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This thread has apparently been hijacked by the "No problem; move along here" crowd, closely associated with the "If you've done nothing wrong, you needn't worry" rent-a-comment group and the "We need security, not privacy" apologists.
It does make me wonder how oversight does in fact work. Does the PM just give the spooks a nod and a wink and they do as they like? How much influence do the Americans have? Who in the elected government has oversight of operational procedures? How much detail are they given or do they understand?
It reminds me of Henry II - 'who will rid me of this meddlesome priest' - give the lackies the opportunity to take matters into their own hands and all hell breaks out. Only perhaps one day it will be 'who will rid me of these meddlesome citizens?'.
Those taking cheap (not to mention easy) pots at Huhne on this thread are missing the point - this IS a serious issue. It's the thin end of the bloody wedge.
In spite of? You think so. You think it was luck and not monumental obedience to secrecy that pulled D-day over the line.
And modern surveillance isn't indiscriminate at all. It's as finely honed as it can be. Nobody wants to waste time monitoring your amiable holiday banter, but somebody, anybody might be interested if you intended smuggling back in gun parts or put in a request for a thousand bags of fertiliser with you not owning a lawn.
Get a grip, some people are behaving as if this has never ever happened before at any stage in human history.
I agree the balance between the limits of state power and the rights of citizens is ages old, but I think there have been enough fuck-ups in history to justify us being deeply concerned.
As for this being the fat end of the wedge - I disagree - you simply don't know how big the wedge is and neither do I.
Not a pretty image just before going to bed, but I get the idea.
Since the tube and bus bombings it most decidedly has been. You're out of date.
I think you'll find that domestic terrorism has been markedly much more successful than that fateful day in July 2005. At the height of the most recent troubles, the IRA were much more capable of mounting attacks on the mainland than any Islamic terrorist group to date.
However, none of this goes anywhere near justifying the state collecting huge amounts of citizen data.
And modern surveillance isn't indiscriminate at all. It's as finely honed as it can be.
It needs to be more finely honed then.
Modern surveillance can be very, very finely honed but, based on the reporting now being made available, this isn't happening.
Nobody wants to waste time monitoring your amiable holiday banter, but somebody, anybody might be interested if you intended smuggling back in gun parts or put in a request for a thousand bags of fertiliser with you not owning a lawn.
The problem isn't really monitoring banter. It is the state collecting and archiving huge amounts of data for searches at a later date. It is about the state recording all your banter just in case something you say or someone you say it to turns out to be interesting.
Monitoring is not carried out by rooms full of people with headsets any more, it is capable of scaling massively and running 24/7. Of course the state don't care about your facebook post or holiday snaps today, but the fact the information is being captured and processed in a way we can never find out about (except for leaks like this) should be worrying for every citizen.
The state works for us and allowing it to monitor us without anything even resembling oversight is a shocking failure.
There is also the additional problem of what happens when a rogue actor gets employment within the state functions capable of monitoring us. No organisation is without malicious employees which places an unquantifiable amount of citizen data at risk.
There is no way of knowing what someone with access to this data could do with it. This is not a good way for the state to protect its citizens.
You mean the three wise monkeys?
Astroturfing is alive, well and evolving.
If you are worried you must think that they know you are up to something, correct. Otherwise how do they know your name, are you on their files or something, because if you are not how do they pick on poor you . If you are on their files, then you do need to be careful about who you phone & e-mail.
They might come across you by chance but the odds are very long as there are millions of calls & e-mails being sent.
Oh yes, we've already had the tacit approval of 7/7 being accepted as a 'domestic' terrorising incident without a nod to the assasination of interested parties in londons docklands, the third tower (wtc7) from 11 sept gets more coverage than our own Reichstag ffs, bloody outside contractors have no sense of irony.
Its so nice to find someone who isn't convinced that every camera is monitoring his every move and every word he types on the internet isn't the subject of some high level NASA/GCHQ inquiry.
I was once involved with the police CCTV system and it was as much as they could do to keep track of the traffic and that usually involved just a couple of policeman monitoring a couple of hundred cameras between them. Usually the only time they looked at a monitor was when a traffic cop pointed out that traffic jams were building up at a certain point.
that is deeply worrying: elected officials are not in the loop, and the shady services operate on their own. It is a state within a state.
It rather begs the question, how is it funded ? In the absence of any other answer, one must suppose, with US money, so is it a case of some body else's state with in our state.
U answer ur own Q.
Read John Lanchesters Column.
Good. With approximately 250 million e-mails being sent every minute that will be giving Americans valuable reading experience must be welcomed. Mine are particularly well written but unfortunately in English which is going to be a challenge. However, I would caution those who are most excited (a.k.a. 'gamers') rest assured: You are just not interesting enough to bother reading.
The whole affair smacks of that American obsession with gigantism: Big is Good but much Bigger is Better! Using one's intelligence, providing one has some to begin with would so much, well, easier.
So, our intelligence services were able to play a significant role in defeating Nazi Germany, yet over sixty years later, failed to detect or thwart a successful attack on London commuters.
Presumably the bombers communicated via a 'super Enigma'
as opposed to email or mobile, or were they just left to get on with it?
government wasn't at war with its own citizens?
Yes it is. With the treatment of the unemployed & disabled it shows its desire to scapegoat certain members of society.
They then monitor people to prevent legitimate peaceful protest.
I was once involved with the police CCTV system and it was as much as they could do to keep track of the traffic and that usually involved just a couple of policeman monitoring a couple of hundred cameras between them. Usually the only time they looked at a monitor was when a traffic cop pointed out that traffic jams were building up at a certain point.
That isn't how these GCHQ and NAS methodologies work. They capture every second of everyone's online, phone, email activity, etc, and can dial back to a previous point in time to browse and search at their leisure. It's like an ongoing time capsule. All they need to justify their action is to select a reason from a dropdown menu provided by lawyers. Now, say the NSA want to look at something not allowed by the US Constitution or in their dropdown menus, then they get in touch with GCHQ. And when GCHQ wants something not allowed in their dropdown menus... well, I'm sure you get the picture.
D-Day decoys - I seem to recall that we were in the middle of a fairly serious war. What's up now?
Mine are particularly well written but unfortunately in English which is going to be a challenge.
Yeah? good.
Using one's intelligence, providing one has some to begin with would so much, well, easier.
See what you mean!
Its so nice to find someone who isn't convinced that every camera is monitoring his every move and every word he types on the internet isn't the subject of some high level NASA/GCHQ inquiry.
I rather thought the point was that, there is no political oversight, that it is hidden from the democratic process.
You get a grip.
I am not a Nazi German - I am not an Enemy Combatant - I am not a threat to my own Country.
I am just a normal citizen not working for some crappy sleeper cell or otherwise - there is NO reason to subject all citizens to this level of surveillance - the irony that you think we need this because that one time it was useful against Nazi Germany, an outside force who used their technology against their OWN citizens in pretty much the same way as d9id the rest of Eastern Europe - never heard of the Stazi?
I didn't say we need it. I appear to be one of the few not surprised by the depths to which monitoring has reached. I think it is inevitable that a technology so widespread will watch what happens on itself.
What on earth does the effort to keep D-Day secret have to do with mass surveillance? Other than the fact that they were both kept secret, they bear absolutely no relation to each other.
I think it's you who needs to 'get a grip'; casually comparing the biggest clash of civilisations in human history with the over-hyped yet underwhelming 'threat' that we supposedly face today.
@SOUTHERNBIAS 07 October 2013 12:30pm. Get cifFix for Firefox.
Yes, that serious point seems to have been overlooked and/or ignored by the nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear pop-ins, who always show up in threads like this..I rather thought the point was that, there is no political oversight, that it is hidden from the democratic process.
Actually the truth is that all this "security" is just a "for show" cover up of what they are actually doing.
I think Robin Williams got it right in "Man of the Year" in 2006 in which he said
Why would security guards pad down an 85-year-old lady with a walker? If *she's* a terrorist... well, then the ball game's over, folks.
This is what I mean about "for show" whilst we are all running around in panic looking for Terrorists they are doing what they like when they like.
I always thought that armed incursions in to foreign countries were called "an act of war" apparently its now called Mr Obama's arrest and detain operations and completely justified for him to enter Libya and Somalia.
OK I get the point but remember Rendition. It was on the streets of Europe and some are still languishing in Guantanomo to this day. If you do not object now one day it will be you and your country.
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@AgentC 06 October 2013 6:58pm. Get cifFix for Firefox.
just how deep does this rabbit hole go?
And how out of control is the rabbit that's digging it?
"just how deep does this rabbit hole go?"
Whatever theory that anyone comes out with is dismissed as a conspiracy as it isn't from a gov minister.
Now is this revelation going to change any of your doubters? Maybe not as you cannot comprehend how much you have been shafted by your masters all these years!
12 ft 13 inches and a bit.
To the microphones and thermal sensors underneath your house.
the courtiers have a finger in everyones pie, those who don't have got insurance.
Who's rabbit? Oh no it's okay. It's only a mole...
And how out of control is the rabbit that's digging it?
Let's ask Chas and Dave...
Yup. Very, salient, point.
Another example why democracy cannot succeed when society permits people to possess this type of unchecked power.
Of course it may be that you don't even need real dirt any more, how hard is it to manufacture?
@PeteSaman 06 October 2013 6:59pm. Get cifFix for Chrome.
I don't think they have 'dirt' on me. Unless they are making it up, in which case we are back with the practices of the Audit Commission. Lol.
Not hard at all, I imagine. Take the suspect away in handcuffs "examine" his home computer...
Lo and behold! Child porn downloads discovered... The digital equivalent of the gun drop.
Now try and discredit that with no access to expert funding of any kind and minimal legal aid. Goose is well cooked.
The media and the justice system works the same way.
@VarmintRaptScallion 06 October 2013 7:10pm. Get cifFix for Firefox.
Yup. Very, salient, point.
Another example why democracy cannot succeed when society permits people to possess this type of unchecked power.
Of course it may be that you don't even need real dirt any more, how hard is it to manufacture?
Especially when the mainstream media is substantially in the hands of a narrow bunch of proto-fascists like Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre!
Yes, that's the crux of it. If they're monitoring everyone then that includes all MP's, this PM and this cabinet, then the next lot. All of parliament and the Lords is compromised. Every greasy pole, every dodgy deal, all of it recorded and filled away by who.
I watched another NSA whistleblower in a documentary talk about gathering data on Obama when he was still a senator, he didn't have the documentation that Snowden had so was discredited and ignored by the mainstream media.
Far fetched? Maybe, maybe all is well, for now, but this amount of power only goes one way.
YES. That was the RT interview with Russ Tice, right? Very interesting, and chilling, stuff.
this is not new. Harlod Wilson ,labor prime minister always suspected that security people were after him.
Which is why the best course of action would be to simply pull the plug.
No warning, no discussion.
A court order, an electrician and a few polite but firm police officers.
Is this what Brown used?
True trialed in 2008, it had the master signature of Mr Brown, (did he know?) and did he use the material, as certain recent revelations may suggest?
With back door access to your hard drive, a routine check might reveal all sorts of 'searches' you never knew you made.
Russ Tice, yep, that's the guy. After Snowden released the evidence he'd gathered Mr Tice gained a whole lot of credibility. Here's an article from the Huffington Post earlier this year
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa-obama_n_3473538.html
this is not new. Harlod Wilson ,labor prime minister always suspected that security people were after him.
Suspected? How about a very English coup?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/15/comment.labour1
Oh so correct, I am in IT and I have found and reported serious Child Porn when I have found it. Its nasty and horrid and I never want to see it again.
That said you have the right end of the stick.
With the kind of remote access that GCHQ et. al have via Operating System and other backdoors a plant would take seconds to instigate and with Fibre only minutes to install.
Be afraid be very afraid.
Huhne has opened himself up to attacks with his actions. Nevertheless, what he says is interesting and relevant, because he was a cabinet minister and member of the NSC, and was not told what was going on. I also agree with his opinion that oversight of the security services is badly deficient.
MartinRDB VSLVSL
06 October 2013 7:08pm
RecommendYou couldn't care less could you? You are disgracing Orwell's image. Could you find something more appropriate please.
Something like this?
What Huhne said was especially valid given his time with the NSC (that's if what he's saying now isn't part of some ruse). I'm not a great believer in this democracy façade, but you'd expect the people that were voted in to at least know what's happening, even if they didn't have full control.
The Guardian take their time to OK images. It will probably come up sometime tomorrow.
Perhaps you have chosen Keir Hardie or to be more literary, Robert Tressell. Or more radically, since you claim to despise those who misrepresent themselves, simply yourself.
@VSLVSL 06 October 2013 6:59pm. Get cifFix for Firefox.
Huhne's record with monitoring technologies is not strong - his lack of knowledge of PRISM should come as no surprise to anyone.
And the lack of curiosity during his time in government comes as no surprise to anyone whose political radar is sensitive to bullshit detection.
Chris Huhne was deaf, dumb and blind to government privacy abuses when he was on the payroll but has, predictably, seen the light since his fall from grace.
As a Guardian reader for over forty years, I'm disgusted that Huhne's opinions are given any credence.
C'mon Mr Rusbridger, stop being so partisan and at least make a token attempt at calling out the LibDems on their shameless complaisance.
How sure we are that Malcom Rifkind is in the loop of knowing what chaps at GCHQ are up to?
Why do you think that when Huhne was in government he should have done some digging & if he did has it occured to you that certain ears would prick up & ask why he is doing something that was not his remit . It was a need to know & he did not need to know , ever heard that expression have you .
If unelected spooks rather than elected MPs are in charge then the UK is no democracy
But he has shown a remarkable amount of 'bottle' by declaring that he and his collegues knew nothing about this thus exposing himself for possible retribution.
He's a proven liar. Nothing that Huhne says can be trusted. And we should trust him less now that he has become a journalist and has power without responsibility.
That is me. If that is your way of being aspirational so be it.
Are you doing that for GCHQ, the NSA or just for free?He's a proven liar...
He lied about speeding: it is up there with footballers diving in the box. Deplorable, but not in the same league as mass surveillance.
But perhaps you think mass internet surveillance is a good thing - there must be some who do, or it would not be happening.
He perjured himself, perverted the course of justice, and you liken it to a footballer's spur of the minute dive. Pathetic.
Actually I was thinking more of the histrionic follow up claims to the referee. Think of the financial implications can hang on such deliberately mendacious acts: it can represent fraud that outstrips Huhne's pathetically hubristic crime.
But would he have done anything if he had been told? I guess we'll never know, but in the US the politicians in the inner circle have tended to keep deafeningly quiet about it until the Snowden revelations and have since been obliged to defend it.
Interstate surveillance for past 10 years of both citizens and companies, charities etc according to Snowden and others. So the global financial crisis was deliberately allowed to occur because security forces kept their political masters out of the loop. Which companies were/are in the loop?
Millions of people on wages too low to live on without state subsidy. Millions without work. How does that free market economics work eh?
Someone in some past cabinet funded this beast. We need to know who .... someone who's initials are Tony Bliar?
I think it goes further back than that, maybe try adding another few thousand years. I mean this is just the latest toy for the children who like to play oppression.
If we're going to have Tory B-liar I'll see you a Maggie and raise you a Ron.
I hesitate to suggest its older than that.
The Hackers Handbook,
First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Century Communications Ltd ,Portland House, 12-13 Greek Street, London W1V 5LE. Reprinted 1985 (four times)
ISBN 0 7126 0650 5
This was banned for a number of reasons but I suggest it was the red face it caused because its Author (Hugo Cornwall, supposedly a pseudonym of Peter Sommer who is now a Research Fellow in Information Systems Security at the LSE) expanded on the work of Duncan Cambell of the New Statesman and Steve Connor of the New Scientist who, using available public sources, had figured out what was in MI5's basement. It was possible to state the amount and type of computing and storage in MI5 and draw the following conclusions
By looking at the type of computer power MI5 and its associates possess, it is possible to see if perhaps they are casting too wide a net for anyone's good. If, as has been suggested, the main installation can hold and access 20 million records, each containing 150 words, and Britain's total population including children, is 56 million, then perhaps an awful lot of individuals are being marked as 'potential subversives'.
Now Cambell and Connors original work was done in 1984 and appeared in both their publishers around the same time.
My point is if you know anything about Whitehall that MI5 Kit would have started going through the procurement procedure of MOD several years previously and more importantly it would be because existing systems were already out of date.
Also of interest is
How Cheltenham Entered America's Back Door.'
Steve Connor, New Scientist, 5th April 1984Potted history of GCHQ and a sketch of some of its functions and bases, plus brief account of Platform, a computer network run by NSA, of which GCHQ is to become a part.
This paper, written in 1989, describes the PLATFORM wide area network (WAN) evolution.
A brief history describing how PLATFORM arrived at its current, problematic state will be followed by a discussion of the adaptive strategies that are being implemented on PLATFORM today, and finally the future directions of PLATFORM.
Items addressed will include descriptions of the present and future PLATFORM networks, hardware and software changes required (protocols, gateways, IMPs (Interface Message Processor), and the driving forces behind the changes
This document in its history shows the NSA's involvement in ARPANET and calls the creation of the earliest worldwide "internet" forerunner a "blessed event" in 1969 and by the Mid 1970's it had its own version of which GCHQ became a part as shown above.
What I am saying is that this all started long before Reagan and Thatcher what they did is to quietly authorise this internal surveilance of their own people as part of a new level of UK-US SigInt.
let's not pretend that he would be anything other than a GCHQ apologist were he still in power.
So you know this for a fact do you..?
.Does anybody know who actually made the decision to spy on the whole populace yet?
The fact that we in the UK are so far behind in the debate compared to the US is depressing beyond words.
We really need some answers here
Interesting, will take a look at the piece by Aldrich. Thanks.
What are you, Huhne, exceptionally dumb or acting in bad faith again? By the way, folks, have a thought for what the credit reference agencies have on us, i.e. everything. Do we think that they are somehow not co-operating with national governments?
It's deeper than that:-
Acquirers now must disclose to HMRC all data about business transactions on the grounds that this will allow HMRC to assess the business' tax liability.
Currently, information about the person making the card transaction is not disclosed - but this is only a small step away.
This applies to all UK debit and credit card transactions.
Acquirers are the intermediaries between the shop and the bank - they manage all UK card transactions.
in my credit report there is kind of reference that twice law enforcement chaps requested some information. it is a bit old, may be they thought this chap is no good let us not waste time on him.
@Haigin88 06 October 2013 7:03pm. Get cifFix for Firefox.
Richard Nixon was a vicious, psychotic scumbag but, by 2013 standards, he seems quaint and cuddly.
And the former Tea-Party icon Sarah Palin the notorious Senator Joe McCarthy in drag!
Stop misusing the term psychotic please. Nixon knew what he was doing. Psychotics don't have any insight into their own actions. Psychotics aren't evil, they're ill. The mentally ill are constantly stigmatised by this wrong use of language, and I'm sick to death of it. It shouldn't be acceptable in this day and age.
Stop cherry picking someone else's comments, please. Yes, Nixon definitely knew what he was doing (his secret bombing of Cambodia, his treasonous meddling in the 1968 Paris Peace Talks, etc.) hence my above use of the word 'vicious' (deliberately cruel or violent). Nixon also suffered from drink problems, pill problems, depressive problems, and normal pressure from realising that the net was closing in and he could have been looking at some jail time if it wasn't for the grubby quid pro quo brokered by Alaxander Haig with Gerald Ford. In light of the fact that Henry Kissenger knew that Nixon was so divorced from reality, so dangerously psychotic, that he had to spread the word that if Nixon, on pills and booze, ordered a nuclear strike, for the order to be checked with him and the cabinet first. Sorry, he was vicious and he was also psychotic, dangerously so.
Actually, apologies for being brusque and I do recognise your underlying point but, in other words, your post was the right argument but it was connected to the wrong example of the use of 'psychotic'.
I absolutely agree with you, equally a large number of scum bags who knew exactly what they were doing and why hide behind the veil of mental illness. I honestly believe that does nothing to help the genuinely mentally ill either.
After all didn't the one of the Guinness Four pull that trick to get out of a five year jail term.
see here
Ernest Walter Saunders (born 21 October 1935)
is a former British business manager, best known as one of the "Guinness Four", a group of businessmen who attempted fraudulently to manipulate the share price of the Guinness company. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but released after 10 months as he was believed to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease, which is incurable. He subsequently made a full recovery
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Huhne was kept in the dark and utter ignorance over Prism - irony knows no bounds .....
Cant you see beyond the dumbness of your comment...and make comment on the article...
It was 'need to know' & he 'did not need to know' simple isn't it.
As he was in the Cabinet and on the NSC, clearly he did need to know. The problem is that the "need" was oversight over GCHQ, which GCHQ doesn't like or want.
GCHQ is in no position to decide who "needs to know" for these reasons. It has an appalling conflict of interests and will always tend to hoard information and restrict oversight over its affairs. That is a terrible state of affairs.
The fact that we have to rely on people like Huhne to do our oversight for us is slightly absurd, but that's our fault for voting him in. It doesn't change the principle that Cabinet has to know what is going on in GCHQ, and in fact the public should have known about this too, because it affects them very directly.
...so Chris Huhne has affected your life so much..that your'e speechless about the content of his article..? Come off it.
Should elected representatives know what governments do in the name of its peoples? Yes, of course. Importantly, the voting public should know, or we make uninformed decisions.
Time and time again we see secrecy leading to abuses and misuses of power; corruption, systemic torture even, unlawful executions, mass surveillance, ineptitude, and you ask whether these things should be known?
You seem to place undue faith in the competence of an apparatus which has no oversight, no checks and balances, and which was created out of the hysteria of Daily Mail readers and the paranoid delusions of a novelist more than a century ago.
And which now deems it necessary to intercept, eavesdrop, aggregate and analyse virtually all human communication. How can we come back from that? Do you honestly think any organisation would ever give up such power voluntarily? Of course not, they have become dataholics, not unlike Facebook, or indeed the Stasi. Everyone should be concerned, because this is turning into a system of social control positively dwarfing anything that's come before it. Most worrying of all is the fact that this apparatus itself and most of the people in it do not seem to realise this. Even assuming it manages to stop a small percentage of terror attacks, do we want to inch ever closer to a new kind of totalitarianism, one which might pose an infinitely larger threat?
If you honestly think it is right for a government to exercise almost absolute power over its people, to the point where it can know what we are thinking (based on the conversations we have, the things we read, listen to or watch, what we write) then you do not grasp what democracy is about, or how it differs from totalitarianism.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Therefore it stands to reason that no democracy should ever seek absolute power. Reading and seeing the things that Curtis piece, it doesn't seem like a good idea to hand a cabal of secret organisations almost absolute power. So, I think the real question is; Does this amount to democracy?
Spot on mate.
As we move into this brave new world were people discuss, debate and question the world around them, less in the relative safety of pubs and union halls, and ever more in the spotlight of the internet, the privacy we've enjoyed in the past becomes paramount.
Clear legislation outlining our rights to converse in privacy are essential.
I should be amazed that so many people don't see the dangers inherent in a security state that gathers, analyzes, uses and abuses the grist of our lives and thoughts. I'm not. Fuck QEII, apathy reigns here.
Let us face it no bod (outside intelligence community) knew until Snowdon and WikiLeaks surfaced.
Blame anyone and everyone but that is how it appears.
Let us face it no bod (outside intelligence community) knew until Snowdon and WikiLeaks surfaced.
Wrong, been well known for ever. Duncan Campbell was going on about Echelon decades ago.
Spot on Old Chap, glad somebody remembers.
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Just what the country needs - guidance from a convicted criminal and proven liar
Trust and respect are hard earned but easily lost. A decade of deceit, denial and disloyalty to his family will take some time and much rebuilding - starting with his family.
Just what the country needs - guidance from a convicted criminal and proven liar
Our deputry PM is a proven liar, along with all of the ruling party, The Greenest Government Ever!.
As for criminality, most of them were on the fiddle with the old expenses.
The shock would be if a MP wasn't a criminal or a liar.
Can I draw your attention to the content of the article...?and perhaps you'd like to comment on that..or don't you and the other trolls on here have an opinion about every important aspect of your life being monitored and stored..?
Thats was to protect himself , whether you see him as bitter about being omitted from the loop I see him full of his own fixation with his owm importance realising he wasn't that important.
All those accessing porn at Wasteminster must be rather concerned. Who are they watching ? Who is their enemy ?
I hold no brief for Huhne: the speeding was irresponsible, twisting his wife's arm to take the points was nasty, and trying to bully the court to throw the charges out was wicked and crooked.
But I'm grateful that one of the few people who was in the Coalition Cabinet but isn't any more (for good reason as we all know) and can therefore now speak freely about this important issue, is doing so.
I think he's telling the truth on this, because what he's saying can bring him no personal benefit but heaps of trouble.
I think he's telling the truth on this, because what he's saying can bring him no personal benefit but heaps of trouble.
Why would he be lying? As for getting in heaps of trouble, unless he still has skeletons in his closet, Huhne probably has a lot less to lose than most MPs. There probably isn't an awful lot GCHQ can dredge up that would harm him.
I don't like extensive CCTV, ANPR cameras, covert surveillance, DNA records etc etc, but I recognise the benefits. My problem is conducting a rational cost benefit analysis as I don't have access to the facts in order to come to a conclusion - do the ends justifying the means?
Let him that is without sin cast the first stone
Huhne's a proven liar? Of course; he's a human being. Where are you from?
Wrong context, I was not proposing he be punished - the law has already taken it's course. It is his sheer effrontery in public posturing that I find utterly offensive.
A completely irrelevant comment. It matters not one iota that he was convicted of a crime. If a criminal says 2+2=4 it's still true. He's asking us to look at the facts. He was a member of the national security council and he was never told about GCHQ's activities. That is a very serious matter.
This prudery from members of the general public really annoys me. That part of the story is really the business of Mr Huhne, Ms Price and their family.
What does a persons private life - no matter how much you disapprove of it - have to do with talking about the ridiculous power the security services have?
Does the fact that he had an affair mean that you don't believe that the cabinet didn't know about this?
If we suddenly found out that Einstein had an affair at some point does that mean that we have to re-examine the Theory of Relativity?
I shouldn't bring this up as it is totally unrelated to the article but this mass disgust over public figures' foibles, from the most amoral generation in the last hundred years, is really starting to grate.
Let me help you understand. Just as Enigma was confined to a very small number of people In the Wartime cabinet by the predecessor of GCHQ, current intelligence Is also restricted on a need to know basis. Mr Huhne's activities made him vulnerable to blackmail or other forms of coercion. Combined with the Lib Dem views of the scurity service, I have no doubt in my own mind that he would not have been privy to sensitive information.
Astonishing how little on this thread about the "meat" of what is going on and how much on Chris Huhne. Does it actually matter what Huhne is ( a dick) is not the whole point that nobody in the Cabinet knew about it, or did they? or, if some did, why did they not disclose what they knew?
Fundamental questions.
1. Who authorised GCHQ to subvert RIPA and start mass capture of UK citizens data without a warrant.
2. Who was briefed in the current government.
3. Who authorises the spend.
4. Who signs of GCHQ interpretations of privacy law and were they informed about this by GCHQ.
To me it looks like our freedoms have been subverted by a bunch of security quangocrats.
Thanks. My thoughts entirely. It's shocking (or should be) that the Cabinet weren't told, the character of Huhne is irrelevant. Why do so many people seem to treat this as a bit of a joke? When the movie about the Stasi, The Lives of Others, came out, people would have laughed at the suggestion that such a thing could happen here. But it looks like it has, and yet no one seems to care.
Agreed - it's the first rule of debate and committee meetings - ignore the big and difficult issues and go for the trivial and trite. This is a serious issue and we, as citizens, seem utterly powerless. All I can think of doing is to write to my MP (fat use) or perhaps protest - if I don't mind being kettled or thrashed by the police.
Presumably the P.M. and (I'm guessing) some other Old Etonians were in the know? Probably a few throwbacks from Bullers too.
The NSAFundamental questions.
1. Who authorised GCHQ to subvert RIPA and start mass capture of UK citizens data without a warrant.
No-one.
2. Who was briefed in the current government.
They just take 10p from everyone's bank account every now and then.
3. Who authorises the spend.
The NSA again.
4. Who signs off GCHQ interpretations of privacy law and were they informed about this by GCHQ.
Don't you worry about security let us worry about that for you.
yes madam Feinstein I put my trust in you.
"Tempora, as exposed by The Guardian newspaper, is a clandestine security electronic surveillance program trialed in 2008" So someone then must have known and sanctioned this project. Could it have been done and financed without Government knowledge? Any answers Mr. Brown?
And by a bunch of powerful companies, making up the military-industrial complex (especially in the US). As GCHQ transfers sensitive dates of several million Europeans to the US where 4.5 million Americans have access to, and taking further into consideration that 1.8 of these Americans work for private companies...there are even more serious questions to ask: Ed Snowden leaked dates to the press to stimulate a widespread discussion about the political consequences of the affair. But many others are likely to leak the dates to quite different players for quite different reasons: they might just sell them profitably to: all kinds of dubious governments, companies and the financial sector.
And in the course of time there will be more revelations of cases in which (European) states and companies may be able to prove that they have actually been damaged by the NSA/GCHQ. (Based on information they might have bought too!) Don't you think they won't start to charge your government for the damage? The role of Goldman-Sachs in the Greeks' misfortune is a striking example of the damage done by players that are very likely to profit from overall surveillance. Greek may be politically weak, but other EU players are not. But the political agent easiest to charge in that dirty game is - for European governments and companies - is the British government.
Eventually this might turn out to be extremely expensive for the UK. And, honestly, I hope it will be. Because still the majority of Brits don't understand how deeply disastrous mass surveillance is. It affects: the basis of our democracies, the validity of human rights, the architecture of international relationships and the basis of economic policies that should be meant to provide wealth for the peoples and not only limitless profits for small and corrupt elites.
@KingofWelshNoir 06 October 2013 9:14pm. Get cifFix for Firefox.
..because it muddies the waters, and successfully, given how this thread has been derailed.
...the character of Huhne is irrelevant. Why do so many people seem to treat this as a bit of a joke?
Are you sure GCHQ is subverting RIPA, surely its the fact that RIPA is there to give GCHQ its mandate for internal monitoring.
I was working with a small independent ISP in 2000 and we got told that when RIPA came in we, and all other ISP's, had to install (at our time and expense) a "black box" that would allow GCHQ full access to all our traffic.
It was common knowledge in 2000 amongst the ISP's that GCHQ would have full access to our data streams from the beginning.
Now he tells us.
Why didn't he contact The Guardian sooner?
Better late than never, i suppose.
Exactly. Huhne was part of the system right up until he was exposed, convicted and jailed for being a liar.
This sudden conversion to transparency and open government is too ridiculous for words.
Those commenting above seem to be in wilful ignorance.
This issue is of fundamental importance. It is a clear example of how the machinery of government assumes control over an apology for a democratic process. Robust questioning is needed to assert democratic control.
What Huhne is reporting is all too believable.
I agree, it is. No libdem MP would dare speak up right now. They've probably all been gagged.
I am bored with all the character assassinations and personal judgments on these threads. It distracts from the important core issues and destroys real debate.
The man was punished for a driving offence. Big deal. That doesn't mean he is making this up.
He's had his public humiliation and is in a good position to blow some whistles. I believe him. The core group in government now are deceitful, secretive and exclusive. The spying agency doesn't widely discuss its work.
Thank you Chris Huhne for speaking up.
@MirandaKeen 06 October 2013 7:34pm. Get cifFix for Firefox.
The man was punished for a driving offence. Big deal.
No, the man was punished for perverting the course of justice. A much bigger deal.
He had numerous opportunities to come clean but stuck to his denials over and over and tried every trick in the book to have the case thrown out of court. He only admitted his guilt on the actual day his trial started, presumably in an attempt to lower his sentence.
He has no credibility and I'm disgusted but not surprised that this newspaper is employing him.
Fair enough but in comparison to the theft of our public services, and the crimes against humans committed by other politicos, I find this forgivable.
Yeah but he is associated with the LD's and the jealous Labour hiveminders won't have that round here!
and thank you for your intelligent and oh so true comment...I believe Chris Huhne too...
He wasn't punished for a driving offense - he was punished for perjury. Given his character and reliability I'd be quite happy if he had been excluded from discussions - if Clegg didn't know that is different.
Remember the movie Independence Day
Julius Levinson: Oh, don't give me unprepared! You knew about this for years! What with that spaceship you found in New Mexico! What was it called... Roswell, New Mexico! And that other place... uh... Area 51, Area 51! You knew then! And you did nothing!
President Thomas Whitmore: Mr. Levinson, contrary to what you may have read in the tabloids, there is no Area 51. There is no spaceship...
Albert Nimzicki: Uh... excuse me, Mr. President? That's not entirely accurate.
Overheard from an American "Britain? That place where they aren't allowed to know their own history til 100 years after? Worse bet than Cuba under Batista or 'Nam under Thieu".
Overheard from a Brit: "America? That place that elected George W Bush? Worse bet than Wonderland under the Mad Hatter."
America gave us the KKK, Big Macs and horse diapers. They also gave us functioning democracy, Martin Luther King and Family Guy. Oh and have a Constitution. Try passing the Civil Contingencies Act with that.
So who passed the law(s) which allows these programs? Is it just done on the say-so of a minister? Or a minister and a few others? The process for creating the authorisation for this snooping looks secretive in the extreme, and I don't think that making laws secretly is a good idea. If I don't know what they propose to do, then my MP cannot raise any objections that I (or any other constituent) may have, which seems very undemocratic.
There seems to be an arrogance about this - it's as if they know what's best for us and nobody could possibly point out any flaws in their thinking, or highlight any problems with their proposal.
I think this snooping will be found to be illegal by the ECHR. I doubt that that would stop them from doing it, though. Have Labour pledged to stop the mass snooping? No, didn't think so. They are all as bad as each other.
I think this snooping will be found to be illegal by the ECHR
Would the security establishment have been so secretive if that were not a distinct possibility? They must know better than anyone that terrorists already suspected such systems were in place, so that is unlikely to be the reason for secrecy.
Why would the security services inform the Cabinet? When we have seen a Minister for Defence travelling around the world with a non security vetted 'friend' and observe that umpteen MPs are members of 'Friends of wherever', the last people you'd tip off are the subjects of the surveillance.
"Why would the security services inform the Cabinet?"
Mr Huhne was a PM-selected cabinet member and was on the National Security Council. If he couldn't be trusted with confidential information, then our system of government is so broken that it can no longer be called a democracy in any way at all.
So whom can we "trust" with this so-sensitive information? The PM all by his lonesome? That's a recipe for dictatorship. The CGHQ and its thousands of lowly clerks? Or the NSA (strictly the ODNI)? Was the problem that nobody in the US trusted anybody in the British cabinet, beyond (presumably) the PM?
This gets worse and worse.
GCHQ, not CGHQ. Gah!
OnSecondThoughts Councillor
06 October 2013 8:41pm
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1"Why would the security services inform the Cabinet?"
Mr Huhne was a PM-selected cabinet member and was on the National Security Council. If he couldn't be trusted with confidential information, then our system of government is so broken that it can no longer be called a democracy in any way at all.
Government ministers (and their officers) are security vetted. You'll recall the recent controversy because Coulson allegedly had access to material beyond his level of vetting whilst acting as Cameron's press officer.
Huhne would have been vetted as a matter of course. I suspect he had a lower vetting than his ex-wife.
In some respects, that he knew so little, is reassuring.
The "friends of whatever" seem to of had the jump long before our ministers.
Nah. Wherever itself probably knew in advance, though.
Because democracy depends on an informed public, that happens to include Cabinet members. Without an informed public democracy ceases to be, there's no two ways about it.
So what you're saying is, the people can't be trusted, as they are the "subjects" in question? We can be trusted to vote and be taxed, stand for public office even, just so long as we refrain from questioning what it is we vote and pay for?
This was a recipe for disaster, and worse yet the disaster has already happened but being secret by nature we had to find out what has transpired through whistle-blowers who are now fearful or their lives.
You are arguing from a position of institutionalised paranoia, which is unquestioning in its belief that said institution and said paranoia are right and must be protected from public scrutiny at all costs (which seems to be a paradox).
Everything that has happened demonstrates that in fact there is no public oversight and this is state dysfunction running out of everyone's control was how this apparatus has reacted to the publications; by bullying, making it a crime for journalists to do their jobs (D-Notice) and threatening or even persecuting everyone involved in the leaks, even barging in a major newspaper and demanding the destruction of information (entirely symbolic but thuggish intimidation meant to prevent papers everywhere conducting investigative journalism). These are the absurd acts of a cabal of secretive organisations and corporations who have grown altogether too fond of flexing their muscles, and have now got it into their heads that intimidation is an appropriate response to the public. Democracy cannot require that democracy be sacrificed, no matter how complex the world is now. Because if that were true then it is meant to self-destruct.
How fucking naive can you lot get? Of course the govt spied on the people. That's what governments do. Have been doing for hundreds of years. Obviously now they have means a million times more effective - and you expect us to be surprised and outraged!! And rabbit on about democracy!! In Britain!!
You get the Cabinet members you deserve if you allow coalesced comic capers in a democratic national environment.Britain's trite 'light touch' demeanour wants to be killed off and sharpish, in favour of uncovering the people at the heart of our so-called democracy who think that they can get away with murder - and given many a modern track record probably do.See Retail Consortium and Banking practices over at least 35 years!
General Election Now!
How much is a cabinet member paid for being a part of our safeguards of the rights and security of the people of Britain? One expects some large figure way out of the reach of all except crooked bankers and insider trading tossers in the City of London, that trusted institution.
Should such highly placed people, supported by equally comfortable Civil Servants, not be required to do some simple security check of their own to the satisfaction of reasonably sound people? Of course this begs a separate question. Are there ANY reasonably sound and secure people left in the corridors of wiggly wangly power in the U.K.?
Cabinet was told nothing about GCHQ spying programmes, says Chris Huhne
They would not have understood it anyway Probably delegated some junior researcher the task of Sorting out all that wishy washy gobbledegook Cameron hasn't got a clue whats going on. Now there's a surprise
As a cabinet minister and member of the national cecurity council (NSC), Huhne said he would have expected to be told about these operations,
Shouldn't that be the NCC then ? And no caps either.
Well I'd like to move on from Huhne's past.And I welcome his more critical analysis of state apparatus,and it's seeming unaccountability.Of course everyone has a right to keep throwing the past at the man,but if you do so,you will lose the opportunity to see if the person has changed.
I agree. He's admitted his mistakes and taken a lot of vitriol by coming BTL on CiF.
Not many disgraced MPs would have the bottle to that. If any.
But I'm still never going to vote LibDem.
That's not bottle, it's just the need for attention.
I wouldn't believe Huhne until I had seen GCHQ's HD film of every Cabinet meeting since Logie Baird.
Would you let Huhne in on a secret. I bet there is loads of stuff he was not told about. His job was windmills
Okay this is now starting to do my head in. Like him or not. As energy sec his job would include the security of Britain's energy infrastructure. So nuclear power plants that's why he was on the NSC. It has nothing to do with him as a individual. This is about the fact that the energy sec a cabinet minister on the NSC along with other senior cabinet ministers who were not informed about these programs it is inconceivable to me that members of the NSC would not know about this. Doesn't matter of what party or whether you personally like a particular individual or not rather this is about proper oversight by people we elect over OUR institutions.
That's assuming Huhne is telling the truth on this one.
Which, given that he has just been jailed for being a liar, is an assumption too far for me.
I swear on my mother's grave, your honour, I was just holding the bag, it wasn't mine, it's someone else's stash.Cabinet was told nothing about GCHQ spying programmes, says Chris Huhne
Believe him if you will.
I won't.
So effectively, Chris Huhne is saying that even the people "running the country" don't really know who is running the country.
Bloody marvellous.
If Obama isn't really in control of the US and Cameron isn't really in control of the UK then who the fuck is?
Whoever it is, they certainly weren't democratically elected to those positions.
CompassionateTory
06 October 2013 7:27pm
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0So effectively, Chris Huhne is saying that even the people "running the country" don't really know who is running the country.
The people who are running the country know who's running the country - they just haven't told the government.
You know that COBRA thing when there's a crisis - theatre for the national press designed to keep the Cabinet occupied whilst other people are making decisions.
Who is the richest an at the top of the pyramid? Therein lies the answer.
We have PR front men acting like politicians. They represent business and coerce the people through media an bare faced lies.
A pyramid for sure but I'm not sure it's necessarily the richest.
It's someone who has focused not on becoming the richest but on usurping political power. And they've used modern technology to do it.
@CompassionateTory 06 October 2013 7:27pm. Get cifFix for Firefox.
If Obama isn't really in control of the US and Cameron isn't really in control of the UK then who the fuck is?
It's obviously the portly gentleman, sitting stroking a cat in his underground bunker on a privately owned island.
My guess it's one of the Barclay twins.
Someone who can expose corruption and control the whole system? Wow, that's scary.
It makes me wonder if the global crisis isn't orchestrated deliberately to remove that threat. Way above my head but I can see the potential now.
Big brother is pulling their strings too.
Welcome to the NEW WORLD ORDER.
That does indeed seem to be the question now. Who is really running the Five Eyes? The revolving door suggests a corporatocracy, and the Bilderberg Group a conspiracy of elites at the upper echelons.
There is a curious little movie called "Half Moon Street" 1986 starring Sigourney Weaver.
In one scene she escorts Lord Bulbeck to a very exclusive Black Tie do and is impressed by all the Influential People there to which Bulbeck replies.
"Actually there are only about 150 people in the world that really matter and I doubt you will see one of them here"
Think about it, would you stand up and be seen as one of the rulers of the world if you could get an idiot in parliament to take the limelight and the headshot when it really starts to get up peoples noses.
ha ha ah aha - do you really believe the people you vote for are in control ?
Any oversight would be good! We are the most spied-on people in the world.
Did anyone else note that the woman they locked up for having that mummified child in the cot - just before sentencing, there was that press release (from whom ???) saying she has phoned out for a pizza the day the child had died.
Do they have that sort of information on you and me too? Every call we've made?
Excuse me, but is it really such a good idea to give the power of oversight to the judges? In my opinion judges already have too much power. Besides, they're easy to corrupt. There is already talk of certain judges belonging to this or that political party. Oversight yes, but preferably by someone more transparent and accountable. At the moment it seems some newspapers and journalists should be best candidates for the job. ( Take a bow Guardian and Glenn Greenwald! ) Come to think of it it would not be a bad idea that oversight and transparency would be linked to a party that informs the public. Maybe new forms of oversight altogether should be dreamed up? Since these new forms of surveillance are so big and so wide, seems only fitting.
Abso-f'ing-lutely spot on! You should put a spoiler warning in front of that... Theresa May spluttered her coffee all over her monitor and made an ugly mess.
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No politician should have any control over GCHQ (not that it appears they do, anyway) - judges are far more suited to the task.
If your telephone is 'tapped', under certain circumstances, you are notified 90 days after it ceases.
I never use a telephone when in North America, I only use the Spot system for messaging.
Either you are boasting that you have secrets that need to be kept from the US security services, or you are self delusional. Almost certainly the latter as if you did have anything to hide you wouldn't be drawing attention to it on the Guardian's website.
Maybe he just saying he values his right to privacy. And disagrees with illegal state spying
If indeed we are sleepwalking into totalitarianism, the rank stupidity that allows us to do that is at least recorded on these threads. That people bothering to comment on this subject in a supposedly liberal newspaper aren't bothered by the fact that we appear to have a state within a state that is wholly unaccountable to our elected representatives shows us where the problem really lies: there are far too many British people who are actually too stupid to deserve either privacy or freedom, and they're well represented here.Who is governing us?
I am surprised so many CiFers seem to have missed this fundamental question.
sadly I agree with you.
Huhne wasn't told?
What a surprise!
I doubt any of the LibDems were informed of anything important as the Tories didn't consider them as part of government except for the bits they needed support with and GCHQ wasn't one of them.
Huhne and his cohorts should bury their faces in their hands with shame and embarrassment at how stupid they've been to trust the Tories and how, as a result, have all but destroyed their party. Good riddance!
Does anybody know who actually made the decision to spy on the whole populace yet?
The fact that we in the UK are so far behind in the debate compared to the US is depressing beyond words.
We really need some answers here.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
The security services have never been under full cabinet control in the UK and never should be. Cabinet is too big and too leaky
Trialed in 2008, who sanctioned it, who financed it? Any answers Mr. Brown?
And yet, despite such a revelation - its mind-boggling implications compounded the obvious ignorance of those populating the U.S. Congress and Senate - our global electorate (as evinced by comments appended to this article) persists in believing our politicians to be "in control", "running the country", "providing oversight", or something other than becoming increasingly irrelevant to us and to those truly wielding power, i.e. the spooks and vested interests controlling the information and data flows on which our networked world relies.
"We sometimes find we get far more in the newspapers — we get crossword puzzles as well — we get more in the newspapers than in classified briefings," Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) [October 3, 2013]
You gave this quote:
"We sometimes find we get far more in the newspapers â we get crossword puzzles as well â we get more in the newspapers than in classified briefings," Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) [October 3, 2013]"
Useful when considering to give judiciary oversight of security programmes.
Ja, all such widened oversight does, as is the case of the U.S.'s FISA Court (and all other courts ruling on the basis of 'secret' legislation or laws not tested against the constitution), is discredit the judiciary which, ultimately (if not immediately), becomes complicit.
And that's where arguments for surveillance for political, corporate, financial or other dubious gains fall apart. The UK judiciary needs to bring a ruling to bear on the legality or otherwise of such programmes.
The UK may not be a Constitutional Republic, but it has a body of law that puts most others in the shade and, if it is to show its independence, such programmes offer it ample opportunity to do so (the U.S. courts having been thoroughly discredited by political appointments),
Where they go beyond the bounds of ensuring state security and the rule of law, etc. such totalitarian surveillance programmes should be declared illegal and the politicians responsible for them – be they ignorant of them or not, be held to account before those same courts.
I agree.
2 points:
1)How to ensure independent , ie from political and commercial bias, judges?
2) How to secure these metadata silos from criminal access?
I wouldn't tell Chris Huhne anything either
Why do I feel suspicious, that a shamed and jailed, ex MP is the only one to "officially" speak out about this?
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that someone has eventually spoken out on this matter.
Chris Huhne is obviously a man with nothing or nothing further to lose.
What is the matter with you people?
Mr Huhne has payed his debt to society in the most humiliating manner . But he is a good writer and has insider knowledge that is important to communicate for all of us.
Give the guy a break
Good on the Guardian for giving him the space to point out some very important issues.
I don't have any faith in the UK political or civil service apparatus achieving anything meaningful for UK citizens and organisations. What I mean is we've been allowed to put our information into foreign IT systems when GCHQ has allegedly known foreign powers potentially will end up knowing more than the UK Government about us ( which is bad enough ).
If the allegations are true, unfortunately its going to be the bad press reactions of foreign Governments to what we've done to their citizens privacy and intellectual property that will achieve anything rather than our Government reacting to what GCHQ has allegedly stood back and let us do to our own privacy and intellectual property.
personally i find it hard it hard to believe anything "grouty" says anymore.
We need to ask and find out who in the government knew about the wide-spread surveillance by the GCHQ.
Did the PM know about it?
Did the Deputy PM know about it?
Did the Foreign Secretary know about it?
Did the Home Secretary know about it? Did she sign off on it?
If they they did not then we have security agencies without any oversight. In a democratic society that is completely unacceptable.
Asking the Guardian to destroy hard drives even when there copies elsewhere, is nothing short of bullying and thuggery by the government agency. It should not be allowed.
The agents did not ask for the hard drives to be destroyed. They came to The Guardian and DEMANDED to see it destroyed.
What? So they asked in FRENCH?
The Guardian didn't have to destroy them - read the articles - even they couldn't claim they were being forced.
At that point the Guardian had said precisely NOTHING about GCHQ having self neutered after a D notice that they didn't comply with.
I hate the Government - I hate the effects of this situation od normal citizens but lest not pretend the Media are some fucking shining light of upstanding morality - they are compliant.
Show them a long bow next time round.
Cam gave the order and Whitehall phoned The Guardian saying 'you had your fun, we want our stuff back'. Sadly, Britain has a bad record of press freedom since at least that rascal Lord Protector Cromwell. To escape persecution, the supporters of King Charles had their pamplets printed in Holland. In the 1960's the police raided and threatened editorial offices and confiscated any publications they failed to understand. Even though Cam demonstrated he's a warmongerer, now Alan Rusbridger thinks Cam is 'a nice man'. So much then, for our supposed press freedom.
06 October 2013 6:58pm
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