GCHQ can and will spy on politicos, rules tribunal The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has ruled that GCHQ is allowed to collect the communications of MPs. An IPT announcement stated that it "heard and resolved issues relating to the status, meaning and effect of what has been called the Harold Wilson Doctrine, or the Wilson Doctrine, originating in the statement in the …
It SHOULD be the case that "we,the people" are in charge with our will expressed through parliament and executed by civil service.
It is a GOOD thing that parliamentarians do not have any privileges not allowed to ordinary citizens beyond those strictly necessary for their jobs as parliamentarians. The key is in this phrase here:
"upcoming legislation on surveillance must include a provision to protect the communications of MPs, Peers, MSPs, AMs and MEPS from extra-judicial spying."
Well, that's complete BS. EVERYONE's communications should be protected from *extra-judicial* spying, this is not a privilege to be granted to MPs etc. On the other hand, if there is reasonable suspicion / evidence that is strong enough to get a judge to sign a warrant for surveillance, that *legal* surveillance could be applied to anyone, right up to the PM and the Queen, no exceptions.
I agree James. Indeed GCHQ should be reading this; let's ensure they do.
Bomb attack. Code name Gibbon. The Queen. David Cameron. Allah Akbar. Vestal Virgins here I come. President of the United States. Assassinate. 08:30. Death to the Jews. Semtex in the vase by the cooker. Your's sincerely Jeremy Corbyn.
That actually replicates a similar ruling in Bulgaria from a year back. Nearly word by word too. The mere difference is that there the security services got caught red-handed snooping on actual MPs. It was not deduced out of some Snowdenian revelations.
To be honest, MP communications being privileged is not a far fetched expectation - that the ones that _SET_ the law should be offered the same protection in their work as the ones that _APPLY_ the law. However, do they (and we) like it or not, the Eu conventions and the law in most countries in Europe do not offer this protection to the legislative branch. Some do. Not all though.
So the tribunal ruling was expected - the law does not provide any protection, so no surprises here. Same as in Bulgaria by the way. The result in 20+ countries in the Eu would not be different either.
>However, do they (and we) like it or not, the Eu conventions and the law in most countries in Europe do not offer this protection to the legislative branch. Some do. Not all though.
However, do they (and we) like it or not, the Eu conventions and the law in some countries in Europe theoretically offer a protection to the legislative branch. The protection is applied nowhere though.
Fixed that!
In most countries (if not all), magistrate candidates (e.g., judges to be) must pass security clearance, same for "elected officials" aka politicos.
To be honest, even if it were completely illegal, I'd still expect them to be doing something like this on the entire population, especially the politicians.
What worries me is what they will do with that information. Who will be responsible when they get it wrong.
I was going to change my name; was it Buttle or was it Tuttle?
Probably the judiciary and the home sec - then we would get to understand if our Home Secs have always been authoritarian fascists or just become that way after a visit from the Gmen with a file on them.
Although on general principles I should state that I am against exceptions for Teresa May for anything.
Or hows about just stopping bulk collection GCHQ? I rather suspect if you dropped it down to soley 2 degrees of Kevin Bacon on known loons + some fairly targeted keyword collection you would get almost the same amount of good intel as you do with the current "get everyone" policy.
This is the real reason. I'm sure GCHQ would be quite content to not bulk collect anything from a .gov.uk address, but if they're bulk collecting everything from GenericEmailProvider.com, then they might inadvertently hoover up an MPs private email.
Far better for them if they have the loophole in place before any MPs get annoyed about their personal emails getting trawled.
@ phuzz
gov.uk is part of the dragnet, however, they are SPECIFICALLY TARGETING gov.uk addresses, pretty sure they have ppl listening in on/reading each and every email, call, or whatever is made by UK officials - I am pretty sure they keep a list of all foreign bank accounts these guyz have as well (if applicable*) ...
* I have to add this or my comment will be censored on here ;-)
You've got to laugh. Only a politician could come up with this.
"We promise not to monitor an MP's telephone calls.
Apart from the times when we want to.
And then we'll tell you about it.
Afterwards. A very long time afterwards.
If we feel like it. But we don't really feel like it..."
FOR
"This judgment is a body blow for parliamentary democracy," said MP. "My constituents have a right to know that their communications with me aren't subject to blanket surveillance – yet this ruling suggests that they have no such protection."
READ
"Oh God no! my expenses claim," said MP "How the hell am I going to claim this amount without anyone finding out."
The public might be though. If, y'know, they really needed to know about it. Like if the MP was sponsoring a bill to constrain GCHQ. They wouldn't *release* that information though, that would be unthinkable. There might just be a... leak, that such information should be requested via FoI between certain dates. Or maybe not even anything criminal, maybe just some interests the MPs have which might cause embarrassment or hurt election chances and they'd rather weren't made public knowledge
The point of the Wilson Doctrine isn't just to protect the public from being spied on, but also to prevent intelligence services from being able to build portfolios which can be used to pressure elected officials into towing the party line on security, whether directly through warnings about "national security threats" to places they know that MP cares about to third parties who the information is "leaked" to
Makes a change for MPs to eat their own swill. Normally that kind of thing is only for the peons^H^H^H voters.
I'd like to think this means surveillance will be curtailed but it just means a new law to curtail it with respect to MPs. But only those MPs deemed worthy enough and who've kissed the right arses.
As for "Wilson promised that MPs' and peers' phones would not be tapped by the security services. However, he also said that he might secretly remove this rule, and only tell parliament that he had done so at some later point decided by him."
This sounds to me more like it was written by Sir Humphrey on behalf of one of his chums in GCHQ and the PM was asked to sign it when he was in a hurry and thus didn't read it (see Yes, Minister). It clearly wasn't worth the paper it was written on. Perhaps it could be redubbed the Chocolate fireguard rule?
when Germany temporarily (sic) introduced mass data retention (including their MPs) before 2010, it did improve the crime solution rate. It increased by 0.06%.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/10/13/snowden-and-allies-issue-warnings-australia-unleashes-mass-spying
problem is that in Germany the full data-take is shared 50% spooks - 50% cops, routinely. Whilst in UK the cops hardly get a look at the full-take material as it is too secret, (no one knows about it), and so it can't be used in court to avoid challenges as to where it might have come from, and god-forbid that the defence team should ever have a trawl through the raw muck! That wouldn't be cricket
Who do GCHQ report to? Who do GCHQ represent? The government? The Queen? ... Syntax Error
Valid questions, Syntax Error, which methinks because it be best and prudent, will never be answered fully and frankly. All that can be currently transduced is that their intelligence product is principally sub-prime and of no practical use to that and they who would/could be of specific mutually beneficial interest to them, should they be in any way effective in playing Great Games and virtually leading the mass with remote anonymous command and absolutely fabulous fabless control .......... aka Heavenly Ubiquitous Direction.
Are you ill today? That one made sense ..... theodore
Feeling real fine and dandy, theodore. Thanks for asking.
And they all make sense at the levels and to the agents they are addressed to.
I am pleased to imagine and accept that we are brighter than before and are better able to communicate and understand where we be coming from and/or going to too because of what is being so freely shared and posted worldwide.
And we all have El Reg to thank for that ISP facility and capability.
Three cheers, El Reg.... Hip, Hip, Hooray
Hip, Hip, Hooray
Hip, Hip, Hooray
"...does this ruling mean that the amoral scum in Cheltenham are free to do whatever they want?"
sorry, that's only 66% of all VPN's, probably!
NSA are possibly cracking common but expensive D-H prime numbers used in https etc at rate of about one per year using massively parallel CPUs/GPUs
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/haldermanheninger/how-is-nsa-breaking-so-much-crypto/
that's why I have nothing to hide!
there's nowhere to hide it. . .
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