> police hacking of journalists and protestors
Because they are the real terrorists. I seriously think they had dissidents in mind when pushing for all those "anti-terror" surveillance laws.
Because they are the real terrorists. I seriously think they had dissidents in mind when pushing for all those "anti-terror" surveillance laws.
This doesn't add up for me yet, because I don't understand what the supposed motive is. Do the police have much interest in journalists accounts? I mean really, what's the thinking here? Are London police ignoring murders of journalists? The UK is hardly an autocracy.
Frankly we should wait to see what the IPCC says. This could easily be entirely fabricated, the only corroboration was information that would be accessible to cybercriminals, not anything that implicates law enforcement specifically.
Not only autocracies do this kind of evil. Especially now that the (deeps state) ruling class consists mainly of capitalist, you can see that the police targeting dissidents fits a clear motive.
Sorry I don't think you should state conspiracy theories as fact without someone calling you on it. There are reasons for police to spy on activists (even illegally) without needing to assert the existence of a "deep state"
EDIT: to clarify, above where I say "reasons" I mean just that, not "reasons that I necessarily agree with"
These are people with political views the government disapproves of. They are not bomb-throwing anarchists or people with a history of violence. They are not organising or threatening acts of public violence.
This is entirely a free speech issue.
Animal rights protestors have firebombed[1] several UK department stores (for selling fur), and abattoirs and milk distribution depots; dug up a corpse from a grave and held the body hostage; rescued animals from labs and caused damage to the labs;
Far right groups have rallies that attract considerable violence; an English politician was murdered by a far right extremist.
Illegal surveillance is obviously, unambiguously, wrong. The people who did it need to face both disciplinary action and criminal prosecution.
There's real "people harming" evil all over our societies. Evil towards rather innocent people that destroys lives and kills, often benefiting the perpetrators (financially, or by pushing their agenda). These, to me, are the only crimes that need tough surveillance.
So under your definition of terrorism someone needs to be injured? You're diverging from the dictionary a little there.
Some kinds of animal-rights attacks on shops or universities could qualify, especially ones using indiscriminate methods like car bombs. But I don't see how it makes sense, apart from wanting to use pejorative hyperbole, to use "terrorism" to describe sabotage that damages equipment on a lab or farm, things like throwing paint or glue on things, short-circuiting electronics, etc. We already have the perfectly good words "sabotage" and "saboteur" to describe those acts and the people who carry them out. If these all start being grouped under "terrorism", then we end up with absurdities like describing the Boston Tea Party as an 18th-century terrorist attack, which I've actually seen people do, but I don't think is useful.
The comment I replied to generalised the work of these activists as "potential property damage"... which in the case of the Animal Liberation Front's firebombing campaign, or the plan to interfere with the safe operation of a nuclear power station is incorrect. They're both acts that put lives at risk and clearly intend to cause fear beyond the event.
I mentioned a group that stole a corpse from a grave.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/12/animalwelfare.top...
> The militants, including a vicar's son and a psychiatric nurse, led what they called a "holocaust" against a farm which bred guinea pigs for medical research. Jon Ablewhite, John Smith and Kerry Whitburn pursued a six-year hate campaign against Darley Oaks farm in Newchurch, Staffordshire. Whitburn's girlfriend, Josephine Mayo, was sentenced to four years for a lesser part in the campaign.
> Almost 100 people connected to the farm were targeted. Explosive devices were sent to some, mail threatening to kill and maim to others. There were attacks on homes, cars and businesses. The relentless campaign culminated in the theft of the body of Gladys Hammond, a close relative of the Hall family who ran the farm, from her grave in October 2004.
> For months, activists taunted the Halls, telling them the body would be returned if they closed the farm. The body was found only last week in woodland after Smith told the authorities where it was.
This is a campaign of violence, against people, for political reasons.
Firebombing department stores to stop them selling fur is terrorism by most definitions of the word.
Don't forget that arson is a particular type of criminal damage and carries much heavier sentences because it's so dangerous.
No-one even knows why they were infiltrating them in the first place. The Met has got seriously out of control. Undercover officers with crazy fake identities not investigating crimes but acting as stasi agents.
This is not a surprise nor particularly unbelievable.
Talk to some anarchists, activists and others that may be labeled as dissidents by the capitalists ruling class. They will clearly tell you their motives: keep the status quo from being seriously challenged, allowing the rich get richer at the expense of the broader societies and the environment they exploit.
The police had legal surveillance powers available to them, but chose not to use them.
Now they face both disciplinary action and criminal prosecution; and the victims can sue for damages.
Journalists may have information that the state may want to know. For instance, you'd want to know if a new Snowden is leaking info to more Guardian journalists. It's wrong and worrisome, of course, but I'm not surprised in the least.
Authoritarians (like cops, broadly speaking) have always tried to spy on people who might subvert their own authority and the status quo, like protestors, activists, and the journalists who cover such things and who keep in touch with such people. It has ever been thus.
Social reformers sometimes actually change things - think of the labor movement, the civil rights movement - but foreign terror against random civilians usually only re-enforces the social order and the status of cops. The cops are, and have historically been, more concerned with domestic journalists than with foreign terrorists or even actual criminals.
"Cops caught spying on journalists and activists, won't even apologize" has been a pretty common headline for many decades.