UK Police Spy On Journalists At Small Town Paper, Gather One Million Minutes Worth Of Call Data
from the just-a-tiny,-long-running-abuse-of-the-system dept
The UK's top spy agencies have been known to place journalists under surveillance. Leaked Snowden documents showed GCHQ collected emails from news organizations such as the New York Times, BBC, and Washington Post. More accusations of spying were raised by UK journalists, detailing what appeared to be a clear abuse of the country's anti-terror laws -- laws particularly prone to exploitation thanks to generous loopholes and a minimum of oversight.
It wasn't just spy agencies doing the spying. In the case of the UK journalists, it was also local law enforcement digging through their emails and phone calls in hopes of identifying sources and leakers. More evidence of police surveillance of journalists has come to light, as reported by the Associated Press. Once again, it's law enforcement looking to uncover sources and whistleblowers, rather than terrorists or criminals.
British journalist Julia Breen's scoop about racism at her local police force didn't just get her on the front page, it got her put under surveillance.
In the months that followed Breen's exclusive, investigators logged her calls, those of her colleague Graeme Hetherington and even their modest-sized newspaper's busy switchboard in an effort to unmask their sources. The two were stunned when they eventually discovered the scale of the spying.
"It just never even crossed our minds," Breen said in a recent interview in the newsroom of The Northern Echo, in the English market town of Darlington. "I don't know if I was quite naive, but on a regional newspaper you don't expect your local police force to do this."
Mark Dias, a Cleveland Police officer, came forward and admitted he was the source for Breen's story, but that didn't stop the department from obtaining three days worth of calls to the paper's switchboard, along with logs of calls to and from three of the journalists who worked for the paper.
Once the police were tapped in, they just kept collecting call records.
Although none of the seized records included the content of the individuals' conversations, collectively the length, timing and nature of hundreds of phone calls can be extraordinarily revealing. It was later calculated that the surveillance covered over 1 million minutes of calling time.
And for what? The whistleblower the police were interested in had already outed himself. (And placed under investigation by his department.) Anything beyond that point was purely a fishing expedition for new sources/whistleblowers -- presumably in hopes of heading off more negative press. In addition to the journalists and Dias, Cleveland Police gathered information on communications with a police union official, and a lawyer that Dias and the union official were working with.
Since this came to light, the department has apologized to all of its snooping targets. It has also promised to perform an internal review of its last six years of policework to see if other surveillance abuses have taken place. This was more likely prompted by a court decision calling the surveillance unlawful than the department's innate desire to do the right thing. It will be doing it now, but only after being caught doing things it shouldn't have been doing.
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Filed Under: journalists, law enforcement, police, privacy, surveillance, uk
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If it was unlawful...
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Re: If it was unlawful...
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Laws are 4 the little people
Extensive formal & de facto police-immunity has been quietly and steadily built in to the practical application of government criminal justice... over many decades.
Most citizens do not notice this systemic corruption -- they see occasional news reports of police abuses, but falsely assume these are unusual events by a few bad apples.
The media is overwhelmingly supportive of government and its enforcers... normally celebrating the police and downplaying police criminality.
However, the media gets annoyed when they are the target of police corruption & abuse -- as is the case with this referenced British/journalists story.
The MSM never discerns the core problem with government law enforcers.
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Lager issues
There seems to be some overlooked, or at least undiscussed, larger issues here.
you don't expect your local police force to do this.
The issue I see is why do they even have the capacity to do this, let alone an excuse?
prompted by a court decision calling the surveillance unlawful
It it was unlawful, then it was criminal. Show me the orange jump suited police officers serving time in jail for this illegal act.
crickets chirping
Yeah, pretty much what I expected.
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Re: Lager issues
Big problem with this.
UK prison outfits are grey sweatshirts and jogging bottoms.
Makes them look like a slightly overweight middleaged woman trying to jog around her area of ticky-tacky little boxes.
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Should have cut their losses
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Re: Should have cut their losses
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It is a pity they have to kowtow to every demand to ignore misconduct or they will screw up other cases moving forward & take other actions to retaliate against them for upholding the law.
They wonder why so many people have no respect for the law or its cogs that are magically freed from having to follow the law.
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And now they are trying get journalists that receive leaked stuff guilty of spying
theregister - Planned Espionage Act could jail journos and whistleblowers as spies
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Re:
https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Slimline-Corded-Keyboard-99201/dp/B017M4IX8W/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&ie= UTF8&qid=1486984990&sr=1-6&keywords=usb+keyboard
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And here I was worried for a moment
Since this came to light, the department has apologized to all of its snooping targets. It has also promised to perform an internal review of its last six years of policework to see if other surveillance abuses have taken place. This was more likely prompted by a court decision calling the surveillance unlawful than the department's innate desire to do the right thing. It will be doing it now, but only after being caught doing things it shouldn't have been doing.
Well now, with the department tasking itself to check to make sure it didn't break the law in other ways consider my concerns put to rest.
I mean surely no-one is better suited to investigate potential wrong-doing than the very target of the investigation, that's why accused criminals without badges are put in charge of the investigations regarding their actions, who would do a better job?
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Re: And here I was worried for a moment
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"will you stop spying on that newspaper?"
"fuck no"
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It is ONLY a mere one million minutes of call data
The police are just being extra careful in case more criminal activity occurs. To protect us all. Can't you imagine horrible threats to our way of life? It's like the potential monster under the bed. You need to wake up the police to come check under the bed and install permanent surveillance. In every bedroom, just in case.
Somewhere in that 1.9 years of call data, there might have been a call to a terrorist. Of course, to be sure, everyone contacted during that time needs to be investigated, and their contacts as well. Because terrorists.
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