Page 7 - Intelligence Services Act News Today

Posted on Jan 12, 2021 by Caleb Chen The United Kingdom (UK) High Court has ruled that the country’s security and intelligence agencies can no longer use “general warrants” as legal writ for property interference, aka hacking. The move has been declared a victory for the rule of law by privacy and civil liberties experts around the world. For years, law enforcement in the UK has been using general warrants under an interpretation of the law provided by the Investigatory Powers Tribuna...

The Australian coat of arms over parliament house, Canberra (John/Flickr) Published 11 Jan 2021 06:00   0 Comments   The Richardson review, released last month, amounts to the most significant review of Australia’s intelligence legislative framework since the Hope Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security in the 1970s. Back then, as David Irvine has noted, former judge Robert Hope laid out operating princi...

Government use of general warrants to authorise computer and phone hacking is unlawful A court has ruled that the security and intelligence services can no longer rely on ‘general warrants’ to authorise the hacking of large numbers of computers and phones belonging to UK citizens Share this item with your network: By Published: 08 Jan 2021 23:03 The security and intelligence services cannot use “general warrants” to indiscriminately hack into large numbers of mobile phones and comp...

PRIVACY campaigners have won a five-year legal battle against the secret service’s use of “general warrants” to search the computers and phones of millions of people.  The High Court ruled today that section 5 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994 does not permit the issuing of general warrants with property interference and some forms of computer hacking.  The ruling quashed a previous decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.  The decision hinged on Common law dating back to th...

© REUTERS/Toby Melville FILE PHOTO: The MI6 building in London August 25, 2010While debate rages over controversial spying legislation in the UK, other disclosures indicate British spooks have long been secretly free to commit crimes with impunity anyway. There has rightly been intense controversy over the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) bill in recent months. The legislation would enshrine in law the ability of undercover operatives - both employees of British state agencies and thei...

Dont show me this message again✕ John Le Carre has died aged 89 (Rex Features) John le Carre, the writer whose fiction illuminated the ambiguities of espionage and treachery more than any factual accounts could ever do, died last weekend at the age of 89. And he would surely have savoured the irony. The timing was such that appreciative obituaries and warm personal memoirs found themselves sharing media space with some of the more tantalising glimpses afforded to the British public in recent...

MI6 May Have Let Spies Commit Crimes in UK: Tribunal A UK intelligence services watchdog tribunal heard on Wednesday that MI6 may have authorised spies to commit crimes in the UK, possibly without any limits on their extent. According to campaigners, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that the UK’s foreign intelligence secret service MI6 and GCHQ, its intelligence communications service, may have breached their remit by operating under a policy to break the law in the UK that the governm...

Spy chiefs may have illegally authorised British agents to commit serious crimes in the UK, a tribunal heard. MI6 – the foreign intelligence service – is able to authorise spies it recruits overseas to commit crimes. But it cannot permit criminal operations by agents in the UK. A ruling by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal said MI6 and GCHQ informants may have been allowed ‘to participate in criminal activity in the UK’, and raised the question of ‘whether that conduct was lawful’....

The cost of courage: Australia must do more to protect whistleblowers We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. Dismiss Opinion By Kieran Pender Normal text size Advertisement As we reach the end of 2020, four individuals – Bernard Collaery, Witness K, David McBride and Richard Boyle – are being prosecuted by our government. These whistleblowers spoke up in the public interest, and now face the very real prospect of jail time. If we want to live in a tran...

MI6 failed to make clear to the Foreign Secretary that one of its spies overseas had gone rogue and engaged in serious criminal activity, a new report by Britain’s intelligence watchdog has revealed. The intelligence agency had been asking for renewed authorisation of the agent’s activities without being clear about the agent’s behaviour, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO) latest annual report says. IPCO has censured MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), for ...