Tag Archives: snoop

Somebody at Loose Women is a genius. Here’s the reason

Think about it:

Pertinent question: Piers Morgan.

For information, from Wikipedia:

During Morgan’s tenure as editor, the Daily Mirror was advised by Steven Nott that voicemail interception was possible by means of a standard PIN code. Despite staff initially expressing enthusiasm for the story it did not appear in the paper, although it did subsequently feature in a South Wales Argus article and on BBC Radio 5 Live in October 1999. On 18 July 2011 Nott was visited by officers of Operation Weeting.[97]

He came under criticism for his “boasting” about phone hacking from Conservative MP Louise Mensch, who has since apologised for these accusations.[98]

In July 2011, in a sequence of articles, the political blogger Paul Staines alleged that while editor of the Daily Mirror in 2002 Morgan published a story concerning the affair of Sven-Goran Eriksson and Ulrika Jonsson while knowing it to have been obtained by phone hacking.[99]

On 20 December 2011, Morgan was a witness by satellite link from the United States at the Leveson Inquiry.[100] While he said he had no reason to believe that phone hacking had occurred at the Mirror while he was in charge there, he admitted to hearing a recording of an answerphone message left by Paul McCartney for Heather Mills, but refused to “discuss where that tape was played or who made [it] – it would compromise a source.”[100] Appearing as a witness at the same Inquiry on 9 February 2012, Mills was asked under oath if she had ever made a recording of Paul McCartney’s phone call or had played it to Piers Morgan; she replied: “Never”.[101][102] She said that she had never authorised Morgan, or anybody, to access or listen to her voicemails.[101] Mills told the inquiry that Morgan, “a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years”, would have relished telling the inquiry if she had played a personal voicemail message to him.[102]

On 23 May 2012, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman was a witness at the Leveson Inquiry. He recalled a lunch with the Mirror editor in September 2002 at which Morgan outlined the means of hacking into a mobile phone.[103]

On 28 November 2012, the Channel 4 documentary Taking on the Tabloids, fronted by actor and phone hacking victim Hugh Grant, showed footage from a 2003 interview with Morgan by the singer and phone hacking victim Charlotte Church, during which he explained to her how to avoid answerphone messages being listened to by journalists. He said: “You can access … voicemails by typing in a number. Now, are you really telling me that journalists aren’t going to do that?”[104][105]

On 29 November 2012, the official findings of the Leveson Inquiry were released, in which Lord Justice Leveson said that Morgan’s testimony under oath on phone hacking was “utterly unpersuasive”. He stated: “[The] evidence does not establish that [Morgan] authorised the hacking of voicemails or that journalists employed by TMG [Trinity Mirror Group] were indulging in this practice … What it does, however, clearly prove is that he was aware that it was taking place in the press as a whole and that he was sufficiently unembarrassed by what was criminal behaviour that he was prepared to joke about it.”[3][106]

On 6 December 2013, Morgan was interviewed, under caution, by police officers from Operation Weeting investigating phone hacking allegations at Mirror Group Newspapers during his tenure as editor.[107]

On 24 September 2014, the Trinity Mirror publishing group admitted for the first time that some of its journalists had been involved in phone hacking and agreed to pay compensation to four people who sued for the alleged hacking of voicemails.[108][109] Six other phone-hacking claims had already been settled. The BBC reported that it had seen legal papers showing that although the alleged hacking could have taken place as early as 1998, the bulk of the alleged wrongdoing took place in the early 2000s when Morgan was the Daily Mirroreditor.[110] The admissions by Trinity Mirror came whilst the London Metropolitan Police investigation into the phone hacking allegations was ongoing. Morgan has always denied any involvement in the practice.[110]


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Lords Sneak UK Internet Snooping Law into Bill, Minus Safeguards – ISPreview

internet-surveillance

Opponents of the Government’s plan to revive the twice failed Internet Snooping law, which would force ISPs into logging a much bigger slice of everybody’s online activity and also make it more accessible to security services, are crying foul after dirty politics resulted in 18 pages of new law being snuck into the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill (CTSB) at the last minute.. and without the promised judicial oversight (safeguard), according to Mark Jackson of technical website ISPreview (thanks to Helen Price for the heads-up).

The significant amendment was tabled in the House of Lords by former Metropolitan Police chief Lord Blair, with support from Lord Carlisle, Lord King and Lord West. Suffice to say that the text appears to be almost [the] image… of 2012’s rejected Communications Data Bill, which itself was a revival of Labour’s equally controversial Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) several years earlier.

At present the existing law already requires broadband ISPs and telecoms firms, after receipt of a warrant, to maintain a very basic access log of the targeted customers online activity (times, dates and IP addresses) for a period of up to 12 months, which does NOT include the content of your communication and only occurs after a specific request is made to the ISP.

By comparison the new law wishes this to apply to everybody and to expand its remit into other fields, such as the monitoring of access/chats logs for popular online games and social networks, as well as Skype calls.

All of this has happened despite the coalition Government’s original pledge to “end the storage of internet and email records without good reason“, although clearly the interpretation of “good reason” differs for politicians as the new law would apply to everybody, irrespective of whether or not you’ve ever committed a crime (i.e. guilty, until proven innocent).

Needless to say that opponents of the old bill(s) and the ISP industry have reacted with disgust.

As a person who takes part in online activity, you’ll want to read the rest of this article, on ISPreview.

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Are we really stupid enough to believe Israel is spending £7.8bn on CRYPTOGRAPHY?

[Image: International Herald Tribune. America has been debating government surveillance for a while now.]

[Image: International Herald Tribune. America has been debating government surveillance for a while now.]

After yesterday’s article on Gaza was written, Yr Obdt Srvt opened the new edition of Private Eye and read the following on page 29:

“Downing Street’s promise on Monday to review all the UK’s arms export licences to Israel will come as no surprise to anyone who has perused a recent report from MPs… The report revealed the continuing mystery of licences for £7.8bn worth of equipment, mainly ‘cryptographic equipment, software and technology’.”

Really?

But page 5 of the same magazine states: “Many of the countries the UK supplies are flagged up by the Foreign Office as being ‘countries of human rights concern’. They account for £11.9bn of UK arms sales and include China, Iran, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, who have been sold ‘cryptography’ equipment – essentially kit to disguise communications, infiltrate external websites and protect their own from surveillance.”

Really.

That costs £7.8 billion in Israel but only £3.1 billion to all these other countries, does it? And it’s before taking out sales of any shoot-bang-kill weapons, too.

Arms exports to Saudi Arabia total more than £1.5 billion, and to China another £600 million or so. That leaves £1 billion between Yemen, Iran (!) and anyone else not mentioned in the article.

It’s not believable. Even if the software licence was the most expensive ever, it beggars belief that Israel would be willing to pay 16 times as much as – for example – Iran, for the same equipment.

Meanwhile, an article in today’s Guardian clarifies how this kit will be used. The country’s right-wing government is intent on suppressing dissent against its military operations in Palestinian areas and has worked hard to ensure that around 95 per cent of the public support it.

This leaves five per cent of the population, who are afraid to voice their opinion openly for fear of being attacked in the street. Left-wing commentator Gideon Levy, who has written in opposition to the assaults, has suffered epistolary attacks from (among others) Eldad Yaniv, former political adviser to ex-prime minister Ehud Barack. Yaniv wrote on his Facebook page: “The late Gideon Levy. Get used to it.”

It does not seem far from the realms of possibility that a government that has generated this kind of support would buy surveillance equipment to snoop on its detractors in search of any evidence that could bring them down.

“What is different this time is the anti-democratic spirit,” Levy states in the Guardian article. “Zero tolerance of any kind of criticism, opposition to any kind of sympathy with the Palestinians,” says Levy. “You shouldn’t be surprised that the 95 per cent [are in favour of the war], you should be surprised at the 5 per cent. This is almost a miracle. The media has an enormous role. Given the decades of demonisation of the Palestinians, the incitement and hatred, don’t be surprised the Israeli people are where they are.”

Is this not exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany, back in the 1930s? Isn’t it exactly what Roger Waters was protesting against, as mentioned in yesterday’s VP article? And did the Nazis not use surveillance techniques via their secret police, the Gestapo, to ensure dissent was suppressed and propaganda in support of their policies held sway over public opinion?

(It should be noted that none of this should be used to suggest that the Palestinian organisation Hamas was right to launch attacks on Israel. The plight of the people of Gaza is real but must be settled by peaceful means; violence can only ever make matters worse in the long run.)

Now come back to the UK, where we have a right-wing government that has worked extremely hard to ensure that the mass media put forward only stories supporting its policies and point of view. Is it not possible that a government in possession of the kind of surveillance equipment it is exporting to ‘countries of human rights concern’ – a government that is known to have extremely unsound beliefs about human rights – might turn that equipment on its own people?

These are dangerous times for all of us.

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