UK intelligence agency admits unlawfully spying on Privacy International | Hacker News Reader

UK intelligence agency admits unlawfully spying on Privacy International

privacyinternational.org

178 pointsseverine32 comments

I think that historically law enforcement and intelligence agencies are strongly leaning to the right. They use the power granted by citizens to do their jobs and use it to pursue their personal political agendas.

"The activist, Kate Wilson, had a two-year intimate relationship with Mark Kennedy, who was known to her as Mark Stone. She only found out in 2010 that he had been an undercover officer tasked with infiltrating environmental protest groups." https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/21/uk/uk-police-spy-activist...

Instead of investigating power corruption, the relationship between far-right groups and Russia, etc. UK thinks that infiltrating "environmental groups" and using government resources to allow an spy to have sex with an activist is more important, because "environmental activists" are bad...

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world have a problem with lack of professionalism were personal political agendas triumph doing the duty that they have been tasked to do. That is why they are so inefficient and things like the Russian meddling with Brexit and the USA elections happen.

And if there are no consequences, they will continue to do so.

Surveillance is no partisan issue anymore. With the absence of further evidence, I believe the Russian influence, not by the lack of trying, is limited in scope. Brexit and US elections have more believable domestic policy explanations. On the contrary, I think these stories serve as justification to fortify intelligence powers.

Like you said, I believe it has been historically a domain further to the right. Currently, it is not a partisan issue anymore.

We even have testimony that at least to some degree federal agencies in the US were fiercely situated in other political camps. This is of course the fundamental argument for limiting powers of any intelligence agency.

> I think that historically law enforcement and intelligence agencies are strongly leaning to the right.

Lots of law enforcement lean left due to being in unions and government protections. Even in the intelligence community, a lot lean left.

I think you are confusing right with authoritarism. Law enforcement and the intelligence community lean to authoritarism. There are authoritarian left and authoritarian right. Both extremes hate freedom and love control.

The worst form of authoritarianism occurred when extremist left ( socialists ) joined extremist right ( nationalists ) and created nazi germany.

> That is why they are so inefficient and things like the Russian meddling with Brexit and the USA elections happen.

So you want intelligence agencies to tell the people how to vote? They do that already. And if they are rightists as you claim, wouldn't you want them to be less effective?

Your comment contradicts itself.

We are beginning to look like fake democracies. The press and commentators seem to have no trouble getting 'charged up' about China or Russia but there is a shocking absence of scrutiny and outrage about actions at home.

What makes this absurd is its being done in a 'democracy' making that word increasingly meaningless as a marker. Activities that define a surveillance state cannot coalesce into 'western democracy' without rendering it meaningless.

Its unlikely without mainstream protest the surveillance state project will simply fold on its own. And the dangerous dynamic of denial and dissonance that systematically focuses attention and outrage on 'the other' is letting citizens and media affect commitment to these values while letting their own governments off the hook.

Yea

It's less democracy and more rule of law what is sacrificed, imho. Which is way more important.

If organisations critical of the government are prevented from doing their work, voters will be less informed, and democracy takes a hit.

You either have a democratic legitimacy or you rule by power. If you have power to rule, you have power to change legislation at will. So it becomes rather meaningless.

So, if you refer to western democracies, the one necessitates the other anyway.

And in this case, surveillance as part of the executive branch of a government can have a severe and chilling penalty to any form of democratic decision-making process.

As surveillance is more and more about computers, networks and not people running with microphones...

Maybe IT sector, like Medical, should have their Hippocratic Oath, and we should enforce it among our peers.

Too many times I read that some Organisations do evil things. Each of these organisations is made up of people, and good deal of them is some kind of IT specialist. Without IT supporting these actions, maybe, these orgs would not get as far with evil as they are getting to today.

Remember times when a thing like this would cause an outrage?

Honestly? No. It's only ever been a small group of us techies and lefties that get outraged. The general public is far more likely to be demanding that Something Be Done. European countries with a recent history of fascist occupation or the Stasi have a much more intuitive understanding of the risks.

Alas, the 'Alternative fuer Deutschland' is more popular in the formerly Stasi-plagued East than in the West. So the 'more intuitive understanding of the risks' might not work that well?

That has nothing to do with their perception of risk regarding surveillance.

The supporters of the AfD view the current establishment as their main enemy and it has everything to do with their views on migration.

If the AfD was openly campaigning to introduce surveillance laws those same areas would not be in favour of them.

(At least that is what I have come to understand about them as a foreigner living in Germany)

Thanks. I have been living as a German abroad for all of AfD's rise.

> Remember times when a thing like this would cause an outrage?

Most news on the web is USA centric. I suspect if you replaced Privacy International with EFF, you'd get much more outrage.

I need to be educated about why this is a big deal. I’m sure MI5 will be doing the same to Greenpeace, Amnesty and others too. What does the law say, that they can’t tap phones/gather data without a good reason?

Most countries have laws limiting the scope of the activity of it's spies. In this case the headline covers wether this latest activity did break one of those laws:

> UK intelligence agency admits unlawfully spying on Privacy International

There's a lot of law that limits the activities of states in general, and when government oversteps these bounds it's a big deal because when they continue to do it you risk the foundations of the state itself, allowing for authoritarianism, dictators etc. etc.

Slightly off topic, however, I always wonder if there is a team of spooks out there producing propaganda in the comments for people on hacker news.

I'm fairly confident there are. Social media manipulation is a key element of the spook brigades' agenda. They're there to influence what people think, after all.

Very obviously so on mainstream social media.

I'm on some tiny, tiny progressive forums and we regularly see pretenders - posters who make the right noises in a "I don't really understand this, so I'll do my own parody version" way - and spoilers who post random and/or obviously divisive crap from strange IPs which disappear as soon damage is done.

And not just spooks.

I mentioned glyphosphate in a FB post once, and I was immediately jumped on by a couple of aggressive posters who denied it caused cancer, said there was no scientific evidence it caused cancer, and so on - which was an epic overreaction and hilariously disturbing, because Roundup and cancer were some way from the main topic.

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

Thank you. An atmosphere has been created, that trys to make anybody that puts information about the secret services psyops out there an alex jones conspiracy theorist. Western secret services have morphed into the East German Stazi.

I guess there would be. Is there anything forum mods could do to repel it?

Based on what we learned from the Snowden docs I would be very surprised if HN didn't have NSA/GCHQ shills poisoning conversation.

I wasn't shocked at all because UK is part of the 5-eyes alliance, so pretty much everything is monitored

"What we do: We are developing principles, policy positions and research, that will identify the changes we all need"

It'd be more useful to develop actual privacy end user software and tools, imho. All Safari 12 users lost adblocker extentions overnight :)

Is it just me, or do all of these state operated bulk data spying programs come off as incredibly rapey?

NSA: hey, can I read your email?

Me: nah, I really don't know you that well...I like my privacy, and frankly don't really trust you with my data... You tend to accidentally leak it to hackers, because you're irresponsible.

NSA: I'm gonna read your email. Read every single message. Every byte. Every bit.

Me: okay that's creepy as fuck, please go away.

NSA: ahhh yeha I'm taking your email to party town! I'm looking at all your contacts now

Me:Jesus just get the fuck away... Aren't you funded by my tax dollars? Why am I paying you sick fucks???

NSA: cause we are the NSA, and you don't have a goddam choice. We are gonna take whatever we want from you, and you are gonna smile and bend over, cause there are no other options!

Me: yeah okay well maybe this is why the 2nd amendment is a THING

U ok boo?

Ah yea, mostly, just frustrated that they just keep creepin on all of us. No means no, ya know?

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