Where there's already a somewhat tired Verizon thread with its opening post justifiably slinging a barb at the US intelligence community and what governs it, maybe its time to address what's coming home to roost.
Those not familiar with the John Le Carré crowd should know that British intelligence (forget the oxymoron for the moment:p) believes checks and balances to be something that one fills out for payments or looks at to see how much is left in the bank. So, it appears, does the UK government itself.
There's something called schedule 7 (of the UK terrorism act 2000) under which UK police can stop, examine and search passengers at ports, airports and international rail terminals.
Nothing sensational as such but here it comes.......
They are not required to have any reasonable suspicion, can nevertheless detain the "customer" for up to nine hours and are entitled to seize anything in his/her possession, being compelled to return it within seven days but meanwhile entitled to download anything on laptops, tablets, phones etc.
All this not to ascertain that you just pushed your granny down the stairs (for that you need reasonable suspicion) but to ensure that you're either a terrorist or not (for which you apparently don't).
Well, for those that have missed it, guy called Miranda got himself held at Heathrow Airport on just those standards. He's (live-in) partner to a journalist from the Guardian that published a load of Edward Snowden's stuff, basically the technology and methodology (as known) of how NSA and GCHQ have gone to blanket surveillance of whole nations, incredibly even their own. Something that is currently causing legal stir in the US since the concept of checks and balances is understood there properly.
In the UK it can't cause any legal stir because it's not illegal. And yes, if you know something about the UK, you've probably guessed it:----it's not legal either. All on the principle of if you don't want to lose loopholes, don't put anything into writing and where you really have to, keep it vague, ambiguous and confusing.
The Guardian journalist in question has now made a claim that UK officials (basically the metropolitan police accompanied by a couple of obscure heavies) visited him earlier and forced him to smash some hard disks in the cellar on the principle of destroying information that may aid terrorists. And threatened him with legal action if he didn't. Now get that one, they didn't even have a court injunction in hand, they said they'd get one.
And of course:rolleyes:, letting terrorists know that their telecommications are all under heavy surveillance is aiding and abetting, seeing how they now know to quickly throw away their i-phones and close their facebook accounts, something that would obviously not have occurred to them before under their own steam.
Whether the Guardian journalists story will find verification? Well, gubmint won't comment on matters of security.
The ECOHR (European Court of Human Rights) is going to love this one, provided it ever gets there and a couple of Smiley's heavies don't go and blow it up beforehand.:rolleyes: Because there's not going to be any recourse on this by any British justice system, I don't think.
In the US at least one has the saying of what happens when giving up freedom for safety, in the UK larger parts of both establishment and population have clearly been brainwashed into believing the two are the same.
Welcome to the goon show (and I don't mean the people).
Those not familiar with the John Le Carré crowd should know that British intelligence (forget the oxymoron for the moment:p) believes checks and balances to be something that one fills out for payments or looks at to see how much is left in the bank. So, it appears, does the UK government itself.
There's something called schedule 7 (of the UK terrorism act 2000) under which UK police can stop, examine and search passengers at ports, airports and international rail terminals.
Nothing sensational as such but here it comes.......
They are not required to have any reasonable suspicion, can nevertheless detain the "customer" for up to nine hours and are entitled to seize anything in his/her possession, being compelled to return it within seven days but meanwhile entitled to download anything on laptops, tablets, phones etc.
All this not to ascertain that you just pushed your granny down the stairs (for that you need reasonable suspicion) but to ensure that you're either a terrorist or not (for which you apparently don't).
Well, for those that have missed it, guy called Miranda got himself held at Heathrow Airport on just those standards. He's (live-in) partner to a journalist from the Guardian that published a load of Edward Snowden's stuff, basically the technology and methodology (as known) of how NSA and GCHQ have gone to blanket surveillance of whole nations, incredibly even their own. Something that is currently causing legal stir in the US since the concept of checks and balances is understood there properly.
In the UK it can't cause any legal stir because it's not illegal. And yes, if you know something about the UK, you've probably guessed it:----it's not legal either. All on the principle of if you don't want to lose loopholes, don't put anything into writing and where you really have to, keep it vague, ambiguous and confusing.
The Guardian journalist in question has now made a claim that UK officials (basically the metropolitan police accompanied by a couple of obscure heavies) visited him earlier and forced him to smash some hard disks in the cellar on the principle of destroying information that may aid terrorists. And threatened him with legal action if he didn't. Now get that one, they didn't even have a court injunction in hand, they said they'd get one.
And of course:rolleyes:, letting terrorists know that their telecommications are all under heavy surveillance is aiding and abetting, seeing how they now know to quickly throw away their i-phones and close their facebook accounts, something that would obviously not have occurred to them before under their own steam.
Whether the Guardian journalists story will find verification? Well, gubmint won't comment on matters of security.
The ECOHR (European Court of Human Rights) is going to love this one, provided it ever gets there and a couple of Smiley's heavies don't go and blow it up beforehand.:rolleyes: Because there's not going to be any recourse on this by any British justice system, I don't think.
In the US at least one has the saying of what happens when giving up freedom for safety, in the UK larger parts of both establishment and population have clearly been brainwashed into believing the two are the same.
Welcome to the goon show (and I don't mean the people).