[HN Gopher] Northern Ireland police unlawfully put reporters und...
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Northern Ireland police unlawfully put reporters under surveillance
Author : campuscodi
Score : 75 points
Date : 2024-12-17 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| all2 wrote:
| Of all the places to broach tyranny, you'd think Northern Ireland
| would know better. I refer to the IRA and the old folks who knew
| about calculated murder and car bombs to dissuade certain
| political actions.
|
| I am not advocating violence, simply stating that the peoples of
| Northern Ireland are well familiar with tyranny, and are mentally
| equipped to do something about it. They used to be, anyway.
| jmkni wrote:
| One of the side effects of The Troubles was giving the police
| more power than they have in the rest of the UK.
|
| For example, if you are arrested in Northern Ireland, you have
| no "right to remain silent" thanks to a law brought in in 1988.
| A court can draw "adverse inferences" (take it as a sign of
| guilt) if you remain silent during a police interview.
| dave4420 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that law got extended to the rest of the UK a
| few years later.
|
| (I agree with your overall point though.)
| arrowsmith wrote:
| "You don't have to say anything, but it may harm your
| defence if you don't mention when questioned something that
| you later rely on in court."
|
| That's what UK cops say when arresting someone.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| The government has also at times permitted the police to
| torture suspects, and allowed indefinite detention without
| trial: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-27714715
| dundarious wrote:
| Protest laws are very different in NI. Draconian compared to
| the rest of the UK, at least before the last Tory
| government's changes.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >Protest laws are very different in NI. Draconian compared
| to the rest of the UK.
|
| Yeah but you can close a street and march all day as long
| as you call it a tradition and not a protest against oil.
| regularization wrote:
| Actually you can go back to the 1922 Special Powers Act, or
| before that even.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| It shouldn't be amazing but it is endlessly surprising to me that
| authorities cannot stop abusing their authority to spy on their
| fellow citizens. The articles doesn't clarify whether this is a
| case of "shootings are happening right now and we are spying on
| the reporters for a day or two because there is an urgent need to
| protect people and maybe their sources will help us", or whether
| it was "we were irritated that they figured some things out, it
| was an easy lazy way to try to find out who was giving them
| info".
|
| Authorities will spy on us when given the opportunity for
| expediency. With everyone carrying around phone/tracking device,
| your recent vintage car comes with one and then there are just
| things like tagging devices, apple tags etc.
|
| What we need are serious penalties for this spying, but ha ha we
| are going in the opposite direction. I'm not even in the UK, but
| I figure authorities in the US are doing this kind of thing too.
| They try to get text messages, all kinds of surveilance is going
| on.
| vkou wrote:
| > It shouldn't be amazing but it is endlessly surprising to me
| that authorities cannot stop abusing their authority to spy on
| their fellow citizens.
|
| The relationship between the UK and Ireland is less like that
| of fellow citizens and more like that of a colonial occupier.
| vinay427 wrote:
| This article is about the PSNI, a documentary released in
| 2017, and surveillance in 2018. While the history between NI,
| the rest of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland is obviously
| relevant, it's a bit of a stretch to reduce this to the
| relationship between the UK and Ireland.
| vkou wrote:
| It's really not. The existence of NI as part of the UK is
| not something that Irish nationalists have historically
| been very happy with. They aren't in charge, and the people
| who are in charge are scared shitless of them ever getting
| truculent again.
|
| And they try to pre-empt it in the only way that they know
| how.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Birney and McCaffrey were arrested in 2018 over the _alleged
| theft of material used in the documentary from Northern Ireland
| 's police ombudsman_ and claimed they were subject to covert
| surveillance before and after the release of the film.
|
| The PSNI overreacted in this case over concerns that
| information was leaking from the police regulator. Keep in mind
| that at the time of the documentary's release, the Royal Ulster
| Constabulary (the PSNI's predecessor organisation) was
| undertaking a massive decades-long counter-terrorist operation
| that involved suppressing terrorist organisations on both sides
| of the conflict, and that many of these terrorist organisations
| still exist and remain heavily involved in organised crime.
|
| While the PSNI acted illegally in these raids, it's easy to see
| that their motivation stemmed from a need to investigate any
| leaks, which, if they had existed, would almost certainly have
| put lives (informants) at risk.
|
| It's not always some grand conspiracy. At least in the UK, it's
| _usually_ honest people doing their best and getting it wrong.
| rootedbox wrote:
| The Peelers have historically not been known for their
| honesty when interacting with Catholics. Racism serves as an
| institutional tool for harassment and the justification of
| power over certain groups. There is no genuine honesty in
| these practices, even if they are ostensibly used to prevent
| violence.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >they were arrested over a documentary that alleged police
| collusion in the 1994 murder of six Catholic soccer fans.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > their motivation stemmed from a need to investigate any
| leaks
|
| It is 100% of the time motivated from a _desire_ to
| investigate leaks and find sources. If you think this is a
| justification, you will always be in favor of the
| surveillance of journalists.
|
| > It's not always some grand conspiracy. At least in the UK,
| it's usually honest people doing their best and getting it
| wrong.
|
| If they were honest, they'd admit that they neither believe
| in journalism, nor the protection of journalists' sources.
| Some do admit that, but most don't.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Perhaps removing the informant from the field would be a less
| productive but legal solution to preserve their life?
|
| I don't think non-secret police has the right to overpass
| it's rights even for any good with honest sentiment. How
| useful is a legal framework that can be trespassed in case of
| lives at risk, in a violent context where people get
| murdered?
|
| We should refrain to call conspiracy easily but if I would be
| caught, "honest people doing their best" is how I'd try to
| defend myself.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" I figure authorities in the US are doing this kind of
| thing too"_
|
| It's endemic, and coincidentally there was a bill that failed
| in the US senate just last week that was meant to put to a halt
| to it--Wyden's "Protect Reporters from Exploitative State
| Spying Act",
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5033592-cotton-blocks-fe...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/press-act-journalism-shield-law-...
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Every institutions #1 priority is to amass power and perpetuate
| itself. Of course the violence arm of the state engages in
| extralegal surveillance and extralegal intelligence gathering
| and extralegal violence to these ends of course it curries
| favor with the arms of government it seeks to ally itself with
| by offering to do so on their behalf on a limited basis.
|
| Speaking about the police specifically, or perhaps more
| generally the executive branch of the state, the only thing
| that checks this power is the risk of them doing something that
| so threatens the populace or other institutions that they ally
| against them. The point at which this check starts becoming a
| realistic possibility explains the variance in volume and forms
| this bad behavior takes from country to country, culture to
| culture, etc.
| potsandpans wrote:
| And yet, we as civilians cannot resist just handing that power
| over to them.
|
| What's the solution? People just don't care about civil
| liberties, if it means the possibility of preventing every
| perceivable harm to protected members of society (think of the
| children).
|
| There is apparently no line.
| dylan604 wrote:
| "This was one of a number of difficult decisions on a complex and
| fast moving day," he added.
|
| Um, okay. So maybe you made a bad decision rashly on the day, but
| then every day after that was an opportunity for someone to
| realize the bad decision and undo it. Instead, they allowed it to
| continue. That means the fog-of-war type excuse is crap
| pessimizer wrote:
| This was a norm completely shattered in the West by the Obama
| administration, and the Trump administration happily did the same
| to try to stop their leaking. In the West, "reporters" and
| "activists" are unofficially certified by the government, and
| those who are not are considered suspected terrorists. The idea
| that NI police would hold themselves to a higher standard is
| laughable.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journ...
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fox-news-reporter-secretly-moni...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/trump-administration-p...
|
| In the US, this attitude has even filtered down to local bosses:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/kansas-mar...
| ajb wrote:
| Tangentially related, but the old Official Secrets act (1920)
| made this exception for Journalism:
|
| 5 (5): "Nothing in this section shall apply to postal packets
| -addressed to any office where any newspaper or periodical is
| published, being postal packets in reply to advertisements
| appearing in such newspaper or periodical."
|
| (the rest of the section mandates recording the origin of post or
| telegrams delivered or forwarded by any business)
|
| I've always wondered what caused that exception to be made, but
| I've not found any historical evidence about it.
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