back to article Intelligence Committee marks Gov's Snoopers' Charter: See me after class

The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament has warned the Government that it needs to make "substantive amendments" to its draft Investigatory Powers Bill, before proceeding to outline changes which don't appear to be very "substantive" at all. The committee said the new draft provides insufficient safeguards and …

  1. James 51

    What happens if the PM or Home Secretary is suspected of doing something naughty and someone wants to spy on him. Will they have to approve the warrant to look into their own affairs?

    1. 2460 Something

      Of course not. That just gets carefully filed until the new regime comes in and needs somebody to blame/distract the public for their latest cock-up.

  2. Warm Braw

    Inconsistent and largely incomprehensible

    As is the current legislation - it conveniently allows for the most creative of legal constructions, none of which of course ever gets tested in court. If it ain't broke...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > "Additionally, the protections afforded to sensitive professions – such as lawyers, doctors, politicians, and journalists – were also criticised as inconsistent. "

    Everyone is equal under the law, privacy rights are afforded to EVERYONE, we can quote these people as EXAMPLES, simply because its easier to explain why they need privacy more than a nobody. But then they were all nobodies before they were a 'sensitive professional'.

    This is not some magic theory, this is the law as it stands today and as is being broken by GCHQ and its allies.

    Bulk Personal Dataset / Bulk Acquisition warrants are nothing but warrantless mass surveillance and has zero justification.

    "Targetted isn't targetted", yeh words changing their meaning, a typical political tactic. Rendition instead of kidnapping etc.

    Database, Dataset, Al Qaeda... what does it matter the name being used, its mass surveillance without warrant of innocent people for the purpose of fishing.

    "GCHQ does not seek to collect the communications of people in the UK, but some incidental interception is inevitable because the origin of the sender or recipient is not always clear"

    Bullshit, that's the legal coverage they seek, Snowden revealed they do full take. It's basically the "collect it all and datamine it", i.e. start with the bulk surveillance then search it, and don't count searches till someone actually reads it, even though it was collected and searched before they read it.

    We call that fishing. It means they're not trying to start with a targetted set of likely interest (e.g. knows terrorist groups) then going after communications with that group, they're doing the collect it all stuff.

    As to "there is a prohibition on searching for and examining any material that relates to a person known to be in the UK", that's a real f**ing joke right there. They capture all comms to the UK, so everyone in that discussion is in the UK. Their claim is that the other half may be outside the UK, but so what?

    It's not whether the other half of a conversation is outside the UK, that would justify stripping UK privacy rights, its whether the other half is a potential military or terrorist threat to the UK that would justify that.

    i.e. do you start with your targets and work forwards, or do you spy on everyone and datamine hoping to find targets?

    One is legal, the other is fishing in a haystack for needles that most likely aren't there. Because you built the haystack from stuff that was easy to get instead of focussing on the difficult to get needles.

    We can politely pretend that some magic law happened to which we're all unaware that makes this all legal, but no, this was the redefinition of words by a few individuals who decided to face down Parliament and ignore that basis privacy right.

    "Designated Senior Officer" is self regulation. Putin was a Designated Senior Officer, now he's a dictator. We have controls because we're not idiots.

    Start with the basis that Parliament REJECTED Snoopers Charter, and we have agencies that ignored that rejection and continued anyway. Now Parliament is being bumped into obeying.

    i.e. Have this Hobsons choice, Thin Thread is no longer available because we decided we're ignore the laws and do "Full Take", so now how can you legalize "Full Take" with minimal protections, perhaps an Ombudsman, or a tweak here or there, but trust us, we're not an out of control agency threatening the core democracy, no, not like Putin's FSA at all.... YOU ARE EXACTLY LIKE THE FSA.

    Parliament REJECTED Snoopers Charter, you lot went ahead with "Mastering the Internet" anyway, several of your accomplices in the cover-up tried to slip Snoopers Charter into Lords Amendments and were rejected. You don't run the country, you are not the secret hand that keeps everyone safe, you're the biggest threat to the UK right now. Do you think you could come back within the law?

    When Theresa May admitted UK mass surveillance to the Houses of Parliament, I bet the chill of surveillance went through the room. How much private info did she have on her opponents. Too much. More than is legal, and I bet you delude yourself otherwise.

  4. Bota

    Whatever the law says, there's an army of "legalese speakers" who will interpret it as whatever they want.

    Remember kids, it's only collected if someone looks at it ;)

  5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Simple rule:

    No bulk anything.

  6. Chris Parsons

    Theresa May

    I assume the tosser that downvoted you must have been Mrs May?

  7. long-in-tooth

    Who?

    Several people regularly use this machine!

    Several people have access to this router!

    Who the hell sent that message?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who?

      The answer will probably end up being "who the hell cares who actually sent the message" as long as someone gets fingered; after all, this is all run by inveterate box tickers.

      The lesson learned from the Birmingham Six etc was probably not the one that should have been.

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