Lord Blair Calls for Laws To Stop 'Principled' Leaking of State Secrets 395
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from the Guardian: "Tougher laws are needed to prevent members of the public from revealing official secrets, former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Blair has said. ... The peer insisted there was material the state had to keep secret, and powers had to be in place to protect it. The intervention comes after police seized what they said were thousands of classified documents from David Miranda – the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been reporting leaks from the former US intelligence officer Edward Snowden. ... He warned there was a 'new threat which is not of somebody personally intending to aid terrorism, but of conduct which is likely to or capable of facilitating terrorism.' He cited the examples of information leaks related to Manning and WikiLeaks."
Re:Government vs terrorists (Score:5, Interesting)
Missing option: Answering this poll
Re: Government vs terrorists (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, "Lord Blair" is a top-ranking policeman, like our head of the FBI, and is not related to the ex-prime minister, AFAIK. In fact, a "lord" cannot be a prime minister. It's his job to beg for police rights to violate privacy, restrict citizens from video taping arrests, and of course punish anyone who would reveal police secrets. This isn't really news worthy. It's like saying the Queen is in favor of constitutional monarchies.
Re: Government vs terrorists (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand the point you were trying to make, but British Prime Ministers are all in fact Lords.
Historically, the title "prime minister" was not used (other than as an insult) and instead the most senior elected leader in the UK was known as The First Lord of the Treasury. Whilst that remains today, the title prime minister is widely and popularly used instead.
Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the first elected leader (1905) to popularly use the "prime minister" title.
Re: Government vs terrorists (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless, of coure, the majority of the public doesn't like the minority to which you belong.
Well yes, that's a problem with majoritarian democracy per se, hopefully counterbalanced by a powerful and independent judiciary. We hope to overcome this by the observation that each of us is, in some way, in a minority; and that laws protecting the rights of minorities qua minorities protect us all. Unfortunately, I'm not sure a majority of people see it that way yet.
My intention was actually to highlight how important it is to a functioning democracy what Snowden, Manning, Assange and others have done for us.
The other, imho more pertinent, consideration is an informed majority's willingness to act upon the information. OP asked "How do we fight this nonsense?" Well so long as most of us are locked into party tribalism, and can't consider voting against our tribe and for the tribe we hate even though they may be offering to end this stuff ... not fucking much. But being informed of what is being done in our name is the necessary precondition for any action.
[Y]ou still can become a criminal for ingesting a substance that the majority doesn't approve of.
Well that's not really a minority issue. That's because you are foolish enough to ingest a substance that is dangerous to you and that we have to intervene for your own good. Which is obviously best achieved by relieving you of your freedom and locking you in a confined space with HiV infested serial rapists ... no wait.
Re:All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that that one's not good, but it really has little to do with the current discussion. You might be thinking of The Power of Nightmares [wikipedia.org], perhaps?
Re:Protection of Corruption Laws (Score:4, Interesting)
I didn't vote for the corrupt president of my country, Spain, but he's there anyway. Blaming voters means you are also blaming me, but I didn't vote for the thievering retard running the place.
Besides, in this country it's not unlikely to see dead men voting for the winning party. I once found my late grandfather listed in such a list. So what's the real value of a vote?
Re:Protection of Corruption Laws (Score:4, Interesting)
Corporations are corrupt. Democratic governments are not 'made up' they are elected. The electorate votes for those person they believe will represent them. This belief is based upon the information provide to, not just any information by the dominant most repeated information. The information channel has been corrupted by corrupt corporations and money defines what information is the most repeated and the truth full ness of that information is not a measure of it's value, the only measure is how much is spent spreading and repeating it. So corrupt individuals get elected and this is paid for by corrupt corporations.
Just because some people are corrupt does not make all people corrupt. Just because psychopaths know they are corrupt, does not mean that self image is validly applied to others no matter how psychopaths view others. Reality check, not all people are the same, some are born psychopaths.
It's cute that psychopaths still think the old lies hold. I know psychopaths view every else to be corrupt as themselves, will at least they routinely express that but reality is psychopaths recognise each other and scheme and plot together but only for as long as it advantages them both.
Honestly and if course logically, yes normal people will routinely work together for the common good, the evidence of that is staring you in the face (they must be in by far the majority, else the society collapses). I also know that psychopaths specifically and narcissists less so, do not. They are destructive parasites that will destroy society to favour themselves, psychopaths far more than narcissist. I don't think I need to give a hint of the kind of person who sees everyone as being as greedy and selfish as them self, do I?
Re: Government vs terrorists (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike your earlier links (about Syria and Iran), this one actually is on topic... But the interesting bit of your link, in my opinion, is not what this unnamed official says (there is zero information in that because it is entirely predictable) I think the more telling quote is from a named source, viz Snowden:
"Anyone in the positions of access with the technical capabilities that I had could suck out secrets, pass them on the open market to Russia; they always have an open door as we do. I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are and so forth," he said.
"If I had just wanted to harm the U.S. You could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon. But that's not my intention," he said.
He could be lying about that, I suppose, but it does seem consistent with his actions as far as I can see (which, like all of us, admittedly isn't very far). Also, while I am obviously in no position to know either way... The one person who does, Snowden himself, has indicated that he is seeing stories that did not originate with him, suggesting that these are being planted specifically to be able to say, "look! Real damage due to this whistleblowerleaky traitor"
Re:Definitions (Score:4, Interesting)
OBL's Abbottabad compound (Score:2, Interesting)
"I suggest that terrorist organisations, rather than individuals, already know how they were caught before and will update their procedures accordingly."
this is one of the things that's cracked me up/pissed me off the most about this whole NSA debacle!
Snowden is supposedly SIMULTANEOUSLY:
A. damaging national security
B. wrong
C. lying
D. BUT not telling anyone anything they didn't already know...
at least "D" is true (though in typical govt fashion the last of the four positions they tried floating).
if I'm Al Zawahiri I'm falling out of my chair laughing at the Snowden "leaks"/NSA's tap dance but I _DAMN_ sure took notes on all the material that's come out about how they found OBL (particularly that compound was an RF black hole)...
Re: Government vs terrorists (Score:4, Interesting)
It is also news because it indicates how the People In Power are thinking. And it is disturbing.
So what Lord Blair is saying is, paraphrased:
"Oy, the government's actions are so sleazy that normal people no longer can sit aside and do nothing; they are ethically driven to release this information in hopes of forcing, through an informed populace, change in policy. Obviously then, the problem is people's principles and not the government actions that drove them to that extreme in the first place! We must put laws in place so people can not act on those principles!"
As opposed to:
"Increasingly the citizens of democratically-elected nations are showing their dissatisfaction with government policy through non-violent methods such as releasing classified documents revealing the government's wrong-doing. We should crack down on the government agents who are abusing the trust of those citizens and hold true to the laws and ideals of the nation, which will also cure the symptom of 'principled leaks'."
(which is idealistically what we want them to say)
It is news because people in authority are increasingly willing and vocal about how they want to abuse their authority to hide the fact that they have been abusing the authority. Not only does it indicate a shift in the attitudes of government towards its role in our society but also - by the total lack of diplomatic idiom - their total disregard for what their own citizens think about the situation.
I mean, at least call Snowden or Greenwald traitors so it looks as if they are the bad guys and the government is just fighting the good fight!