Iām no expert, but maybe Parliament should avoid sweeping, unpopular legislation just before the Scottish referendum? This move seems very Thatcher-esque.
So when Journalists do it then itās called āhackingā and thereās a big public furore but when governments do it, itās called surveillance and weāre supposed to accept it?
Now that Cameronās buddy Coulson has been sent to jail for looking at the private communication of members of the public itās apparently become ok for the government to give themselves the same abilities , you know, because of the kiddie fiddlers, terrorists and the bogeyman under the bed. Iām struggling to see the difference with the two situations - both are spying without permission.
That would imply that David Cameron wants Scotland to remain part of the UK, with all of those seats that will not vote Conservative.
Whatever his personal or political feelings about the place, does Cameron really want to be the prime minister who lost Scotland? No spin-doctor would be able to salvage his reputation.
Heāll get out of it, Scot-free!
His spin doctor is in prison. Canāt do much from there anyway.
Coulson only got a slap on a wrist - you can do the same time for pinching a bottle of water. Plus heāll do it in a low security āhotel styleā (as he used to call them) prison. And Rebekah Brooks got off scot free. So it;s not as if the government think hacking is bad. Oh unless youāre a private citizen of course in which case theyāll lock you up and throw away the key or give you to the USA for even worse treatment.
A hastily-enacted and vaguely-worded law, with broad cross-party support from representatives who are too frightened of being seen as āsoft on terrorismā to question anything that it says? Why, Iām sure thereās no chance that that could ever be misused or extended to cover areas far outside its original remit. It reminds me of the Patriot Act in the US, and we all know what a splendid success that has been.
Itās moments like these that make me want to tell our elected representatives as a body: āJust give us the fucking keys, youāre clearly not fit to drive.ā
To be fair, itās not that vaguely written, itās pretty upfront that that they can demand that any communications provider must store up to 12 months of your communications if the government tells them to. Where ācommunications providerā means any entity that might have data on you, even outside the UK.
I donāt see anything vague about āall of your data are belong to usā, itās only as vague as saying āthis crocodile is going to eat youā, you might wonder which end itās going to start with, but at the end of the day, youāre getting eaten.
Does anyone know of a good breakdown (by someone who is actually competent to read these things) of exactly what is proposed, and whether it really creates any new powers that did not exist in RIPA?
I had a skim through it, but Iām not practiced at reading such things, and I donāt know the RIPA in detail, so I found it hard to spot where new powers were introduced.
My understanding was that RIPA already allowed for telling telcoās etc to retain data on a target.
Just to clarify, I think the RIPA is terrible piece of legislation, Iām just confused as to whether the new bill actually changes anything.
He could have easily avoided that possibility by offering devolution max as a referendum option.
Ha ha, said the American, you Brits are sure messing up your basic liberties.
As Graham Linehan said:
Worse than useless. Fuck you, Ed
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