UK Hacking Powers Can Be Challenged in Court, Judge Rules (zdnet.com) 27
A five-year court battle in the United Kingdom has come to an end with the UK Supreme Court ruling that the UK's spy agencies and their hacking activities can be made subject to court challenges. From a report: On Wednesday, the court ruled that the GCHQ's Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) is subject to judicial review in the High Court, which in turn means that the intelligence tribunal's decisions can be exposed, and challenged, based on the law of the land. The IPT is a closed-door and secretive tribunal involved in making decisions relating to the security activities and surveillance performed by UK intelligence and spy agencies, including the GCHQ, MI5, and MI6. The case in question is based on the GCHQ's powers to hack thousands or millions of devices in the quest for intelligence, previously challenged on the basis of human rights. Privacy International launched a legal case in 2014 questioning these powers. A subsequent ruling in 2016 by the IPT determined that the UK government held the right to launch sweeping "thematic" warrants which validated the hacking of devices en masse in the UK and abroad.
Slight conflict of interests, here... (Score:2)
Let's just ignore the specifics, and consider for a moment: This article seems to be suggesting that a court has declared that they themselves have the authority to decide the legitimacy of a given activity -- much to the chagrin of the Parliament. And nobody on that court has considered that perhaps they shouldn't necessarily have the authority to determine the extent of their own authority? Huh.
Yeah... this is clearly not the end of this story.
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No, it's that the tribunal, set up by and for those who wanted to maintain the status quo, to wit, to secretly be able to hack anybody and everybody with mere hand waving and "national security" used to dismiss anyone who had issue with the unaccountability or blanket use thereof, does not have the authority to declare these actions lawful and "nothing to see here".
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Here us the underlying legal problem. In 'hacking' the target computer there is only one thing that they have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and in fact have made it a legal certainty, could the targeted computer be hacked and they have proven that. So the targeted individual could claim the computer had been hacked and prove that his system was insecure by proof of the government hack, it legally doubt, how reasonable or not, down to the security of the system and whether other hacks were recorded and i
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My reason for specifying at the outset that I was ignoring the specifics is that I don't think the specifics (including your commentary thereon) in any way impact the validity of my assertions, much less my conclusion. As I said: This is not the end of this story.
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To have the UK mil/SAS/police get guidance in real time?
Decades of "nothing to see here" let the SAS work all over the UK and Ireland. In other parts of the world too.
Why the legal rush to find out how the UK mil "works" and "wins"? The actions are lawful as the UK gov has command over all its mil at all times.
Malware collection allowed a person/group to be found/collected on/tracked and the SAS gets sent in.
The accountability is the approval of the malwar
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That might be one view, but it is pretty widely accepted, see Marbury v Madison, which was seen as a massive power grab by the US Supreme Court, but has been widely adopted across the common law world.
Privative clauses are on the rise for tribunals though, but this at least establishes that for this tribunal, the courts still have a role.
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It looks like an example of the courts doing what comes naturally in setting/settling case laws.
Parliament creates and approves laws. These laws are written by lawyers not formal logicians. The use of natural language, with the English languages huge vocabulary with multiple words meaning almost but not quite completely the same thing, inevitably leads to some ambiguity and areas of interpretation. Indeed a whole chunk of law is based on what a "reasonable man" (aka the man on the Clapham Omnibus) would t
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The results of hacking powers matter in real time.
Hacking powers let gov/mil/police find people.
Once found the SAS van can move in.
Someone in the UK/Ireland is left with the results of an action by the SAS who used a van to carry out a legal mil task.
What can a lawyer ask of the UK gov/mil/police? A human rights lawyer? An EU court?
Staying within the (When the UK exits the UK? If the exit takes longer and the UK vote to exit is ignored? Full EU laws in the UK?)
Lets s