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Comment by alan_cx | Hacker News Reader

I want to know what all the fuss is about with Murdoch and co hacking phones, if the government and all its agencies are going open season.

Amazingly, I would rather a sleazy newspaper hacked my phone, than the government having complete unfettered access.

And if they have this access, why not bug all our houses, etc. I mean, if you have nothing to hide.....

It really is about time we people took our countries back.

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They've decided that transparency is for the citizens and privacy is for those with power. Instead of the other way around.

"As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped.

Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue.

'You can turn it off!' he said.

'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'"

This is from 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' by George Orwell. You should give credit to the author and more information to your readers.

He’s quoting, so that it’s obvious that he’s not the author. And I’d say that most people here know immediately where the quote comes from. If not, it’s trivial to find the source and more information:

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Julia+uttered+a+tiny+sound

"It's trivially Googleable" is not valid citation. Though I agree it's clearly a quotation, citation would still be preferable.

Thanks, I had no idea where this was from.

The new powers are a minor modification to existing laws. They aim to allow real time (that's the new bit, they already have retro-active) access to meta data, not content. That is, to details about when calls are made, who by, and who to. They still need a warrant if they want access to the content of the calls.

Can you really not see a difference between an over-sighted government spy agency looking at details of who made calls and a newspaper hiring unregistered private detectives to listen to content of calls?

Yes. The government agency is worse.

Ask yourself this: Whom is this agency over-sighted by?

Elected representatives at national level; elected representatives at international level; law enforcement; employees (through various levels of whistle-blowing); and clients.

I might not like the laws under which the various agencies (GCHQ; MI5; MI6; etc) operate, but at least they appear to be mostly legal.

Compare that to recent UK scandals where some reporters appear to be out of control and operating mostly outside the law.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/)

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