GCHQ Does Not Breach Human Rights, Judges Rule 81
An anonymous reader writes The current system of UK intelligence collection does not currently breach the European Convention of Human Rights, a panel of judges has ruled. A case claiming various systems of interception by GCHQ constituted a breach had been brought by Amnesty, Privacy International and others. It followed revelations by the former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden about UK and US surveillance practices. But the judges said questions remained about GCHQ's previous activities. Some of the organisations who brought the case, including Amnesty UK and Privacy International, say they intend to appeal the decision to the European Court of Human Rights.
One hand washes the other (Score:1)
Bloody bourgeois hypocrisy to cover yup the crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages.
Re:One hand washes the other (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One hand washes the other (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that in the UK, Judges have the ability to nullify a law if they consider it onerous or wrong, without being specifically asked to look at the law itself.
One of the many reasons I trust the UK judicial system - its very independent of the current Government.
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Re:One hand washes the other (Score:5, Interesting)
A non-political body called the Judicial Appointments Commission, the 15 members of which include barristers, judges, normal everyday people and legal professionals. The government have no say in appointments, and have no power over the commission - its completely independent.
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A non-political body called the Judicial Appointments Commission, the 15 members of which include barristers, judges, normal everyday people and legal professionals. The government have no say in appointments, and have no power over the commission - its completely independent.
Look at the list of the current commissioners sometime...
normal everyday people eh?, let me see who the lay members are..
former senior civil servant, couple of professors, a top businesswoman, a Lieutenant General Sir... the sort of people I meet every day (well, I *used* to when I worked in Camford..).
oh, for sure, independent..for a given value of independent.
Re:One hand washes the other (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately the NSA can have no dirt on any of the judges, so nothing could go wrong at all.
Oh...
Wait...
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Fortunately the NSA can have no dirt on any of the judges, so nothing could go wrong at all.
Oh...
Wait...
This isn't about 'dirt'; this is about the government's left hand telling you it's okay that the right hand keeps spying on people.
We need this to go to an actual courtroom, not the government lapdog quangos.
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Minor correction - this changed with the introduction of the UK's Supreme Court, whose judges are politically appointed.
The government of the time created it specifically so that they had a top court they could take advantage of when they found that whole independent judiciary thing inconvenient.
You're right we've always had a great system and we do still have a great system for the most part, but the UK's Supreme Court has put an end to that to some degree as the government can always just escalate to them
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So logically if the appointing person is female:
she appointed the judges -> who appointed the judges?
the judges will be appointed by her -> by whor will the judges be appointed?
Somehow this doesn't make sense.
Re:One hand washes the other (Score:4, Informative)
The system is too easily subverted by the government. They made rules to have much of this case in secret, making it impossible to make proper arguments. Judges can only act within the rules set by the government.
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Except that in the UK, Judges have the ability to nullify a law if they consider it onerous or wrong, without being specifically asked to look at the law itself.
You think that's fancy, here in the USA, a jury can nullify the law, at least for the extent of the case. Of course, that doesn't tend to actually happen, not least because judges deliberately lie to juries and tell them that in certain conditions, they must find the defendant guilty. There is no such requirement, and any judge who says so should be removed from the bench. But, you know, good luck.
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Except that in the UK, Judges have the ability to nullify a law if they consider it onerous or wrong, without being specifically asked to look at the law itself.
As I understand it, they can only nullify illegal laws, ie laws that are incompatible with other legislation. If the judge finds law Y illegal because it breaches law X, parliament can vote to repeal law X and reaffirm law Y, and the deed is done.
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The UK has been looking at messages, letters, communications over generations since WW1. With each new generation the ability to sort and store gets better but the laws to access have always been ready.
The digital collection sites are in place. The news about collection was always the same from 1914 to 2014.
The Intelsat collection at Goonhilly Downs in the 1960's.
From the D-notice affair about thousands of private cables and telegrams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] in 9167.
Re:One hand washes the other (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the ones doing the spying are the ones who make the laws. There's no problem at all. Move along, comrade.
Re:One hand washes the other (Score:5, Informative)
Just because the law justifies it doesn't mean it's not a crime. Don't make me break out Godwin to prove my point!
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A few million Jews might want to have a word with you if they were still alive.
There are things that are criminal by definition. Would you consider it ok if whatever constitutional guard exists against violation of personal and intimate room, creating a law that says that any governmental official can at leisure enter your home, search it and take with him whatever he pleases? Because, you know, terrism and that. Make a law and it's ok to do whatever you please?
Question every law you encounter. Test it whet
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Didn't you read? It's not a crime. Just because you personally don't like what they do doesn't mean that it's a crime.
Oh, cool. If it's not a crime, then we all can do what GCHQ does [recalls.gov.au]. Belgacom, here we come! Ur box3z r m1ne? How about Sony? Warner? As long as it's not a crime, that is.
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Simply put, this ruling is meaningless, in the sense that we [and the panel of judges] don't actually know what specifically GCHQ is or is not doing now. We only know bits and pieces of things they may have done in the past.
Remember ... (Score:1)
Next time someone invades your privacy in Europe, please remember, they never violate your human rights !
Captha : regimes
Re:One hand washes the other (Score:5, Interesting)
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Except that nowadays, it's the EU that can't seem to police itself.
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I thought it was to overturn the decisions of national establishment and replace them with decisions made by a supranational establishment instead.
With respect of the human rights laws, they seem to be more of a stick to beat the government with than anything used to really protect human rights - the latest scam from the ambulance chasing human-rights lawyers is the case of a foreign criminal who used the human right to a family life to defend himself from being deported after serving his sentence. Only in
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I thought it was to overturn the decisions of national establishment and replace them with decisions made by a supranational establishment instead.
The European courts cannot creat their own laws - they can only uphold laws that member states have willingly signed up to.
Is state snooping on communications against our human rights? Is it against the human rights legislation?
I think everyone agrees that the East German Stasi were violating people's right to privacy. Do we let the UK away with it just through blind faith that it will never be abused? The security services have always employed the private secrets of innocent, uninvolved civilians to blackmail them into working for them.
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"I thought it was to overturn the decisions of national establishment and replace them with decisions made by a supranational establishment instead."
That's what it does, the person you're responding to gave the reason as to why that's what it does - to prevent anything like Nazi Germany happening again where the government turned on select minorities of their own people leaving those groups with no one to turn to for justice.
"With respect of the human rights laws, they seem to be more of a stick to beat the
The general population isn't human. (Score:1)
Only the elite are human, and therefore, have human rights.
Of course (Score:1)
Odds are that they would also say that if the government was operating worldwide childs molestation rings for profit.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
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As you have just demonstrated, moral relativism can lead to silly arguments. Imprisonment equals "kidnapping"? Only if there is no justice, and that is only one of many considerations you toss.
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Manning: Justice was served.
Snowden: Like the case of the accused rapist Assange justice is denied as he is a fugitive.
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Although your handle is "misexistentialist" your understanding seems to be based on Dada.
It's all pretty much just random, eh?
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kidnap kidnap/ verb: gerund or present participle: kidnapping take (someone) away illegally by force, typically to obtain a ransom.
In other words, law is giving the government leeway to do what would not be moral to do in to do in the general case. Who's responsible to pass laws ? Government. This is a blatant conflict of interest. Don't talk to me about "democracy", we're merely given the choice every few years to choose our dictator.
Surprise, suprise (Score:1)
They would say that wouldn't they. Nothing to worry about, move along now sir.
Re:SHUT THE FRACK UP, SLASHDOT! (Score:4, Informative)
You'd think that the average slashdot user knows how to install adblockplus...
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Thank you for mention, adblockplus - i never heard of this before now. I am so pissed off that Slashdot does this - we wanted to be different from the so-common pigs on the Web. I guess not.
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Why does Slashdot never fix this problem? It's not the first time when I hear people being riled up by intrusive ads over here, especially ones which play audio.
Sometimes this website feels like a ghost ship without anyone in control. :-O
Merkel is a terrorist?? (Score:1)
Well that's a nonsense ruling, Merkel and EU Parliament were spied on, and those targets are political not national security targets. and the data is given to the NSA, this tribunal does not cover the NSA and it cannot vouch or enforce anything the NSA does with that data, clearly if politicians are spied on, then this data is misused.
Any "No-spy" agreement between the UK, US and other 5 eyes, does not extend to Europe yet the privacy right covers Europeans.
Likewise claiming the data is proportionate, when
Perfidious Albion... (Score:2)
There is no hope that anyone there can effect any change, as with the US.
Refuse to hire ex-GCHQ or NSA employees. Make sure they know they're personally accountable for this.
Expansion of Rights (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)