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Comment by bede | Hacker News Reader

Given that our Home Secretary recently stated that 'the UK does not undertake mass surveillance' to the investigatory powers government committee, I can't see this having any semblance of an effect (over here, at least).

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I suspect the legal trick they'll rely on is: "we collect in bulk, but surveillance within that giant haystack of data is only ever aimed at particular persons. We don't want or use the totality of it, but we do need it so we can monitor retroactively."

Which I'd understand, but think they are throwing too much away in pursuit of too little. Still it's how they'll try and dodge. Well, that or "we don't need human rights anyway, can't make us, so neener neener."

Will be interesting how the recent monitoring at work judgement will interact with this.

Under subsequent cross-examination, she might state that they don't regularly weigh the whole national population.

It's a lie, and it's not even certain it's a legal lie until a court has ruled on it.

Indeed. Take last years raid on the bank vault in London. Turns out they had full recordings on their calls. Whilst it did implicate them, how did they have them in the first place? And more interestingly, why to such quality.

From what I understand, they were bugged after the fact.

There is still a bit of a jump (how did they know who to wiretap? It wasn't really reported, afaik), but looking at the biographies of involved parties, they're the sort of people who would have been prime suspects anyway, so choosing to bug them was probably not an improbable decision to take.

They spotted one of them driving nearby in his own car.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35267787 about half-way down.

This will have an effect in the UK - it'll be used by the anti-eu lobby as ammunition, they'll paint it as "the EU is a terror state that supports terror and wants to give a safe space to terrorists and paedophile and bears, oh my!".

Mass Surveillance will grow in response, as the uk's logic will be that it's necessary because Europe don't do it.

I have seen anti-EU folks in the UK supporting the Polish governments attempts to limit press freedom simply because it was the EU that was complaining about it!

The UK executive may say whatever it wants, but if it's sued and the Court takes into account what the ECHR said (as it should), then it should lose.

I expect things like the USA government does, such as surveil you and then when you take them to court say that you don't have enough evidence/standing to prove they did anything. Intelligence agencies monitoring is almost impossible to show if they use techniques like parallel reconstruction.

Here's exactly what I was talking about:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/19/terrorism-act-i...

Unrelated, but it shows that the UK courts care about ECHR rulings. And the standing thing usually happens in the US, not in Europe. European courts rule a lot more on "principle" of doing something, and it matters less if the people accusing the state were involved or not. What matters is evidence that the government did or didn't do something (like mass spying), not whether John Doe was affected by it.

If mass spying is illegal under the European human rights laws, and the governments are found to have engaged in it then the only possible outcome is that they broke the law. Why should it matter if it affected this guy or that guy?

I really think the "no standing" excuse is a very poor one, as it effectively guarantees people have no redress against secret spying against them. That's not what a democratic country should be allowing.

There needs to be judicial redress for everything. Heck, I think the US is about to pass a law that gives EU citizens/foreigners judicial redress against US spying, but the Americans still won't get that. It just goes to show it is possible to have redress, it's just the powers that be don't want you to have it.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1428

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/160...

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