Northern Ireland police unlawfully put reporters under surveillance | Hacker News Reader

Northern Ireland police unlawfully put reporters under surveillance

reuters.com

106 pointscampuscodi27 comments

It shouldn't be amazing but it is endlessly surprising to me that authorities cannot stop abusing their authority to spy on their fellow citizens. The articles doesn't clarify whether this is a case of "shootings are happening right now and we are spying on the reporters for a day or two because there is an urgent need to protect people and maybe their sources will help us", or whether it was "we were irritated that they figured some things out, it was an easy lazy way to try to find out who was giving them info".

Authorities will spy on us when given the opportunity for expediency. With everyone carrying around phone/tracking device, your recent vintage car comes with one and then there are just things like tagging devices, apple tags etc.

What we need are serious penalties for this spying, but ha ha we are going in the opposite direction. I'm not even in the UK, but I figure authorities in the US are doing this kind of thing too. They try to get text messages, all kinds of surveilance is going on.

> It shouldn't be amazing but it is endlessly surprising to me that authorities cannot stop abusing their authority to spy on their fellow citizens.

The relationship between the UK and Ireland is less like that of fellow citizens and more like that of a colonial occupier.

This article is about the PSNI, a documentary released in 2017, and surveillance in 2018. While the history between NI, the rest of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland is obviously relevant, it’s a bit of a stretch to reduce this to the relationship between the UK and Ireland.

It's really not. The existence of NI as part of the UK is not something that Irish nationalists have historically been very happy with. They aren't in charge, and the people who are in charge are scared shitless of them ever getting truculent again.

And they try to pre-empt it in the only way that they know how.

You misspelled gangsters, terrorists, and thugs who murdered civilians willingly. I'll say the same about the RUC, which at its worst was a facade for loyalist paramilitaries. But let's not pretend a revival of the Troubles will do anything or that the UK wouldn't hand over NI if a durable majority wanted it that way.

I’m aware of the broad history, and I’m not claiming the PSNI is particularly neutral or otherwise unwilling to engage in these tactics. However, discourse that reduces the PSNI abusing power to a UK vs. Ireland conflict doesn’t promote holding the appropriate features of society and institutions accountable as they should be.

From the article:

> Birney and McCaffrey were arrested in 2018 over the alleged theft of material used in the documentary from Northern Ireland's police ombudsman and claimed they were subject to covert surveillance before and after the release of the film.

The PSNI overreacted in this case over concerns that information was leaking from the police regulator. Keep in mind that at the time of the documentary's release, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the PSNI's predecessor organisation) was undertaking a massive decades-long counter-terrorist operation that involved suppressing terrorist organisations on both sides of the conflict, and that many of these terrorist organisations still exist and remain heavily involved in organised crime.

While the PSNI acted illegally in these raids, it's easy to see that their motivation stemmed from a need to investigate any leaks, which, if they had existed, would almost certainly have put lives (informants) at risk.

It's not always some grand conspiracy. At least in the UK, it's usually honest people doing their best and getting it wrong.

The Peelers have historically not been known for their honesty when interacting with Catholics. Racism serves as an institutional tool for harassment and the justification of power over certain groups. There is no genuine honesty in these practices, even if they are ostensibly used to prevent violence.

>they were arrested over a documentary that alleged police collusion in the 1994 murder of six Catholic soccer fans.

> their motivation stemmed from a need to investigate any leaks

It is 100% of the time motivated from a desire to investigate leaks and find sources. If you think this is a justification, you will always be in favor of the surveillance of journalists.

> It's not always some grand conspiracy. At least in the UK, it's usually honest people doing their best and getting it wrong.

If they were honest, they'd admit that they neither believe in journalism, nor the protection of journalists' sources. Some do admit that, but most don't.

Perhaps removing the informant from the field would be a less productive but legal solution to preserve their life?

I don’t think non-secret police has the right to overpass it’s rights even for any good with honest sentiment. How useful is a legal framework that can be trespassed in case of lives at risk, in a violent context where people get murdered?

We should refrain to call conspiracy easily but if I would be caught, "honest people doing their best" is how I’d try to defend myself.

- "I figure authorities in the US are doing this kind of thing too"

It's endemic, and coincidentally there was a bill that failed in the US senate just last week that was meant to put to a halt to it—Wyden's "Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act",

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5033592-cotton-blocks-fe...

https://www.wired.com/story/press-act-journalism-shield-law-...

Every institutions #1 priority is to amass power and perpetuate itself. Of course the violence arm of the state engages in extralegal surveillance and extralegal intelligence gathering and extralegal violence to these ends of course it curries favor with the arms of government it seeks to ally itself with by offering to do so on their behalf on a limited basis.

Speaking about the police specifically, or perhaps more generally the executive branch of the state, the only thing that checks this power is the risk of them doing something that so threatens the populace or other institutions that they ally against them. The point at which this check starts becoming a realistic possibility explains the variance in volume and forms this bad behavior takes from country to country, culture to culture, etc.

And yet, we as civilians cannot resist just handing that power over to them.

What's the solution? People just don't care about civil liberties, if it means the possibility of preventing every perceivable harm to protected members of society (think of the children).

There is apparently no line.

Alas, our need for safety is far more primal than our need for freedom.

"This was one of a number of difficult decisions on a complex and fast moving day," he added.

Um, okay. So maybe you made a bad decision rashly on the day, but then every day after that was an opportunity for someone to realize the bad decision and undo it. Instead, they allowed it to continue. That means the fog-of-war type excuse is crap

Tangentially related, but the old Official Secrets act (1920) made this exception for Journalism:

5 (5): "Nothing in this section shall apply to postal packets -addressed to any office where any newspaper or periodical is published, being postal packets in reply to advertisements appearing in such newspaper or periodical."

(the rest of the section mandates recording the origin of post or telegrams delivered or forwarded by any business)

I've always wondered what caused that exception to be made, but I've not found any historical evidence about it.

This was a norm completely shattered in the West by the Obama administration, and the Trump administration happily did the same to try to stop their leaking. In the West, "reporters" and "activists" are unofficially certified by the government, and those who are not are considered suspected terrorists. The idea that NI police would hold themselves to a higher standard is laughable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fox-news-reporter-secretly-moni...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/trump-administration-p...

In the US, this attitude has even filtered down to local bosses:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/kansas-mar...

Of all the places to broach tyranny, you'd think Northern Ireland would know better. I refer to the IRA and the old folks who knew about calculated murder and car bombs to dissuade certain political actions.

I am not advocating violence, simply stating that the peoples of Northern Ireland are well familiar with tyranny, and are mentally equipped to do something about it. They used to be, anyway.

One of the side effects of The Troubles was giving the police more power than they have in the rest of the UK.

For example, if you are arrested in Northern Ireland, you have no "right to remain silent" thanks to a law brought in in 1988. A court can draw "adverse inferences" (take it as a sign of guilt) if you remain silent during a police interview.

I’m pretty sure that law got extended to the rest of the UK a few years later.

(I agree with your overall point though.)

“You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court.”

That’s what UK cops say when arresting someone.

What an absolutely repulsive and manipulative abuse of power asymmetry against the civil population. This is especially the case coming from a country that at least ostensibly makes claim to being a defender of civil liberties.

To assume that a person going through the deeply stressful, possibly traumatic process of being arrested is going to have a clear mind on what to say, not say or remember as useful for their defense is ridiculous.

Nobody should be expected to remember exactly what things to say so that they later don't harm their defense in a potentially complex trial with all kinds possible outcomes and evidence that they know nothing about in advance.

This applies especially in not uncommon cases of a victim being arrested by mistake for something they didn't even do. They could easily have no idea at all about why they're being targeted, yet should know what statements they should or shouldn't make right from the moment of their arrest? Laughable nonsense.

We can make many arguments for the abusive aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system but at least the basic but generally firm rule of having a complete right to silence gives one decent advantage to those suddenly confronted with judicial power.

The government has also at times permitted the police to torture suspects, and allowed indefinite detention without trial: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-27714715

Protest laws are very different in NI. Draconian compared to the rest of the UK, at least before the last Tory government's changes.

>Protest laws are very different in NI. Draconian compared to the rest of the UK.

Yeah but you can close a street and march all day as long as you call it a tradition and not a protest against oil.

Actually you can go back to the 1922 Special Powers Act, or before that even.

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