Politics at Westminster | BREAKING: UKIP

I find it bizarre how I'm being laughed at for trusting the opinion of MI5's DG. Everyone knows their history, but surely no-one doubts their integrity when it comes to terrorism defence?

People think they're so enlightened by questioning these organisations and to an extent, it's important to do. Completely ignoring their view in a domain in which they've clearly done so much positive work is astonishing arrogance.
 
Well with respect, no-one is ignoring the good that they have done. But this is someone who is under a lot of scrutiny right now, he has presided over the biggest public surveillance program of all time, not only without public permission but also without their knowledge. If it wasn't for this whistleblower we still wouldn't know the extent of this illegal program.

A lot of people are angry about it, and they don't have to be experts to justify their anger about their privacy being infringed upon. He will say what he can to justify his actions - anyone would be defensive in his position, so his comments (while important) can hardly be trusted.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/16/nsa-director-keith-alexander-depart

His mate across the pond is on the way out, having been found out. Wonder if the MI5 director will follow suit.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
These revelations show the scope and capabilities of our security efforts. Anyone who knows anything about how you gain an advantage in intelligence also knows that your capabilities should be kept hidden as far as possible.

The thinking goes like this.

Your enemy has a finite resource which they will use to penetrate your security and counter your ability to penetrate theirs. If they can't be sure of exactly what you can do then they will waste at least some of that resource trying to defend or increase the security on areas which you were never able to penetrate. This means that your enemy then has less resource to throw at defending/ attacking your actual capacities.

Anyone who says that these recent revelations haven't harmed our security are wishful thinkers or more likely just too ignorant about how intelligence agencies work to hold a worthwhile opinion.

The debate about whether we should be snooping on the scale we are is a different debate but on the narrow point that intelligence gathering is being harmed and will continue to be harmed by recent events I just don't know how anyone can seriously doubt it as a fact. Idiots who think we spend small fortunes developing these assets without validating the money spent versus information gained, blather on and on but all they really show is how ill informed they are.
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It depends on how broadly you define 'national security' and whether you believe the state can be a security threat itself.

The country with the greatest 'national security' is an Orwellian one, where it is near impossible for an individual or organisation to bypass the all-seeing eye of the state. Any step down from the Orwellian ideal is 'less secure' in theory, but that's to ignore the fact that a state with too much power and control over its citizens gradually becomes a threat to the freedom and security of the very people it purports to protect.

If you see things in purely us vs them terms - the evil terrorists vs the noble state - then everything that restricts the power of the state is going to look potentially damaging to national security.
 
Because they sent them to some UK citizens?

They're resorting to these sorts of desperate measures because they made an election pledge on immigration that was extremely optimistic. That's why they had to start chucking foreign students out as well.
 
It doesn't, but it enables them to say they've reduced immigration by however much more than they otherwise would. It's political, not rational.
 
The Guardian said:
UK's top prosecutor defends journalists who break law in public interest


Britain's most senior prosecutor has launched a robust defence of journalists who break the law pursuing investigations that have a genuine public interest. Legal guidelines had been drafted, he said, to protect reporters.
Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions (DPP), insisted it "would be very unhealthy if you had a situation where a journalist felt that they needed to go to their lawyer before they pursued any lead or asked any question".
In an interview with the Guardian, Starmer added: "We've got to recognise that in the course of journalism, journalists will rub up against the criminal law and that is why, in our guidelines, we took the approach that we would assess where there was evidence of a criminal offence, whether the public interest in what the journalist was trying to achieve outweighed the overall criminality."
Starmer spoke at the end of another week in which the furore over the leaks from the whistleblower Edward Snowden has reverberated around Westminster. One backbench Tory MP has called for the Metropolitan police to investigate the Guardian for publishing stories about GCHQ's mass surveillance programmes.
Without mentioning Snowden, Starmer made clear he drafted guidelines specifically to allow journalists to pursue difficult stories without fear of prosecution, so long as a public interest threshold had been reached. He acknowledged there were "potentially many offences that journalists could commit in the course of their business" but said guidelines were there to offer them protection.
"There are lots of examples of journalists who, on the face of it, may have broken the criminal law but have obviously pursued a greater good in doing so," said Starmer, who will step down as DPP at the end of the month.
"That is why we wanted to issue guidelines, and our approach is very clear: first we look to see if an offence has been committed; well, if not, that's obviously the end of it. If an offence has been committed, we then say: did the public interest in what the journalist was trying to achieve outweigh the overall criminality, taking into account the nature of the lead, how much information there was, what they were trying to uncover etc."
He added: "Defining of the public interest is always very, very difficult. We did go through a consultation exercise on that and I think we've got it about right."
Starmer joined lawyers, academics and senior members of the intelligence community who have said the laws governing Britain's intelligence agencies need to reviewed in the light of Snowden's revelations about mass surveillance programmes run by GCHQ and its US counterpart, the National Security Agency.
The Intelligence and Security Act was passed in 1994, and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in 2000 – long before some recent technological capabilities became available.
"I think there's a growing recognition that the legislation in place needs to be looked at again to see whether it works well in the current environment … some of the old laws should be looked at again. I think most people accept that it is necessary to have some surveillance in a democratic society. I think most people accept that it's important to have limits and clear safeguards on that."
The freedom of speech campaign group Article 19 described calls for the Guardian to be prosecuted as deeply concerning because the Snowden disclosures had kickstarted "a much-needed public debate about blanket surveillance".
The New-York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Scotland Yard's inquiry was "chilling."
Earlier this week, the home affairs select committee said it would investigate the Guardian's publication of stories about mass surveillance as part of a wider inquiry into counter-terrorism.
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has said the extent of state surveillance needs to be properly debated.
The business secretary, Vince Cable, said last week the Guardian had performed a considerable public service by publishing stories about surveillance. He said the Guardian had been "entirely correct and right" and "courageous".
Earlier this week, Starmer's predecessor as DPP, Lord Macdonald, accused the head of MI5 of using "foolish, self-serving rhetoric" to resist legitimate calls for Britain's intelligence agencies to face more scrutiny.
Macdonald said: "It seems very obvious that when it comes to surveillance and techniques of domestic spying, the law should be the master of technology. Anything else risks a spiralling out of control, an increasing subservience of democracy to the unaccountability of security power."
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http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/oct/18/uk-prosecutor-journalists-law-public-interest
 
MikeUpNorth said:
It depends on how broadly you define 'national security' and whether you believe the state can be a security threat itself.

The country with the greatest 'national security' is an Orwellian one, where it is near impossible for an individual or organisation to bypass the all-seeing eye of the state. Any step down from the Orwellian ideal is 'less secure' in theory, but that's to ignore the fact that a state with too much power and control over its citizens gradually becomes a threat to the freedom and security of the very people it purports to protect.

If you see things in purely us vs them terms - the evil terrorists vs the noble state - then everything that restricts the power of the state is going to look potentially damaging to national security.
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The exact opposites also apply Mike, because where the state has no control over its people it has no ability to ensure any of their freedoms/or laws either and you don't just keep those freedoms by default. If the state cannot ensure them then the weak lose them to the strong because there is always an incentive to denying them.

In this debate the general assumption is evil state versus angel citizens. The state spends billions on GCHQ but hey it doesn't do anything except pry into our porn use.

If you take the Orwellian nightmare state as one end of the spectrum and Somalian anarchy at the other then the practical questions are where are we and which direction are we travelling on the spectrum? Do you think we have more or less personal freedom than 30 years ago?

 
Don't Kill Bill said:
The exact opposites also apply Mike, because where the state has no control over its people it has no ability to ensure any of their freedoms/or laws either and you don't just keep those freedoms by default. If the state cannot ensure them then the weak lose them to the strong because there is always an incentive to denying them.

In this debate the general assumption is evil state versus angel citizens. The state spends billions on GCHQ but hey it doesn't do anything except pry into our porn use.

If you take the Orwellian nightmare state as one end of the spectrum and Somalian anarchy at the other then the practical questions are where are we and which direction are we travelling on the spectrum? Do you think we have more or less personal freedom than 30 years ago?
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Less and more, you can say we have made strides in LBGT and Women's rights and to a lesser extent drugs, but overall for everyone our rights are much worse than they were 30 years ago. Its as if at the end of the cold war, our rights began to be slowly erroded away and then picked up pace exponentially after 9/11, all in our "interest". In this country I can see us returning to the Victorian Age, as if the Tories are metaphorically bombing us into it. Terms like the deserving and undeserving poor are back in fashion, albeit changed into "hard working families" and "scroungers", the education system is probably the most unequal it has ever been for 60 years and I even read I think, that workhouses have been proposed as coming back.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
The exact opposites also apply Mike, because where the state has no control over its people it has no ability to ensure any of their freedoms/or laws either and you don't just keep those freedoms by default. If the state cannot ensure them then the weak lose them to the strong because there is always an incentive to denying them.

In this debate the general assumption is evil state versus angel citizens. The state spends billions on GCHQ but hey it doesn't do anything except pry into our porn use.

If you take the Orwellian nightmare state as one end of the spectrum and Somalian anarchy at the other then the practical questions are where are we and which direction are we travelling on the spectrum? Do you think we have more or less personal freedom than 30 years ago?
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I'm really not qualified to answer whether we have more or less personal freedom than in the past.

I do think that the internet is a game-changing technology, and that we have to be extremely vigilant to avoid building the tools that facilitate authoritarianism.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
I'm really not qualified to answer whether we have more or less personal freedom than in the past.

I do think that the internet is a game-changing technology, and that we have to be extremely vigilant to avoid building the tools that facilitate authoritarianism.
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It can just as easily topple governments, but its a double edged sword.
 
Just what is Clegg up to?

I can appreciate trying to appear as an outrider against thr Tories in run up to election, but he's deliberately undermined Laws, who robustly defended free schools in Tristam Hunt`s urgent question on Thursday.

Jeremy Browne today had a barb then about veering to the left.

I can't work out what his intention is.
 
Ubik said:
Might just be being honest.
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But why now? He steadfastly defended the bedroom tax again on Thursday, the most grotesque policy they have.

Out of interest, did any of you pay attention to the SNP conference this weekend? That's what Labour should be like in opposition. They really are a well drilled and feisty organisation. Shrewd, erudite leadership.
 
It's true, he is quite incoherent. I don't think there's anything to the "shaping up for coalition with Labour" thing either, education is hardly going to be a dealbreaker for that.

On the SNP - that's what total confidence can do for you. They must feel completely liberated by not having to give a toss what England thinks, in contrast to all of their opposition.
 
So now France and China will build our power stations for us. And trouser the profits for decades to come.
The Thatcher vision.
Less government is good government.
Unless it's French or Chinese.
 
If the price for electricity is set for double the current market value then that has to be a clear indicator as to the govts thinking about where prices will be in the future.
 
As an aside, Caroline Flint is so hilariously vacuous.

She's just so dim it's unreal. She clearly practices her answers beforehand and thinks they're amazing. She's always so pleased with herself when she's delivered yet another zinger. She's the British Sarah Palin.
 
Hitchens was being hilarious towards the end, telling people to emigrate before it was too late. He's so brilliantly miserable.

Jones was actually quite restrained and didn't really say much.
 
By far the worst performance from a politician came from the respective Labour and Tory MPs on Fivleive's PMQ's panel yesterday, albeit that they were only reflecting the policy of each party's leadership regardign energy policy.

The spokesman for Age UK had the most sense about him, for the main parties it is all about a few crumbs to the electorate for the next election as opposed to good government.
 
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