Thursday, February 19, 2015



Britain admits spying on lawyers

Meanwhile, from spy central, another admission: they've been illegally spying on people's lawyers and intercepting legally privileged material:

The regime under which UK intelligence agencies, including MI5 and MI6, have been monitoring conversations between lawyers and their clients for the past five years is unlawful, the British government has admitted.

[...]

The admission that the regime surrounding state snooping on legally privileged communications has also failed to comply with the European convention on human rights comes in advance of a legal challenge, to be heard early next month, in which the security services are alleged to have unlawfully intercepted conversations between lawyers and their clients to provide the government with an advantage in court.

The case is due to be heard before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). It is being brought by lawyers on behalf of two Libyans, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, who, along with their families, were abducted in a joint MI6-CIA operation and sent back to Tripoli to be tortured by Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2004.


That's a civil case (yes, they invaded people's privacy and pissed on the ECHR just to save the government money), but it is likely they've also done this in criminal terrorism cases as well. Which has just given everyone convicted of such an offence in the UK in the past five years grounds for appeal. Not to mention handed a clear propaganda victory to those terrorists, who can publicly claim (with some justification) that their convictions were just a stitch-up. Heckuva job those spies are doing there. I bet UKanians all feel a lot safer now.