweed Remix) - Love Is A Shield
*Live Operation Virtual Environment, @SATOR
I thought that it wasn't legal to apply changes to laws retrospectively? This was why that broadcaster was given a very light sentence for child abuse, because he'd done it when the law was less severe.
Perhaps there's some difference when an act is amended, or perhaps when it's done through the statutory powers they used. Please let me know if you know the actual answer?
Cameron seems to be Increasingly using the language of former fascist and communist dictators with his drive to protect freedom by restricting freedom. Gchq's shenanigans are only another facet of this whole sorry rhetoric.
I'm waiting for the UK enabling act next
"There have been no changes made to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 by the Serious Crime Act 2015 that increase or expand the ability of the intelligence agencies to carry out lawful cyber crime investigation."
Note that nothing whatever is said about increasing or expanding the ability of the intelligence agencies to carry out _un_lawful_ cyber crimes. That ability stays as high as before.
Out of all the changes made to the CMA, Section 10 seems the most likely candidate...
10 Saving for certain law enforcement powers.
Section 1(1) above has effect without prejudice to the operation—
(a)in England and Wales of any enactment relating to powers of inspection, search or seizure; and
(b)in Scotland of any enactment or rule of law relating to powers of examination, search or seizure.
[F1and nothing designed to indicate a withholding of consent to access to any program or data from persons as enforcement officers shall have effect to make access unauthorised for the purposes of the said section 1(1).
In this section “enforcement officer” means a constable or other person charged with the duty of investigating offences; and withholding consent from a person “as” an enforcement officer of any description includes the operation, by the person entitled to control access, of rules whereby enforcement officers of that description are, as such, disqualified from membership of a class of persons who are authorised to have access.]
For reference, Section 1.
It's so loosely defined that the TV Licence man could legally hack into your computer if they wanted to. And spooks, of course. Perhaps the disingenuous statement means there's nothing that specifically names the intelligence services, but they certainly fall within the scope of this change.
Only if an act of parliament is passed allowing the TV license man to hack into your PC...
You missed the bit where it says :
enactment” means any enactment, whenever passed or made, contained in—
(a)
an Act of Parliament;
(b)
an Act of the Scottish Parliament;
(c)
a Measure or Act of the National Assembly for Wales;
(d)
an instrument made under any such Act or Measure;
(e)
any other subordinate legislation (within the meaning of the Interpretation Act 1978);
I dread to think what the future'll bring .... billse10
A veritable ESPecially gifted, extraordinarily rendered smarter army/force of virtual opponents and real enough Guy Fawkes's would appear to the chosen preference for competing insolvent systems of remote second and third party intellectual property management, billse10.
And who's to say that will not be/is not the current present servering morph of secret intelligence security in smarter prosperous pursuit and lively opposition to fascist imposition of worthless punitive austerity..... which is most surely what one would reasonably expect from leading providers of actionable mentored intel from monitored information systems admins.
Or perhaps such a consumptive is presumed and assumed by established legacy systems as being automatically defaulted to server their continuity in office for power of command and control by order of some sort of arrogance based upon the thought that ignorance in such matters will remain widespread and aid the adventure?! In an age with myriad spaces with remote distant learning facilities and capabilities is that a fine final folly furnishing fools all manner of fickle feasts that funnel fate to deliver destiny's revolutionary rough justice and bitter sweet revenge for dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
It is certainly the Greater IntelAIgent Gamesplay of Future NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive Systems Administration for Present Production Placements of Registering Virtual Realities with Quantum Communication Command of Controlling Creative Computers...... phishing and phorming for SMARTR Machine Existences with Global Operting Devices.
And a great fit for a revitalised and revitalising BBC/RT Type Operation with Creative AI Direction worthy of global support, it is too.
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