News Amnesty International sues the UK over spying

If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If data is gathered and no one views it, is it still a privacy violation, spying, or infringing on people’s privacy and freedom of expression? I guess we'll find out in a few years.

 

I'm a bit confused by this. If they're suing the government, does that mean they're hoping to receive some sort of benefit from this? Or are they trying to put the people in charge behind bars? Because if it's not the latter, then it's just going to cost us (the people) a lot and offer no benefit.

It just sounds incredibly expensive to me, their end game better be worth it. Not the principle, the actual real life impact.

 

Ah you see there's the problem. We've seen all too frequently that people are willing to stoop to whatever level they feel they must in order to get their jobs done. That applies to all areas of life it seems, be it governments, banks or even the high street shops.

At the end of the day, it's likely going to have no effect other than slap a nice bill on the UK taxpayer and divert funds from other Amnesty endeavours. I'm not really sure how you solve this problem tbh. Seems more of an issue with human nature than anything.

 

Yeah that's it Amnesty become annoyed on the behalf of others, 90% of whom didn't appoint you their moral compass or representatives. If the UK government loses this and is fined who will this hurt? the British Taxpayer that's who, haven't we suffered enough under the austerity of the Tory rich boys letting their banker best pals off?

Amnesty is looking for one thing and one thing only, money to fund their cause. Like an Ambulance chasing lawyer they love stuff like this. I hope the courts tell them to go get stuffed.

 

Come now we'd have suffered no matter who's in government, that's the nature of a recession. Having a ridiculous pile of national debt didn't exactly help either. Still, let's not steer this conversation into election politics too much, would just cause a massive angry derail.

 

Still doesn't alter the fact that We the British Taxpayer would end up paying the legal costs and/fines involved that is an absolute fact.

 

Certainly not disputing that, given that's what I said in my earlier comment.

 

Isn't it more that just in theory, can't the ECHR force the government of the day to abolish the law that makes it legal?

AFAIK Amnesty wouldn't profit from taking the UK government to the ECHR, yes the cost of taking something to the ECHR is born by the taxpayers of Europe (not just the UK) but it's not about financial gain for either party involved, it's about changing unjust laws.

It's about standing up for your privacy and freedom of expression.

 

Yes

Yes

 

I cannot believe people are moaning about this, especially tech-literate people?

The Government has stuck two fingers up your chuff and whored your life out to spamming corporations, insurance companies, basically any tom, dick and harry, dodgy or not....who target your kids on their tablets/phones through demographic information obtained very illegally and then spam your toddlers as well as every man and woman in the UK with targeted ads and sweetie commercials so that the corporate types can improve market share and fill up the coffers, pay no tax, make you and your beloved kids fat and move the money abroad, so doing so serve no national economic purpose whatsoever.....and that's ok?

What a whining bunch of short sighted plebs.

I hope the ECHR batter the UK government, and make them comply with THE LAW...

It won't happen of course, because the old boy network is too entrenched in UK society.

People not understanding the concept of what your privacy means.. As illustrated above in some of the negative posts further reinforce the corporate and government steamroller.

Shame on you. BAHHHH!

PS: It is no coincidence that on the day hundreds of thousand of pension chests are unlocked, that an amazing, once in a lifetime oil well is found in southern england...greedy tory tosspots will sink to any level to grab the loot and clean any old timer out.

 

I don't think amnesty will benefit financially from winning the court case. They will probably reclaim their legal costs.

However, surely anger at the cost of this should lay with your government. If there was no breach of human rights no one would have to be take them to court at the tax payers expense.

 

What people don't understand here is that we all moaned and were furious at what happened when it was revealed. The problem is that this particular action will do eff all to solve anything. sure it's nice in principle, but it doesn't do anything helpful. It's not like suing a company, who then lose out on profits and then have to recuperate the losses elsewhere, all the while trying to compete with other players in the market. This is a government, this will cost millions and it will come out of the same pot where we put our taxes into and draw our services from.

What I can guarantee is that a number of senior law partners will be lining their pockets rather nicely.

And I have no idea where all this political diatribe has come from blaming one party or another for this crap. This privacy invasion has been going on for yonks, it's only recently when the full scope of it has been brought to our attention.

 

That's true; but the more exposure this issue gets the better. I don't get all the negative reactions here, honestly. There's no pleasing some people.

 

Not sure why you and others think this action won't accomplish anything.
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/dec/22/britain-european-court-human-rights

If legal actions brought against countries never achieved anything how do you explain the above?

 

and ukip (and a lot of tories) want out of the EU and thus these laws

 

Absolute bollocks Harlequin.

 

Because those are entirely different cases. I could agree with them if they were talking about say the lack of support for victims of child abuse or not ensuring fair employment and pay of individuals regardless of race/gender etc. Those are points where a government has neglected an area and somebody has taken advantage. That goes for all the examples you listed.

This is different. This is a government body wilfully subverting privacy and related laws. If they want to do it again, they can and there will still be no repercussions unless they get revealed once more. They knew what they were doing was morally nebulous in the first place, they clearly don't have a problem with it.

If you want legal action, what needs to be done is a thorough investigation where eventually those in charge are put behind bars and further measures introduced to ensure things can be easily checked up by a secure third party. Of course, that will never happen. For a start, you can't open up an intelligence service to scrutiny from another body, they'll just do what they normally do, hide away in their secrets. Even then, you'd also need a body completely resistant to corruption and coercion from a powerful, state sanctioned service, which again is a bit of a stretch if you ask me.

You can't even replace the government in power either as those working in the services aren't related to them. They'd be snooping around regardless of whether the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems, UKIP you name it were in charge.

 

But wouldn't a ruling in the favor of Amnesty better define what the law considers privacy?
By that i mean even if it's just a computer processing data, not being viewed by human eyes, that it's still a breach of privacy.

I haven't read the entire human rights law but I'm guessing it's like most laws, in that it's failed to keep pace with a digital world, that it may need to better define what privacy is.