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Ars Technica reports:
The UK government has quietly passed new legislation that exempts GCHQ, police, and other intelligence officers from prosecution for hacking into computers and mobile phones.
While major or controversial legislative changes usually go through normal parliamentary process (i.e. democratic debate) before being passed into law, in this case an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act was snuck in under the radar as secondary legislation. According to Privacy International, "It appears no regulators, commissioners responsible for overseeing the intelligence agencies, the Information Commissioner's Office, industry, NGOs or the public were notified or consulted about the proposed legislative changes... There was no public debate."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Monday May 18 2015, @07:45PM
We don't have a written constitution. All we can do (usually) is to hope that the House of Lords reject changes to the law on the grounds that it goes against traditionally-accepted notions of liberty and free speech.
We have a Supreme Court nowadays where laws can be challenged, but that's expensive and takes a long time since you typically have to start at a lower court and work upwards successively appealing to a higher authority as you get knocked back.
There is always the Human Rights Act which holds us accountable to the European Court of Human Rights, but the Tory Party and dismantling this as we speak [theguardian.com] which was one of their election pledges to steal votes from the lunatic fringe who would otherwise have voted for UKIP [theguardian.com].
Who gets to appoint people to the House of Lords? The government of the day (via the Queen), of course. And once you're in the House of Lords, you're in for life.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].