Posted on 11/21/2016 12:14:50 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
A bill giving the UK intelligence agencies and police the most sweeping surveillance powers in the western world has passed into law with barely a whimper, meeting only token resistance over the past 12 months from inside parliament and barely any from outside.
The Investigatory Powers Act, passed on Thursday, legalises a whole range of tools for snooping and hacking by the security services unmatched by any other country in western Europe or even the US.
The security agencies and police began the year braced for at least some opposition, rehearsing arguments for the debate. In the end, faced with public apathy and an opposition in disarray, the government did not have to make a single substantial concession to the privacy lobby.
US whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted: “The UK has just legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Interesting that they would say “even the US”!
Islam always forces the choice: Liberty or security.
To do what? They won't use information they gathered if it is politically incorrect. No amount of surveillance can defeat PC. That is how it stands. So they can gather tons of intel about Jihadi plan to unleash terror in Britain, but it can be useless if they fail to act on it. On the other hand, they would have no problem using it to micromanage the behaviors of ordinary citizens: whether they recycle properly, take out garbage on time, or spend too much time at bars consuming "harmful" substance such as beer and cocktail.
Started by that ‘great conservative’ David Cameron and finished by that ‘great conservative and the new Thatcher’ Theresa May/ sarc.......
I like the name Peter Hitchens has given Ms. May in some of his columns and on his blog: “Chairman May’.
For the land from which we inherited the “rights of free Englishmen”, there is an incredible amount of undue deference to the state in current day England. I overheard a group of ladies in Stratford-upon-Avon (home of Shakespeare) on a trip recently decrying the “racism and extremism” of American talk radio, which clearly none of them had ever listened to, and lamenting that the US government didn’t do something about it like regulating it and imposing standards — it all leads to that horrible Trump, etc.,...
I’d like to read the whole act because maybe the British know something about realistic intelligence operations, tactics and equipment that we don’t, and should.
Remember, the British were into intelligence before there was an America and some of their groups were pretty damned good (except when the Communists infiltrated them during the 20’s - 40’s and betrayed anti-communists to the Nazis and Stalin. French Communists were realistically thought to be behind the betrayal of French Resistance leader Moulin to the Gestapo. In Yugoslavia, the Communist Partisans often worked with the Germans against the Serbian Resistance movement known as the Chetniks). Read, Ally Betrayed, by David Martin, for more on this (Dave was a late friend of mine, RCAF during WW2, U.S. Government intelligence analysis for a congressman and a Senate subcommittee).
The worm seems to be turning even in Britain.
A Trump regime will probably be the LEAST “statist” thing that America has seen for coons’ ages.
The energy behind it is of a different kind.
The proof of the British pudding will have to be in the tasting. If it follows too in the trend of Trump (as with Nigel Farage) it’s probably going to have very little reason to abuse the powers.
In practice, it’s terribly hard to have actual security in the cyber realm. Practicality and convenience and inevitable error and relentless foreign forces all militate against it. Maybe this is mostly a case of labeling a fishbowl, “FISHBOWL.” If you have something you really care about being kept confidential, you won’t ever put it IN the fishbowl.
A greater test will be what happens when Islam is again pushed at bay. The idiots who let it infiltrate with no opposition are to blame for framing the necessity now.
Until they acknowledge that Islam is a political ideology that uses the religious protections afforded by their policies / laws to work unfettered in the background to accomplish their mission of dismantling the states they seek to overthrow and takeover and treat them as such, they will continue to reek havoc in the nations that import their immigrants in vast numbers under the guise of being political refugees. The public knows this. They know this. Yet they still import them. Now I wonder why that is? Its suggests corruption at the highest levels and an agenda that is being coordinated by evil forces at play. It is evident by past experience that Muslims commmit the vast majority of terrorist acts yet they continue to be assisted by their governments. I think BIG money is being passed to facilitate the movement and that the terrorism is being used to destroy lesser civilizations in order to prepare the world for globalization so that the NWO can be realized and established. They are mowing the lawn so to speak and I think they are receiving assistance from money handed to them by rogue elements who have established shadow governments within nations who have access to extreme wealth (i.e. the U.S., Germany, Sweden, etc...) and have subverted taxpayer funds or wealth from other sources to fund it.
I have long maintained that islam is not a religion in the commonly understood sense and hence not entitled to First Amendment protections here.
After having let in millions of potential terrorists, ya gotta go big.
You said “coon”’.
;-)
Catering to Islam is what forces the choice - pretending they are just normal citizens with full constitutional rights instead of stomping them into the ground....
This is about crushing dissent.
This will impact US citizens as well.
One of the ways the gov, both their and ours (and others), get around the law is to share intel they allow on each other.
I.e., it’d be illegal for the CIA to bug your house but if MI6 does it and provides its data to the CIA or FBI, that’s considered legal. FBI wouldn’t need a warrant to see it.
Not something I agree with, because the foreign agency is effectiviely acting as a contractor (though unpaid) of the domestic one, so is in effect the same as if a domestic employee did it.
I don’t think that type of argument has been brought to court though.
Keep this in mind when you link to brit media sites like guardian. If the brits slip in some spyware to their media sites, download your hard drive and hand it over to the FBI, as it stands now, it’d be legal.
This is what happens when you have no Constitution - or, when you don’t bother to enforce it. The only reason Britain lasted as long as it did was that it had a civil society. Had, that is.
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