Online Safety Bill: Whatsapp, Signal issue stark final warning against mass snooping of messages

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Image of GCHQ donught building. Doesn't look like a doughnut. Look. Oh c'mon, can't you see - open your eye.
Image of GCHQ donught building

https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/online-safety-bill-whatsapp-signal-element-breaking-encryption-mass-surveillance-messaging-apps-b1091873.html

The heads of three major messaging apps have exclusively told The Standard that the Online Safety Bill, which is facing one of it’s final votes this week, will lead to the mass surveillance of every private online message and London’s reputation as a place to do business will be destroyed if the bill passes into law.

They also say Prime Minister Rishi Sunak can forget about the UK becoming a technology superpower if that happens, as tech firms will leave London and no one will want to start a business here.

“If the Online Safety Bill does not amend the vague language that currently opens the door for mass surveillance and the nullification of end-to-end encryption, then it will not only create a significant vulnerability that will be exploited by hackers, hostile nation states, and those wishing to do harm, but effectively salt the earth for any tech development in London and the UK at large,” Meredith Whittaker, president of not-for-profit secure messaging app Signal told The Standard.

“Passing the bill as-is sends the clear message that the UK government would rather make law based on magical thinking, than honor longstanding expert consensus when it comes to issues of complex technology.”

https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/online-safety-bill-whatsapp-signal-element-breaking-encryption-mass-surveillance-messaging-apps-b1091873.html

Continue ReadingOnline Safety Bill: Whatsapp, Signal issue stark final warning against mass snooping of messages

The Home Office says you don’t need to know about its ‘spying’ on lawyers

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Image of GCHQ donught building. Doesn't look like a doughnut. Look. Oh c'mon, can't you see - open your eye.

Original article republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Exclusive: Government refuses to answer questions about its surveillance of immigration lawyers

Jenna Corderoy 24 April 2023, 10.00pm

The government has refused to answer questions about its “monitoring” of human rights lawyers – saying revealing the extent of its surveillance is not in the public interest.

In February, immigration minister Robert Jenrick admitted during a parliamentary debate that the Home Office is “monitoring the activities” of “a small number of legal practitioners”, after claiming that “human rights lawyers abuse and exploit our laws”.

Using Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, openDemocracy asked the Home Office how many legal practitioners it is monitoring, the nature of the monitoring and when it began. We also asked which unit within the department is carrying out the surveillance or if it has been outsourced to private firms.

The Home Office has now rejected the request, saying it is not in the public interest to disclose any of the information. openDemocracy has appealed against this decision.

Paul Heron, senior solicitor at the Public Interest Law Centre, told openDemocracy: “Government ministers spying on lawyers sounds like something from an authoritarian state. It is a direct threat to the rule of law and undermines the principles of justice and fairness.

“State surveillance of lawyers, and indeed any worker, is a clear violation of human rights and civil liberties and undermines the very foundation of a free and democratic society.”

Heron added: “The Home Office’s refusal to respond openly, adequately and indeed at all to the FOI request from openDemocracy regarding the monitoring strategy of lawyers by the Home Office should be a real concern, indicating not only a fundamental lack of transparency but a fundamental lack of accountability.”

State surveillance of lawyers, and indeed any worker, is a clear violation of human rights and civil liberties

Jon Baines, a senior data protection specialist at law firm Mishcon de Reya, shared Heron’s concerns.

Speaking to openDemocracy, Baines said: “The secrecy shown by the Home Office is regrettable, particularly as there is a distinct lack of any meaningful analysis of the public interest factors weighing in favour of disclosure.

“Secret monitoring of lawyers by the state has very serious connotations, and if the information really is exempt from disclosure, it is incumbent on the Home Office to give more detail and more justification for what is an inherently oppressive activity.”

The Home Office’s silence comes ahead of the return of the Illegal Migration Bill to the Commons this week, for its third and final reading before moving to the Lords. On Monday, the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that the bill “risks breaching international obligations to protect human rights and exposing individuals to serious harm”.

The government claims the legislation will deter people from crossing the English Channel in small boats.

In February, Tory MP Bill Wiggin used a parliamentary session about a violent incident outside a hotel used to temporarily house asylum seekers in Knowsley, Liverpool to ask about legislating to stop such crossings.

Jenrick replied: “This is one of the most litigious areas of public life. It is an area where, I am afraid, human rights lawyers abuse and exploit our laws.”

The Home Office must give more detail and more justification for what is an inherently oppressive activity

Later in the debate, Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael asked: “The minister told us a few minutes ago that part of the problem here is human rights lawyers who abuse and exploit our laws… could the minister tell the House how many solicitors, advocates and barristers have been reported by the Home Office in the last 12 months to the regulatory authorities?”

Jenrick did not answer the question or provide figures. Instead, he said: “We are monitoring the activities, as it so happens, of a small number of legal practitioners, but it is not appropriate for me to discuss that here.”

At the time, Jenrick’s comments prompted dismay and concern among lawyers.

In its FOI refusal, the Home Office stated that a disclosure would “inhibit free and frank analysis in the future, and the loss of frankness and candour would damage the quality of risk assessments and deliberation and lead to poorer decision-making”.

Explaining its decision to withhold the information, the department said: “The Home Office has a process that allows caseworkers to check companies and individuals are qualified to provide immigration advice and reporting mechanisms that allows us to escalate any issues to regulatory bodies.”

Original article republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingThe Home Office says you don’t need to know about its ‘spying’ on lawyers

Partial anatomy of a hack by GCHQ – It’s pwned

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[5/2/15 I may have been mistaken about the running inside virtualization and that is probably normal livecd messages. There is still something amiss with the different ps axu(s) – it does at least make me very suspicious since I can’t think of any reason why that would happen other than nasty. I’m also surprised that this system is so difficult to boot into OpenBSD. You can’t be too paranoid, or can you?]

I’ve got an AMD64 thin client as a gateway / router that also runs a tor relay. It usually runs dnsmasq but has been running the more conventional dhcpd and named recently. It uses a small camera-style flash card as a hard drive running current and patched OpenBSD. My internal network connects to this through a switch. I run firewalls on all machines – pf on this of course and usually arno-iptables-firewall on debian boxes. This box currently has an uptime of over 59 days.

Image of GCHQ donught building. Doesn't look like a doughnut. Look. Oh c'mon, can't you see - open your eye.

Just recently I’ve had a hard drive fail on my desktop debian machine. I was very surprised at this since it’s very low mileage and being debian linux it hardly ever gets powered down. It appeared to have many and increasing terrible errors that also seemed to jump about whenever I tried e2fscking them. I can’t help but suspect that GCHQ contributed to the apparent demise of this drive.

My new replacement drive arrived yesterday and I had decided to install an OpenBSD xfce desktop. None of the OpenBSD install cds were recognised. What’s going on here?

At the OpenBSD box:

# ps axu | grep bin
root         1  0.0  0.0   744   148 ??  Is    23Nov14    0:01.16 /sbin/init
_syslogd 12341  0.0  0.1   756   876 ??  I     23Nov14    0:08.61 /usr/sbin/sys
_iscsid  10832  0.0  0.1   624   548 ??  Is    23Nov14    0:00.00 /usr/sbin/isc
root     17049  0.0  0.1  1068  1100 ??  Is    23Nov14    0:00.04 /usr/sbin/ssh
_sndio    1059  0.0  0.0   712   344 ??  I<s   23Nov14    0:00.00 /usr/bin/sndi
root     25566  0.0  0.1   904  1092 ??  Ss    23Nov14    0:09.31 /usr/sbin/cro
< (xterm widened) >
# ps axu | grep bin
root         1  0.0  0.0   744   148 ??  Is    23Nov14    0:01.16 /sbin/init
_syslogd 12341  0.0  0.1   756   876 ??  S     23Nov14    0:08.61/usr/sbin/syslogd
_iscsid  10832  0.0  0.1   624   548 ??  Is    23Nov14    0:00.00 /usr/sbin/iscsid
root     17049  0.0  0.1  1068  1100 ??  Is    23Nov14    0:00.04 /usr/sbin/sshd
_sndio    1059  0.0  0.0   712   344 ??  I<s   23Nov14    0:00.00 /usr/bin/sndiod
root     25566  0.0  0.1   904  1092 ??  Ss    23Nov14    0:09.31 /usr/sbin/cron
_tor     18528  0.0  2.8 21700 25344 ??  S<    23Nov14  1927:49.62 /usr/local/bin/tor

That can’t be right – that tor only appears in the second and subsequent ps axu(s). Having huge difficulty i.e. it is impossible, to install OpenBSD to my desktop machine. They’re pwned.

OpenBSD doesn’t install under a Linux  virualization ‘wrapper’. Linux runs under Linux virtualization, OpenBSD won’t – at least not under this virtualization.

“NET: Registered protocol family 17

mpls_gso: MPLS GSO support” it reads – it’s embedded Linux.

It appears to be a very small wrapper in IPv6 coming from the OpenBSD router / gateway. My laptop starts complaining that BIOS has been changed – not seen that message before. The tor router relay is stopped pretty sharpish.

GCHQ? Well my connection to my ISP is to their ‘audit’ machine. I guess that means GCHQ. My close friend’s car was hours late back from it’s first service – shouldn’t the first service only be oil and filter, a half hour job? After that it was clear that cops could hear everything said in that car and were often waiting for us to arrive. A friend who I was once close to had the ‘Water Board’ round to check his taps. He remarked that she was well-presented. I’ve noticed that local ‘Scientific Investigation’ policewomen are well-presented. Oh, and we had a deep cover spy at our anti-casualisation group meetings. He was also at a pre-G8 2005 meeting. I think that he was Met, very interested in me and an apparent dirty, hairy anarchist cop.

I was using a password 29 characters long. My guess is that they used my mobile to map my keyboard – different characters sound different and there are differences in the time I take to reach them. Or they could have watched (spied) through the window.

I don’t know if they wanted me to find this or not.  I met someone from GCHQ in the Bunch of Grapes one Friday afternoon many years ago. It’s their job, it’s what they do.

I watched this a few hours earlier. You may get lost after the first 10 minutes or so. 30 to 37 minutes or so is good for politicians.

Can’t copy embed code. Bloody GCHQ. Bruce Schneier at MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXtS6UcdOMs

I’m listening to this at the moment

but while I’m listening to this I want to explain a far greater danger than terrorism that I face almost daily because you see, I am a cyclist.

Yesterday I was almost mown down by a motorist that was on the wrong side of the road and almost mowed me down. He had not seen me because he was texting.

Motorists on mobile phones are lethal to cyclists – a far greater danger than any supposed attacks by ‘terrorists’. I can attest that there is a far greater danger to people – pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists – than terrorism. We need a sense of proportion, to be measured and to asses issues. As a cyclist, I am telling you it is far more dangerous than any fake manufactured, terrorism nonsense. I accept that there are a very few terrorists – usually insane. How can they be anything other than insane? But, they are caught up in the terrorist narrative. Cycling and being a pedestrian is far more dangerous.

Where is the international campaign against motorists using mobile phones? Surely NASA, GCHQ can catch these ‘t*******ts’? Don’t they cause terror to ordinary people and kill indiscriminitely? Actually, yes they do. And far more than this terrorism BS.

There are very few terrorist. Yes they should be pursued. There is fake, manufactured terrorism which is still terrorism pursued by nation-states and criminal cabals. There are also a few poor sods caught up in the terrorism narrative but let’s get it in perspective.

Indiscriminite drones. Stop it.

Ok, er, cycling is nothing compared to rockets from a drone. It’s much the same that it’s totally undeserved but I reckon a drone is far more lethal

– he’s talking about speed limits now

struck by lightening

I suggest that you watch the Greenwald vid. still long to go – talking about inscenity now

Talking about terrorism defined as what Muslims do. We had this in Uk recently with the car driven into council offices up North which then exploded. Strangely enough that wasn’t a car bomb and was reported on the news as most definitely not terrorism …

Intermission: I take advantage of this intermission to point out out that I do magick: that I have converted water into wine with the assistance of fruit, sugar and yeast. I made Melomel for the first time this year and I think that it may have been the first medicine (Meddygon Myddfai). Untreated, unadulterated honey and currant fruits worked really well. It was like a universal medicine – anything that was wrong with you it cured. I believe that it is possible to keep bees without exploiting them.

OK, intermission over.

<snip>

22/1/15 2.40am At least they know that I’m not into CP. I wish that they would go for the ones that are (and more). Actually, I want them to go for the people that abuse children. My understanding of GCHQ’s purpose is that it’s outside their remit. I think that GCHQ is military and concerned with defence. Can we change that so that they catch paedos?

better now ;)

Continue ReadingPartial anatomy of a hack by GCHQ – It’s pwned

This new total Cnut in charge of GCHQ

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The new man in charge of GCHQ is happy to sit in my bedroom when I’m doing consensual wicked actds with my missus.

That’s what he’s saying – You do not have a right to privacy and GCHQ has the right to spy on everyone to identify … what???

So they have the right to watch you getting down to it???

I think that that is what he’s saying. You might be terrimerists! He wants to sit there watching you while you skudd. Isn’t that privacy?

If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about …

Oh FO. You really don’t want these sihts interfering so you are scared to talk to people cos they will follow them to, do you?
You don’t watching you every second of the day, do you?
If you’ve got nothing to hide. FO, it’s Fascim.

Do you want them to know when you fart? If you’ve got nothing to hide …

Yip, Yip, FM, FM, LM, LM, Quinell the stards are listening. Is happened to me. How long until it happens wholesale?

You got nothing to hide?

Of course you have

You got nothing to hide?

Then they can have recordings of you skudding

Continue ReadingThis new total Cnut in charge of GCHQ

MI5, MI6 and GCHQ ‘spied on lawyers’

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Image of GCHQ donught building. Doesn't look like a doughnut. Look. Oh c'mon, can't you see - open your eye. ed: and 3s or 120s, praps 3 120s?

MI5, MI6 and GCHQ ‘spied on lawyers’

British intelligence agencies have policies allowing staff to access confidential communications between lawyers and their clients, official documents have revealed.

The guidance was disclosed for the first time at a tribunal which examines complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

The lawyer-client relationship is generally protected by strict rules.

Campaigners said the disclosure had “troubling implications for the whole British justice system”.

The government could be handed an unfair advantage in court if it had access to confidential materials, they said.

In one case, MI5 revealed, legally privileged information had been inappropriately passed to lawyers defending the security agencies, where “the potential for tainting” was identified.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) heard that updated MI5 guidance published in January advised lawyers that while there was no “legal prohibition” on reading privileged material relating to their cases, doing so should be “avoided” to prevent prejudicing proceedings.

… (continues)

Continue ReadingMI5, MI6 and GCHQ ‘spied on lawyers’

Message from the new head of GCHQ. Be afraid and embrace the new bullshitism

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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29891285

So the new head of GCHQ says tech

Oh this is all so much bolox

The new Head of GCHQ is in charge of ~ of how does this work? ~ we’re not criminals listening to absolutely all communications into and out of the UK. We can’t be criminals invading the privacy of all you criminal bastards – WE’VE GOT IT ALL. Oh and that criminal Angela Merkel.

Look you’re all criminals, we’re listening to all of it so we can scare you senseless to do as you’re told. Aren’t you afraid of terrrists. I’ll see what I can do.

[ed: These tech companies are bastards too. They’re not playing the game. Why aren’t they totally afraid of these imaginary terrrists too? They’re not playing the game. They’re not playing the be afraid of terrrists game. Bo Woo Woo Woo Hu!

These tech companies who have techies and intelligent people are not playing the game. Oh dear, I wonder why that is. Not.

Praps they realise that it’s all bullshit by Neo-Con scum. I would at least appreciate them that much. You know, they’re not stupid or not as stupid as you presume.

I’m not that clever but I’m not that stupid.

The new GCHQ boss. Is that the best you could do?

I’d better address that bullshit that the new GCHQ boss is spouting. It’s just that there was much crap that he’s overwhelmed me. So much total nonsense coming from the new twat in charge of GCHQ. So much shit.

There’s so much shit you’ll have to give me a day or two. I’ve got to swim through it and reach for air.

ed: It seems quite easy really. GCHQ boss says you have no right to privacy cos he’s got to chase terrrists. Terrrists are imaginary to make you afraid and accept repression. GCHQ boss watches you skudding.

How long till they insist on watching? No, it’s OK they probably got it bugged anyway in this ‘free’ society. They are only protecting your ‘freedom’ after all.

Do be terribly afraid of terrrists. Don’t be afraid of dying when you cross the road which is far more likely.

The main point about about this new GCHQ boss is that he’s pushing the discredited bullshit terrrism agenda. Oh FO. The USians may have swallowed that. The rest of the world didn’t or at least they don’t now.

FO GCHQ boss YFOS(hit).

Some tech company is gonna employ me as head of tech-terrrism relations soon. I can do that. Gizza, gizza, I can do that.

The dominant belief system is depending on imaginary terrrists. Fear. It’s nonsense and it has been demonstrated repeatedly that these b’stards engage in false flag operations to manufacture that fake fear.

It is very likely that tech companies are fully aware of your BS. Tech companies are not required or expected to follow your false prospectus.

Your false prospectus of imaginary terrrists scring the hebbegebbe out of us. That’s Bolux and I would expect that  that is accepted in not only tech companies. I would expect that  that is accepted in all big companies – that  that is total BS.

People believing in that ridiculous BS is diminishing quickly …

later: Why should tech companies comply with the BS nonsense of terrrism?

Why should tech companies allow political BS method of control  – in this paticular instance, the imaginary threat of terrrism  – exploit and disempower people? Should they? Why should they?

Politicians and GCHQ do the fear. Tech companies do the tech.

Looka like this new GCHQ boss gonna scare you senseless. There’s a Woolaf!

Be afraid. Be afraid. GCHQ boss says BE AFRAID!

Continue ReadingMessage from the new head of GCHQ. Be afraid and embrace the new bullshitism

Cameron, Clegg and Ed sneak in a snoopers’ charter by the back door

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A snoopers’ charter by the backdoor: One day until Drip is forced through

by Ian Dunt

Privacy campaigners are frantically trying to brief MPs about the implications of the data retention and investigatory powers bill (Drip), before it is forced through all of its Commons stages tomorrow.

The more experts look at the bill, the more convinced they’ve become that it provides authorities with the spine of the snoopers’ charter, but without any of the public debate or parliamentary scrutiny which were supposed to accompany it.

The charter – known as the draft communications bill before it was killed off – would have forced internet service providers and mobile operators to keep details of their customers’ behaviour for 12 months.

Analysis of Drip, which was supposed to only extend the government’s current powers for another two years, suggests it forces through many of those requirements on internet firms without any of the political outrage which derailed the earlier effort.

Clause four of the bill appears to extend Ripa – the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (basically Britain’s Patriot Act) – so that the UK government can impose severe penalties on companies overseas that refuse to comply with interception warrants. It also lays out situations in which they may be required to maintain permanent interception capacity.

Clause five then provides a new definition of “telecommunications service”, which includes companies offering internet-based services. That seems to drag services like Gmail and Hotmail into the law, and very probably social media sites like Facebook too.

The government insists the extraterritoriality clause merely makes explicit what was previously implicit. It’s tosh. As the explanatory notes for the legislation – released very quietly on Friday night – make clear, overseas telecommunications companies did not believe they were necessarily under Ripa’s jurisdiction.

“Regarding the amendments to Ripa, in view of the suggestion by overseas telecommunications service providers that the extra-territorial effect of Ripa is unclear, it is considered necessary to amend the legislation to put the issue beyond doubt,” it reads.

“This includes clarifying the definition of a ‘telecommunications service’ to ensure the full range of telecommunications services available to customers in the United Kingdom are included in the definition.”

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband insist Drip merely extends their current powers for two years. That’s nonsense. These two clauses, which have nothing to do with the purported aim of the bill, provide the spine of the snoopers’ charter.

They also appear to provide a legal basis for programmes like Tempora, the project revealed by Edward Snowden to allow GCHQ to tap into transatlantic fibre-optic cables and stored data.

Notably, Privacy International, Liberty and others are taking the government to a tribunal this week on whether Tempora is legal, even though the government won’t even admit its existence. Drip could make the tribunal ruling irrelevant.

read more

Continue ReadingCameron, Clegg and Ed sneak in a snoopers’ charter by the back door

The simple way to install Tor for online anonymity

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Image of Tor onion networkingThe bad news is that the National Security Agency (the US authority that spies on internet users) targets anyone searching for privacy tools.

NSA classifies Linux Journal readers, Tor and Tails Linux users as “extremists”

“Months of investigation by the German public television broadcasters NDR and WDR (ARD), drawing on exclusive access to top secret NSA source code, interviews with former NSA employees, and the review of secret documents of the German government reveal that not only is the server in Nuremberg under observation by the NSA, but so is virtually anyone who has taken an interest in several well-known privacy software systems,” said the ARD report.

The program marks and tracks the IP addresses of those who search for ‘tails’ or ‘Amnesiac Incognito Live System’ along with ‘linux’, ‘ USB ‘,’ CD ‘, ‘secure desktop’, ‘ IRC ‘, ‘truecrypt’ or ‘ tor ‘. It also refers to the Tails Linux distribution as “a comsec mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums”.

The good news is that it’s never been easier to install tor anonymity software. Just head over to Torproject, grab the tor browser bundle and follow the instructions.

 

edit: I support the Tor project by running a Tor relay.

Continue ReadingThe simple way to install Tor for online anonymity

UK politics news

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Recent articles about UK politics, some about the Catholic Church policy of protecting paedos and some about Edward Snowden

Socialist Party :: Who’s robbing our NHS?

The National Health Service is under attack as never before. In this feature, a GP from north-west England looks at the effect of a huge government push for privatisation while nurse Claire Job looks at the predatory actions of the pharmaceutical industry.

NHS watchdog says Virgin Care-run clinic put patients at risk | Society | The Guardian

The NHS watchdog has accused a privately run urgent care centre of putting patients’ health at risk by using receptionists with minimal medical training to assess how unwell arrivals were.

A Care Quality Commission (CQC) report has criticised the operation of the urgent care centre at Croydon hospital in south London, which is run by Virgin Care. CQC inspectors found the centre was in breach of four basic standards of care and have told Virgin Care to outline by next week the remedial action it is taking.

The CQC’s report, based on inspections of the centre last July and September, concluded that “care and treatment was not planned and delivered in a way that was intended to ensure people’s safety and welfare”.

38 Degrees interview: Meet British politics’ spammer-in-chief

MPs have come to despise 38 Degrees for clogging up their inboxes with emails from constituents. They need to get used to it – because this model of campaigning-by-email-bombardment isn’t going away.

For an organisation only set up in 2009, 38 Degrees has notched up its fair share of victories. It forced the coalition government’s first big U-turn, on the forests sell-off. It called for more free school meals – and Nick Clegg duly announced they were being rolled out for all infants. It raised enough cash to pay for the judicial review which successfully challenged health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s plans to shut down key services at Lewisham hospital.

“It’s not often you can say ‘I took the government to court and won’, but that’s what thousands of 38 Degrees members could say last year,” its executive director David Babbs tells me. We’re seated at a meeting table in the middle of the 38 Degrees office in central London. From here, the small team of around 15 staff coordinate the activities of its 2.2 million members. Compare that to the 193,000 members of the Labour party – and the 130,000 Tory party members – and you get a sense of the scale of the operation.

Vatican ‘kept code of silence’ on paedophile priests, claims UN report – World Politics – World – The Independent

Snowden leak: GCHQ DDoSed chatrooms of Anonymous, LulzSec • The Register

Pulling power: Wendi Deng reportedly wrote a letter praising Tony Blair’s body – but she’d hardly be the first to go weak at the knees – UK Politics – UK – The Independent

Strangely written from the deluded and divorced from reality perspective of Tony Blair.

Continue ReadingUK politics news

UK politics

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A few recent UK (& other) politics articles

Continue ReadingUK politics