Revelations About Massive UK Police Corruption Shows Why We Cannot -- And Must Not -- Trust The Spies
from the trust-no-one dept
As Mike reported recently, the NSA has presented no credible evidence that its bulk metadata collection is stopping terrorist attacks, or keeping people safe. Instead, the argument in support of the secret activities of the NSA and its friends abroad has become essentially: "Trust us, we really have your best interests at heart." But that raises the question: Can we really do that? New revelations from The Independent newspaper about massive and thorough-going corruption of the UK police and judiciary a decade ago show that we can't:
The entire criminal justice system was infiltrated by organised crime gangs, according to a secret Scotland Yard report leaked to The Independent.
If an entire criminal justice system can be corrupted so completely, there's no reason to believe that agencies like the NSA or the UK's GCHQ are immune. After all, they have the same ethos of serving the public that supposedly prevents them from betraying the trust placed in them (but didn't in the case of the UK police), and the same kind of privileged access to important and valuable information that inevitably makes them attractive targets for blackmail and bribery.
In 2003 Operation Tiberius found that men suspected of being Britain's most notorious criminals had compromised multiple agencies, including [UK tax and customs services] HM Revenue & Customs, the Crown Prosecution Service, the City of London Police and the Prison Service, as well as pillars of the criminal justice system including juries and the legal profession.
Snowden showed us in a dramatic fashion just how easy it is for an individual to access and copy top secret material. In his case, we are fortunate that his strong moral principles led him to reveal the abuses he found, rather than selling them to the highest bidder. Next time we may not be so lucky, so we need to build a system that assumes people are weak or corrupt, and make it as hard as possible for them to get away with any unauthorized use of the system. Despite what the NSA and GCHQ would like, that requires not trust, but its exact opposite.
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Filed Under: abuse, corruption, law enforcement, organized crime, police, uk
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The Govt as a whole is not to be completely trusted. There will always be interests infiltrating. They can be criminal, ideological, religious... What if the [insert religion here] get the majority in the Govt and start pushing laws that suit their dogma? Then at a later stage thei start using the espionage apparatus to persecute those that are not in line with their ideas? Is it far fetched or do we already see the church interfering in the laws for instance? What about totalitarians, has it happened before?
The argument against such broad invasion are sound and strong. The only ones that won't accept them are those benefiting from these exact issues.
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Don't you mean "The previous N times we weren't so lucky"
The problem is we don't know how big N is
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Bu, bu, but . . . Copyright!
* infinite copyright length
* automatic takedowns of a site and anything near it upon mere complaint
* no evidence required
* no due process
* no appeals
* levies on blank media, internet, blank paper, and bathroom tissue -- to compensate artists
* statutory copyright damages that dwarf the entire global economic output of humanity for all human history
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This "IF" is a major part of the problem: people don't grasp fundamentals:
Challenge: state ONE gov't or corporation that has ever voluntarily limited its size or control. -- YOU CAN'T. -- But why don't you apply that to present trends and oppose coporate power TOO?
05:51:43[g-602-7]
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Nothing wrong with that, assuming it doesn't rise to the level of an establishment of religion. If the religion of the duly elected majority states that God established us as stewards of the earth and we therefore have a responsibility to reduce mercury levels in the groundwater, you cannot object just because they are doing it for religious reasons. It has a public benefit, regardless of the religious motives involved.
THAT would be a problem. I suppose that if we didn't already have the apparatus in place they could just build it, but that takes time, and it gains legitimacy if it's something that's already there.
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The entire criminal justice system was infiltrated by organised crime gangs, according to a secret Scotland Yard report leaked to The Independent.
John C Inglis
Mike Rogers
Keith Alexander
Michael Hayden
Peter King
Nancy Pelosi
James Clapper
Diane Feinstein
to name only a few
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Re: The entire criminal justice system was infiltrated by organised crime gangs, according to a secret Scotland Yard report leaked to The Independent.
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and those of a religious disposition should remember that getting too close to the state has its dangers for them also.
The mechanisms that were used by Stalin to persecute the church in Russia in the 20's and 30's were put in place under the previous Tsarist regime.
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The solution to government corruption is smaller government. If there is less power and money in the government's hands, then there is less incentive to try and take it or abuse it.
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I suggest you think about who keeps spreading that nonsense and why. Geez, if I had a nickle for all the times I've heard "small government" mindlessly repeated, I'd be an oligarch by now.
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The reason that it was successfully taken over by the crowd that currently runs it is because we, as a nation, have forgotten who is really in charge.
In the end, the buck stops with us.
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Response to: kenichi tanaka on Jan 15th, 2014 @ 10:48am
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Having said that there are some areas of the state I would like to shrink (because they don't fall into the categories above). The obvious example here is (so called) intellectual property.
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Re: Re: The entire criminal justice system was infiltrated by organised crime gangs, according to a secret Scotland Yard report leaked to The Independent.
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police corruption
"the polygraph is the single most effective tool for finding information people were trying to hide." - DIA, NSA.
CBP could require current employees to undergo polygraphs. http://t.co/MpPsmq2p
Make policy that polygraphs for all new hires expire every 2-5yrs. http://shar.es/epfm2
Random drug, lie detector tests for Police Officers in Spain. http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Random-drug-lie-detector-tests-221734651.
LAPD body video cameras. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-dodgers-lapd-20131002,0,4237783.story
The honest, brave officers with integrity deserve better.
And so does the public.
Wherever you are in the World, in your own jurisdictions, in your own capacity, you can do something, anything, just one thing. And make a difference.
Body cameras for fighthing misconduct.
Routine polygraphs as hiring policy for fighting corruption.
Break the code. Break the culture.
Plain and simple.
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Everybody has a handle
Think *you* don't? What if your child was dying, and they *could* be saved, if only....?
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In this specific example. Look no further than some theocratic countries in the Arab world to see there are plenty of issues with letting religion run loose with the Government.
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http://www.thewire.com/national/2012/08/31-states-grant-rapists-custody-and-visitation-rights/56118
S omething something fetus something fathers have rights too something marriage something make lemonade.
As a member of a small Protestant church, I worry that I may soon discover that I'm the wrong kind of Christian. I'm already the wrong kind of conservative, and am regularly bashed by right-wingers who say I'm a liberal socialist because I'm moderate.
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We've allowed ourselves to be convinced that the government is an insidious enemy at the gates, creeping in an inch at a time like a freeloading relative who won't get the hint about leaving. It's actually an institution we the people created to provide the administration services we need to run the country.
The idea that a private agency could or would do this as a disinterested act of altuism for its own sake is laughable. When it's ours and paid for with our dollars, we own it. And that means we're the bosses. It's time to remind our employees that they work for us. Or get fired in the next election.
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Re: police corruption
Polygraphs tests are a joke in every circle except the conmen selling them, and the conned who keep buying them, everyone else knows how insanely inaccurate they are, so making them mandatory like that would not solve the problems.
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Sure I can.
Regardless of how good the outcome, if the rationale to get there ("god said so") is accepted then a precedent is established, and you can bet that there will be additional, less obviously good, laws that will be enacted on the same premise.
"Establishment of religion" doesn't simply mean that a given religion is deemed as "official". If the laws are based on a religious beliefs, that's just as much -- maybe even more -- of an establishment as making a religion official.
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