Where's the "All your emails and texts and phonecalls are belong to us" thread then?

[wim121]

Whooooooooosh!

????

[Doggy Styles]

That was my exact point which you are missing.

- police/intelligence/gov want to imprison a radical
- obtaining evidence in this manner is legalised

Before this nonsense, he would walk free as he committed no crime.

However now he doesn't as if he isn't found guilty of treason, he is found guilty of another made up crime in the insane mind of labour that we are left with.

That is why i used the point of bragging about your isa rate, yes that is illegal.

So what? You can argue about that until the cows come home.

The point is that this legalisation, if it happens, is being sought to enable the use of such evidence in court. Despite what you say, there was nothing wrong in my original statement at all.

How the legislation is actually used is another matter.

[Sysman]

Wim121, this is all beside the point, which was simply about making it legal.

Evidence collected using illegal methods cannot normally be used in a court of law. Therefore, despite having proof that a defendant is guilty, it cannot be used to prosecute them. If the other evidence isn't strong enough they walk free.

As I understand it these new powers will allow them to use such evidence. Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant to the point.

There are also good reasons why traditionally phone calls could only be tapped with a court order.

[Zoiderman]

Agreed. I worked on another bit. Quite successful as well.

And me...

[darmstadt]

New labour wrecked this country under their thirteen year rule. They made a surveillance state filled with PC correct language.


Labour passed the laws that one can be held for weeks on end, without ever being charged, as well as hundreds of other crazy laws.

Maybe they did but the Tories before them weren't much better, maybe you're too young to remember the SUS law? I remember our phone being tapped back in the late 70's and early 80's (more than likely) due to political affiliations that our family had...

[Sysman]

OK, this is from the US, so not about our own boys in blue, but this is what happens.

Documents show cops making up the rules on mobile surveillance

The documents also suggest that selling customer information to law enforcement has become a significant revenue source for cell phone companies. A particularly illuminating cache of documents comes from the Tucson, AZ, police department. It catalogs how much various wireless companies charge for a wide variety of surveillance services.

[OwlHoot]

... Hardly. So we are to believe that they cant make a simple database to hold NHS records work, but they can make a database that holds all e-mails, texts, and phone convos. Lets not forget that its just not the 3% of e-mails that you want, its the 97% of e-mails which are spam. ..

It might well be the spam ones that contain the real messages between the bad guys.

and not even the contents necessarily - Quite possibly just the timing of a certain email, or anonymous posting of certain porn pics on a usenet alt.binaries group, might be indicative in themselves to those looking out for them.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I am making plans to automatically forward all of my e-mail to my MP. She must think she needs it, after all. I will also repacking all the snail mail I don't need to send to her - after all, we must all be good little citizens and tell our government everything. It's for our own good - they do it in places like that nice China so it must be OK.

[Sysman]

It might well be the spam ones that contain the real messages between the bad guys.

and not even the contents necessarily - Quite possibly just the timing of a certain email, or anonymous posting of certain porn pics on a usenet alt.binaries group, might be indicative in themselves to those looking out for them.

Ah, like the Times Personal Announcements section of yore. We used to have fun imagining some of those messages came from spies.

[escapeUK]

Before this nonsense, he would walk free as he committed no crime.

But isnt that what should happen? Or are you subscribing to the idea of pre-crime, that you haven't actually committed a crime but the police think you will so that is good enough to punish you for the crime. Of course we have this in in a fashion already under conspiracy law. Hard to believe but just discussing a crime and coming up with a plan makes you guilty of an offence. It might well be that you woke up the next day and thought how stupid it was what you was contemplating, but too late, you are already guilty of conspiracy to commit the said crime.

It might well be the spam ones that contain the real messages between the bad guys.

Yes, that's one way to do it.