UK’s Legal Justification For Snooping: Statement | Hacker News Reader

UK’s Legal Justification For Snooping: Statement

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23 pointsuser_23571111 comments

My first reaction when all of this started was how do you cover agencies which cooperate with other countries agencies?

I remember thinking about that when I first heard about ECHELON [1], which was at the time seems like a great get out of jail free card. Any of the participants of the system can deny they are doing anything specific because it's handled by another agency.

Even more liability is farmed out if you use 3rd parties to do the actual work: "Is GCHQ storing information on UK citizens?", "No" (its all in Amazons S3).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

I guess it is simple - all the citizens in all those countries co-operate to stop the buggers.

There doesn't seem to be any relevant content on this page other than a link to https://www.privacyinternational.org/press-releases/uk-intel...

As far as I can tell, the US can spy in the UK because they're foreign, and the UK can spy in the US because they're foreign, and everybody shares information. Also, on the internet, everything's foreign.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51959

Petition to force a debate on Tempora in UK parliament Has 1500 signatures

I signed a petition that triggered a debate. Wrote to my MP and asked him to attend and put my point across. He wrote back to say that he stood by the government decision and encouraged me to read the transcript.

I read the transcript, it was in a side room and at the end the Minister for the department in question said they would take the minutes back to the department for review.

Which I am sure they'll just put in a pending tray as the whole thing was a case of going through the motions.

We need to decentralise, devolve countries into smaller units. England split into 7 would be far less of a threat to its countrymen and have the nimble ability to innovate of a local needs.

> We need to decentralise, devolve countries into smaller units. England split into 7 would be far less of a threat to its countrymen and have the nimble ability to innovate of a local needs.

Well actually, a party in the UK which has been gaining traction recently, for all the wrong reasons, might want this as well. UKIP. They want a Swiss-style direct democracy where all counties within the UK become 'states' or 'cantons'. Regardless of your stance of UKIPs immigration policy, I'm very much looking forward to them implementing this, if they did win the upcoming elections.

edit: However, they have terrible nationalistic policies such as "Teach children positive messages and pride in their country. We want to unite through better integration".

For non-UK voters, UKIP is the middle-class racist party. Not going as far as neo-fascist parties like BNP, but happily taking votes away from the Right wing of the Conservatives by pushing a isolationist, return to glory days agenda.

They have no seats at Westminster but their leader is very telegenic and their message apparently popular at the "mid-term" elections. They are now expecting to win a few seats and are rapidly chucking out people and policies that are too dodgy to be allowed onto newspapers or TV.

Is 7 an arbitrary number made up on the spot or is there some logic behind this?

Its taken from a BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27731725

It seems to work well for Nordic countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries#Demographics

There must be reasons splitting up your country into 7 isn't the best idea

There are pro's and con's in both choices. However I believe that over the course of my lifetime we'll need a fundamental change in the way we are governed if we are to progress as a race.

The growing rich poor divide and lack of social mobility seem like a backward step.

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