UK Investigatory Powers Bill: Politicians exempt themselves from new laws
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
On the other hand, the protections may serve useful some day should they suddenly locate their spines—or perhaps a wave of vertebrate politicians somehow takes office. Either way, the protections would make it easier for the newly-granted surveillance powers to be revoked. Wishful thinking, of course.
At least the UK doesn't waste time on charades like we do here in the US—serving up deprecated or redundant surveillance programs on the altar of political sacrifice while other, more compartmented programs (usually broader and more invasive in scope) seamlessly take their place. Then again, perhaps there's just not enough public opposition to justify the effort in the first place.
There are exemptions in English an European law about crime prevention but it's surprising that "slurp all the data" meets the prpotional test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Harman#2009_wiretap.2FAIP...
Of course, sometimes it's just easier to poorly fabricate supposedly-intercepted communications, do the political damage, and then refuse to divulge any evidence citing either classification grounds or the absence of an investigation.
From a pragmatic point of view, it may have some utility. It's easier to fight surveillance when you're not being actively blackmailed by said surveillance.
The counterargument there is that it's also easier not to care about surveillance reform when you know you're insulated from the surveillance in the first place. Likely a false sense of security, though.
If it only protects those in power it's actually the reverse, since democracy is supposed to be a 'battle of ideas' to prevent physical battles, giving the winning side the upper hand would weaken the system
Fine, then let's protect ordinary people from being coerced or blackmailed, too.
Oh you mean poor ordinary people? You sweet summer child.
A good barometer for deciding if proposed legislation is helpful or harmful: figure out who the law applies to first and who it applies to last.
See here for one example [0]. The SEC does have rules against it, so it's not entirely on a case-by-case basis [1]. It's just the SEC isn't supposed to write law.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-12-11/whats-nex...
It isn't really.
https://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/2011/ts120111rsk.htm
> There is no express statutory definition of the offense of insider trading in securities.3 The SEC prosecutes insider trading under the general antifraud provisions of the Federal securities laws, most commonly Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) and Rule 10b-5, a broad anti-fraud rule promulgated by the SEC under Section 10(b). Section 10(b) declares it unlawful “[t]o use or employ, in connection with the purchase or sale of any security . . . any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance in contravention of such rules and regulations as the Commission may prescribe as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors.”4 Rule 10b-5 broadly prohibits fraud and deception in connection with the purchase and sale of securities. As the Supreme Court has stated, “Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 prohibit all fraudulent schemes in connection with the purchase or sale of securities, whether the artifices employed involve a garden type variety of fraud, or present a unique form of deception,” because “[n]ovel or atypical methods should not provide immunity from the securities laws.”5
Congress wrote some very broad anti-fraud laws, never amended them, and left it up to the SEC to exercise its discretion on what qualified as such practices.
And it doesn't write the law, it writes regulation. Which, on this specific subject, it absolutely is supposed to under the law [0] (and if the law didn't specifically authorize the regulations and criminalize violations of them, the regulations wouldn't support criminal prosecution.)
[0] 15 USC § 78j, particularly subsection (b)
https://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/2011/ts120111rsk.htm
> There is no express statutory definition of the offense of insider trading in securities.3 The SEC prosecutes insider trading under the general antifraud provisions of the Federal securities laws, most commonly Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) and Rule 10b-5, a broad anti-fraud rule promulgated by the SEC under Section 10(b). Section 10(b) declares it unlawful “[t]o use or employ, in connection with the purchase or sale of any security . . . any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance in contravention of such rules and regulations as the Commission may prescribe as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors.”4 Rule 10b-5 broadly prohibits fraud and deception in connection with the purchase and sale of securities. As the Supreme Court has stated, “Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 prohibit all fraudulent schemes in connection with the purchase or sale of securities, whether the artifices employed involve a garden type variety of fraud, or present a unique form of deception,” because “[n]ovel or atypical methods should not provide immunity from the securities laws.”5
Its very, very broad anti-fraud laws.
Incorrect. While most insider trading prosecutions are done under antifraud provisions of the law, and SEC rules adopted ubder that provision, there is also law directly limiting certain trades of certain insiders (e.g., 15 USC 78p).
> Insider trading is something the courts came up with based on an expanded meaning of fraud.
Even to the extent that we're talking about the kind of insider trading that is prosecutrd,ubder antifraud provisions, this is somewhat misleading in that those provisions are themselves framed differently than the common law definition of fraud, it is not,that the courts have applied an expanded definition of fraud.
That's not an exception added because the specific law was onerous; it's a consequence of the absolute Constitutional immunity for all floor action in the Speech and Debate Clause, which supercedes any attempt to criminalize anything. Congress has no power to criminalize Congressional debate.
The insider trading one is more legitimate, however.
Now it seems hypocritical on the surface for congress to not play by the rules it sets for others, especially when talking about diversity in hiring.
But keep in mind how anti-discrimination law works in the US. Usually someone who feels they were denied a job because of their outward appearance will complain to a government agency, such as the EEOC. In some cases, they will also file a lawsuit, which the government may join.
One can imagine how much havoc a group of people could wreak by applying for congressional staff jobs, then suing when they weren't offered one. Discovery alone in discrimination cases takes months if not years.
I think in the case of government surveillance, it might make more sense to pay more attention to those inside government - who historically have been the source of most successful coups d'etat - than to the proletariat.
And one would think that a body such as parliament or us congress would welcome additional scrutiny -- at least to counter the perception that they are all crooks -- but such conjecture strays into political heresy, I fear.
And so both deserve to be at the bottom of a nose gaze.
Will it prevent their data from being collected? No. Do warrants magically seal data away from human eyes? No. Will contractors and administrators and bored people with access on the job have access? Yes.
Therefore, does it actually protect them from the force of the bill? Not really. Sure, the police couldn't use bulk collected data in a case against an MP without the PM's say-so, but what's to stop Boz Admin selling their porn history to a newspaper?
Nothing.
No, what is actually relevant about the exemption is the breathtaking naivety and shortsightedness of those in power when confronted with something they don't fully comprehend revealed by its existence. If they actually understood the Greek fire they're playing with they would not have passed the legislation.
It's up there with a president-elect saying "it's visually important for me to...", plainly echoing what a spin-doctor adviser said to him, equally revealing the small minds behind the great Oz.
The crushing nature of a surveillance state comes only in a small part from centralised orchestrated action. Most of it is crushingly mundane - an officer wants to boff your wife, so you are a pedophile and you divorce. The soviet's daughter got mud on her dress at your garage so the place is shut down for code violations, and mysteriously the soviet's son is running the place next week. Your neighbour who works at equifax doesn't like your face so your credit score goes down.
The more centralised the truth is the easier it is for dirty hands to rewrite it.
Our organizations don't reward the smartest, but those who gain the most power and sway others.
Any law they strive to pass will increase their power. That they seek to circumvent any law is a clear sign they fear it will reduce the power of those impacted by it. They don't have to be effective in their efforts to reveal the truth of the situation:
This law weakens those it applies to people and democracy.
The NSA developments in recent years have shown that while privacy protections do exist that limit access to collected data (e.g. FISA warrants), they're still collecting everything on everyone regardless. The intercepted data then rots in a huge database for years at a minimum—in practice probably indefinitely.
In what was one of the the most brilliant legal/public relations plays in recent history, NSA decided to play a shell game with the definitions of the terms "collection" and "targeting", redefining them (when convenient) as the accessing of data—by humans—that's already been intercepted and stored.
A good example of the distinction is the raw audio of a domestic phone call in the US. First it's intercepted in bulk, then automatically sent to DSP hardware for transcription into a searchable text log.
That wouldn't qualify as "collection" as the NSA defines it until a human analyst actually listened to or laid eyes upon the data.
Automated analysis programs looking for keywords or specific patterns of behavior within the data probably require legal authorization as well. However, it's unclear if the legal authorizations such programs operate under are broad in nature, or issued individually in a more explicit manner.
So at least if a shifty employee feels like taking a look at the data, or leaks the data, or an ISP gets hacked, our MP's browsing history will be exposed too.
The lack of technological literacy amongst the populus and the utter contempt which the government has towards privacy and anonymity is very disheartening.
Has the data collection started? Is it about to start?
I think we can assume it's been going on for years already.
At the behest of this Act? No, not yet. It has yet to be determined and ordered how "Internet Connection Records" will be collected and stored; perhaps this will occur at backhauls and exchange levels, rather than at the terminating ISP level. Much easier to implement and for the 'authorities' to query.
This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.
https://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRe...
Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.
We are WAY overdue for a culling of the ruling class.
I'm under no illusion that revolutions are bloodless, but I believe that sometimes they are the the only option when system becomes so corrupt and rigged in favour of a small, wealthy, ruling elite.
The French Revolution for example which was grisly as all fuck and the years of instability afterwards can not be understated. Yet I do believe that what eventually came out of it (the French Republic) is far, far better than what came before the people started chopping the heads off the insane, greedy, oppressive aristrocracy.
There are of course counter-examples. The Russian revolution. Though was the revolution itself the problem there, or the people that commandeered it for themselves in the years afterwards (e.g. Stalin)?
I cannot see a way to fix the current system. The populace is so suppressed in ways that are sometimes subtle as fuck. Decades of demagogue politicians playing on fears, dividing the demographics into us-versus-them tribes out for blood, fostering the paranoia and fear of the foreigner, engaging in massive orgies of deregulation of financial services that cause crash after econimic crash, where the average schmuck picks up the bill and those reponsible get to carry on as normal.
Repealing basic services like welfare and healthcare, fostering resentment between age groups, racial groups and classes as a misdirection of attention from the actual cause of our current ills, socially irresponsible banks and financial services that have no tangible value to society other than to move money around.
Intelligence services and police forces focused on inward threats from their own people lest they somehow upset the status quo of funneling up the wealth of nations into the hands of a few oligarchs at the top of the pyramid.
Western democracy is completely fucked. It has been corrupted and made a sick facsimile of what it was intended to be. There is no fixing this system without massive civil unrest, and that impending civil unrest is why (I believe) we are witnessing the insance lurch towards authoritarianism and watering down of basic rights all over Europe and the US, it's those with a lot to lose preparing themselves.
And they are winning. They will continue to fuck us all as long as we keep falling for the whole 'terrorist', 'immigrants', 'paedophile', 'hackers' bullshit as a reason why they must keep taking away our rights and liberties.
We are frogs slowly boiling alive in the cooking pot.
"beginning with the historical observation that societies always have hierarchically divided themselves into social classes and castes: the High (who rule); the Middle (who work for, and yearn to supplant the High), and the Low (whose goal is quotidian survival). Cyclically, the Middle deposed the High, by enlisting the Low. Upon assuming power, however, the Middle (the new High class) recast the Low into their usual servitude. In the event, the classes perpetually repeat the cycle, when the Middle class speaks to the Low class of "justice" and of "human brotherhood" in aid of becoming the High class rulers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oli...
1) Orwell as himself a democratic socialist, writing on behalf of democratic socialism.
2) The level of stratification between high, middle, and low varies massively across time and place. More egalitarian societies have actually existed.
What happens to the pigs in the end? The farm seems much happier without them..
If I recall correctly, they turn themselves into equivalents to humans (the bourgeoisie), invite the humans over for a big banquet, and gloat over their exploitation of the other animals.
"the Revolution devours its children"
Corbyn catches flak because despite loudly proclaiming how straight talking and honest and pure he is, he refuses to disavow Marx (rather: dodged a question asking him to in a classic politician style), and praised Fidel Castro, both men whose ideas and policies caused profound suffering on a massive scale. That rather implies that if Corbyn ever got anywhere near actual power he'd rapidly start abusing it.
Mandatory reselection after boundary changes should see to that.
Doesn't the UK have a similarly entrenched party system to Canada and the US, with first-past-the-post districts for MPs and all that?
But trying to coordinate your constituency to vote for someone from a minor party makes arguably a little more sense than demanding that politicians be sent to the guillotine, which is where my comment started.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vot...
The government should not be able to use the tools of state to suppress legitimate parliamentary opposition. There would be nothing to stop the party in power using the law to specifically target opposing parties.
For the rest of us here in the UK, your traffic is already being collated and probably has been for some time.
Why not introduce a law that further decouples intelligence agencies and the government. It could be made mandatory that information released by agencies are released to all members of parliament. This way, the government gets more transparency, and the people also get more transparency indirectly.
Just my 2 pence.
Or we could choose 1 MP per party to be informed.
It's just that they don't believe those same privileges should extend to everyone else.
Note the use of the word 'privileges' rather than rights, because once parliament starts making that distinction between groups that have them and groups that don't that's exactly what they become.
(Obvious exceptions would be necessary for things that are truly national security secrets, etc).
That's the problem. Corruption in the UK isn't perceived as such, because they go to greater lengths to hide it. That doesn't change the fact that UK politics are rotten to the core and their politics have a much bigger global effect. Remember when London bankers recently manipulated the stock market and got away with it?
And let's not ignore that Transparency International themselves are somewhat shady. They gave Hillary Clinton an award for integrity and that's only the funniest of their failings.
That's a very simplistic and primitive way to look at it. For one, there are more and wealthier people involved so the costs are shared. Profits are also bigger, because the UK is better connected, so the increased investment costs are acceptable.