Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors by Trevor Johnson.
From the post:
The existence of a secretive unit within London’s Metropolitan Police that uses hacking to illegally access the emails of hundreds of political campaigners and journalists has been revealed. At least two of the journalists work for the Guardian.
Green Party representative in the British House of Lords, Jenny Jones, exposed the unit’s existence in an opinion piece in the Guardian. The facts she revealed are based on a letter written to her by a whistleblower.
The letter reveals that through the hacking, Scotland Yard has illegally accessed the email accounts of activists for many years, and this was possible due to help from “counterparts in India.” The letter alleged that the Metropolitan Police had asked police in India to obtain passwords on their behalf—a job that the Indian police subcontracted out to groups of hackers in India.
The Indian hackers sent back the passwords obtained, which were then used illegally by the unit within the Met to gather information from the emails of those targeted.
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Trevor covers a number of other points, additional questions that should be asked, the lack of media coverage over this latest outrage, etc., all of which merit your attention.
From my perspective, these abuses by the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard), are examples of the terrorism bogeyman furthering government designs against quarrelsome but otherwise ordinary citizens.
Quarrelsome but otherwise ordinary citizens are far safer and easier to spy upon than seeking out actual wrongdoers. And spying justifies part of Scotland Yard’s budget, since everyone “knows” a lack of actionable intelligence means terrorists are hiding successfully, not the more obvious lack of terrorists to be found.
As described in Trevor’s post, Scotland Yard, like all other creatures of government, thrives in shadows. Shadows where its decisions are beyond discussion and reproach.
In choosing between supporting government spawned creatures that live in the shadows and working to dispel the shadows that foster them, remember they are not, were not and never will be “…on you side.”
They have a side, but it most assuredly is not yours.