Protest isn’t harassment, says group suing UK government over law change

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 Original article by Anita Mureithi republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence

Protesters gather in Parliament Square, London, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, 21 February 2024
 | Alberto Pezzali/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Human rights group Liberty says spotlight on MPs’ safety has seen Tories ‘vilify’ Palestine marchers

Ahuman rights campaign group suing the government for forcing through anti-protest laws says people who go on Palestine marches are being “vilified” to “stoke division”.

Liberty is today challenging the home secretary, James Cleverly, in the High Court over a decision by his predecessor Suella Braverman to introduce new legislation targeting protesters that had already been rejected by Parliament.

The case comes in a week where protest rights are in the spotlight. Pro-Palestine marches are being labelled a threat to MPs and the Home Affairs Select Committee has called on the government to force organisers to give more notice.

Speaking to openDemocracy ahead of the hearing, Liberty director Akiko Hart said: “We’re seeing both our fundamental rights of protest being undermined, but also specific protests like the pro-Palestinian marches being vilified.”

Hart took aim at the “incredibly irresponsible rhetoric from senior politicians where protest is equated to intimidation and harassment”.

MPs’ safety fears were raised last week following chaos in the House of Commons over a symbolic vote on a ceasefire in Gaza. Though some MPs have reported an increase in abuse and threats, campaigners warn that peaceful protests are now being associated with terrorism in order to undermine them.

“There were legitimate concerns around MPs’ safety – obviously, two MPs have been murdered in the last ten years,” she said. “We need to take that very, very seriously. I would also say that it’s MPs who are racialised who are most at risk from harassment, and that’s what the evidence shows us.

“But to conflate harassment with protest, which is what’s happening this week, is really dangerous and irresponsible. There are laws in place to deal with harassment and abuse. That isn’t the same as legitimate protest.”

In its recommendations, the Home Affairs Select Committee said more notice was needed ahead of Palestine marches because the size and frequency of the protests is a burden on police resources. But according to the coalition organising the national Palestine marches, the measures would further limit the right to peaceful protest. Hart also said the current notice period of six days is enough for police to prepare for marches.

“Extending that will just restrict people’s ability to be able to make their voices heard. With this, as with any other issue, the point about protest is that it is not about whether or not you agree – it’s about our right to protest,” she explained.

Liberty was given the green light to sue Braverman in October after she used secondary legislation – which doesn’t get the same level of parliamentary scrutiny – to allow police to restrict or shut down any protest that could cause “more than minor disruption to the life of the community”.

“It shouldn’t be the case that you would have to take the home secretary to court with all the time and effort and energy and expertise that that involves,” said Hart. “The reason we are doing so is because of the then home secretary’s egregious act of circumventing Parliament.”

The government previously tried to insert the new powers into the Public Order Act 2023 in January last year, but was blocked by the Lords.

The point about protest is that it is not about whether or not you agree – it’s about our right to protest

Liberty believes a win “would be a powerful check against any future minister or government that intends to do the same thing”.

Hart told openDemocracy that there have already been clear examples of the impact of anti-protest laws that have come through the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts (‘Policing’) Act and the Public Order Act, which both give police more powers to restrict protests.

“There were anti-monarchy protesters who were arrested on the basis that the luggage straps that they were carrying were seen to be tools for locking-on, which was a new offence created under the Public Order Act, but they were carrying them to secure their placards.

“We’re also seeing it in sentencing. Last summer, the Court of Appeal upheld the sentences of the two protesters who scaled the Dartford crossing. And those sentences were two years and seven months, and three years – the harshest sentences ever handed down in modern times around protests around civil disobedience,” she said.

The trial against the home secretary is expected to run for two days at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Hart told openDemocracy that while she and Liberty’s team of lawyers are feeling optimistic, “there’s a level of underlying exhaustion at how this government is conducting itself and responding to the protests that are happening”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The right to peaceful protest is fundamental; the right to disrupt the hard-working public is not.

“We have taken action to give police the powers they need to tackle criminal tactics used by protesters such as locking on and slow marching, as well as interfering with key national infrastructure.

“We work closely with the police to make sure they have the tools they need to tackle disorder and minimise disruption.”

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 Original article by Anita Mureithi republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence

Continue ReadingProtest isn’t harassment, says group suing UK government over law change

Congressman: DOJ Investigation of Big Oil Is Now “Even More Urgent” Following Shell Revelations

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Original article by Emily Sanders, ExxonKnews republished from DeSmog.

Credit: Tess Abbot/ExxonKnews

With more proof of Shell’s climate deception, Rep. Ted Lieu is once again urging the Department of Justice to look into whether fossil fuel companies broke the law.

After new evidence emerged last week showing that oil major Shell internally acknowledged the dangers of their fossil fuel products decades ago, a member of Congress is renewing his previous call for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether Shell and other Big Oil companies’ “alleged campaigns of climate deception” may have violated federal law.

The company documents, first unearthed by Dutch researcher Vatan Hüzeir and reported last week by DeSmog and Follow the Money, reveal Shell executives and employees predicting “major adverse changes” to the climate from fossil fuel emissions — and admitting Shell’s role in causing the problem. “Global warming could challenge the very fabric of the world’s ecological and economic systems,” warned Shell executive Ged Davis in one newly uncovered document from 1989. 

“This new set of documents further demonstrates that Shell privately knew about the dangers its products would cause to the environment yet continued to deceive the public in pursuit of company profits. This is wrong and potentially illegal,” said U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), who along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) led 20 members of Congress in a letter last year urging the Department of Justice to look deeper into evidence that Shell, ExxonMobil, and other fossil fuel majors “lied — and continue to lie — to the public about their central role in exacerbating the climate crisis.” 

“These new documents provide additional evidence and make our calls for an investigation even more urgent,” Lieu told ExxonKnews in response to the latest Shell revelations. 

The lawmakers’ July 25 letter cited an initial batch of internal Shell documents released by Hüzeir last March. The evidence, they wrote, should inspire the DOJ to “investigate Exxon, Shell, and other members of the fossil fuel industry to determine whether they violated RICO, consumer protection, truth in advertising, public health, or other laws.” 

A separate letter from U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Ed Markey (D-OR) urged the DOJ to go even further and “bring suits against the fossil fuel industry for its longstanding and carefully coordinated campaign to mislead consumers and discredit climate science in pursuit of massive profits.”

The latest documents add to an abundance of proof that Shell was well aware of the harm its products would cause — and acknowledged its culpability for the damage.

“If a product is used, as indicated by Shell, and annoying consequences nevertheless arise, Shell feels partly responsible,” representatives from Shell told researchers from the Dutch University of Leiden in 1970.

Those “annoying consequences” — which turned out to be more catastrophic and deadly than just annoying — were plainly elucidated by the company in the years to follow. In a 1985 journal article, Shell employee T.G. Wilkinson observed that the burning of fossil fuels has “upset the balance” of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and “will cause major adverse changes to some areas.” 

“The dilemma therefore remains as to whether to encourage the continued use of fossil fuels with the potential enormous effects on the world’s climate,” Wilkinson wrote.

Two years later, an internal Shell report titled “Air Pollution: an Oil Industry Perspective” noted that a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere “could lead to a higher average surface temperature on Earth, which could have far-reaching environmental, social and economic consequences.”

In 1989, Shell executive Davis warned that “Two groups who could bear particularly heavy costs will be: Future generations who would have to live with the costs of adaptation, and…Those in countries yet to industrialise who would face constraints on energy use.”

Davis is now executive chair of world energy scenarios at the World Energy Council.

Armed with the information it needed to steer the world toward cleaner sources of energy, Shell embarked on a campaign to undermine climate action instead. 

The same year Davis made his prediction in the OECD report, Shell helped found the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), an oil industry lobbying group that worked to spread disinformation about climate science. 

A year later, in an internal publication, Shell admitted the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and embrace alternative sources of energy — but stated that “by the time the enhanced greenhouse effect has been conclusively proven, it may be too late to do anything about it.”

Shell went on to promote the idea that climate science was uncertain and downplayed the role of fossil fuels in the years to come. “It is very difficult to aportion [sic] the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations to any particular cause,” read one paper published by the company in 1992. 

When Shell left the GCC, citing its opposition to the Kyoto climate agreement, it explained in a 1998 report that “The Shell view is that prudent precautionary measures are called for.”

Hüzeir, the researcher who unearthed these reports, told DeSmog that documents like this could help litigators make the case against Shell in a growing wave of lawsuits seeking to hold the company accountable for knowingly fueling climate chaos. “Shell’s deepening embrace of the precautionary principle, as revealed in this document, shows that Shell was well aware of the crisis ahead,” he said. “What else did they know?”

The documents add to a heap of evidence that could spur the country’s most powerful public interest law firm to investigate Big Oil.

“If the allegations against ExxonMobil, Shell, and other major fossil fuel companies are true, their coordinated efforts to deceive Americans constitute the most consequential deception campaign in history, with potentially existential consequences for our planet,” Lieu and other members of Congress wrote in their July letter to the DOJ. “We respectfully request that the DOJ investigate whether these actions violated federal law.”

Since that letter was sent last year, more state and local governments have taken the companies to court for that deception. California — the most populous state in the nation and one of the world’s largest economies — sued Shell and other fossil fuel majors for climate damages and consumer fraud. Two Indigenous tribal governments in Washington State, forced to spend millions relocating their communities due to rising seas, filed their own lawsuit against oil giants. Honolulu’s climate accountability lawsuit cleared motions to dismiss the case by fossil fuel defendants, putting it on a path to be the first case of its kind to go to trial. 

The stakes of these legal efforts are only getting higher, as climate disasters continue to batter many of the same communities awaiting their day in court. The DOJ threw its support behind the plaintiffs in a U.S. Supreme Court brief the agency filed last March, but it hasn’t yet taken independent action against the fossil fuel industry.

“It’s time to hold polluters accountable for their lies, which could have existential consequences for our planet,” Lieu said.

Original article by Emily Sanders, ExxonKnews republished from DeSmog.

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Continue ReadingCongressman: DOJ Investigation of Big Oil Is Now “Even More Urgent” Following Shell Revelations

Europe cracks down on ‘direct action’ climate protests

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Insight: Europe cracks down after rise in ‘direct action’ climate protests

  • Summary
  • France, German states use wiretaps, GPS to track activists
  • Bavaria tries to stop protests with preventative detention
  • Berlin police spend more than 400,000 hours on climate cases
  • France outlaws one group, German states consider ban

BERLIN, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Simon Lachner had plans to glue himself to a German city thoroughfare in June to call public attention to climate change. Instead, he ended up in police custody before he’d even left his home.

Lachner, 28, is one of thousands of activists caught up in a European crackdown on a wave of direct action protests that gathered pace last year demanding urgent government action against climate change.

Roadblocks on major motorways in Britain have caused traffic chaos, protests at oil installations in Germany have disrupted supplies, and in France, thousands of activists and police clashed over water usage, leaving dozens injured.

Determined to prevent such protests from strengthening further, states in Germany and national authorities in France are invoking legal powers often used against organised crime and extremist groups to wiretap and track activists, Reuters found, based on conversations with four prosecutors, police in both countries and more than a dozen protesters.

In Berlin alone, police have spent hundreds of thousands of hours working on more than 4,500 incidents registered against the “The Last Generation” and “Extinction Rebellion” groups, according to previously unreported data from police.

State authorities in Germany are widely using preventative detention to stop people from protesting, including holding at least one person for as long as 30 days without charge, which is permissible under Bavarian law, the prosecutors consulted by Reuters said.

Lawmakers passed new surveillance and detention laws in France in July and in Britain in May, with Britain making it illegal to lock, or glue, yourself to property.

Insight: Europe cracks down after rise in ‘direct action’ climate protests

Continue ReadingEurope cracks down on ‘direct action’ climate protests

Lawsuit Targets Shell’s Board of Directors Over Energy Transition Plans

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Original article by Dana Drugmand republished from DeSmog according to its republishing agreement.

Shell admits in internal documents it has “no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio.”

Series: CLIMATE CHANGE LAWSUITS

Exterior view of the Victorian Gothic arched doorways and windows of the pale stone Royal Courts of Justice building
The entrance to the Royal Courts of Justice in London, which houses the UK High Court. Credit: Derived from the original by Seth AndersonCC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Shell’s board of directors officially has been served with a world-first lawsuit aiming to hold its corporate directors personally liable for alleged mismanagement of climate risk. The lawsuit, filed Thursday by UK-based environmental law organization ClientEarth, contends that Shell’s strategy to address climate change and manage the energy transition fails to align with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and leaves the company in a vulnerable position as society shifts away from fossil fuels.

ClientEarth alleges that inadequate climate strategy by Shell and improper management by the board amounts to violations under the UK Companies Act. ClientEarth, itself a token shareholder in Shell, filed its case in the High Court of England and Wales in London and is suing the company’s 11 directors. Institutional investors with collective holdings of over 12 million shares in Shell are supporting the legal action, which comes on the heels of Shell reporting a record $40 billion in profits in 2022.

“Shell may be making record profits now due to the turmoil of the global energy market, but the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels long term,” ClientEarth senior lawyer Paul Benson said. “The shift to a low-carbon economy is not just inevitable, it’s already happening. Yet the Board is persisting with a transition strategy that is fundamentally flawed, leaving the company seriously exposed to the risks that climate change poses to Shell’s future success — despite the Board’s legal duty to manage those risks.”  

This is the first ever case targeting a company’s board over its handling of climate risk and alleged failure to prepare for the energy transition. As DeSmog previously reported, it is likely just the beginning of such litigation against corporate directors.

Climate Litigation Piling up Against Shell

ClientEarth initiated this new lawsuit last year when it gave notice to Shell’s board of its intention to sue and is the latest in a string of legal actions seeking to hold the oil major accountable for its alleged climate and environmental misdeeds. Earlier this month the environmental and corporate accountability group Global Witness lodged a greenwashing complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claiming that Shell was misleading investors and authorities on its renewable energy spending. 

That complaint came just days after more than 11,300 individuals and 17 institutions from the heavily polluted Nigerian community of Ogale sued Shell in the UK High Court, adding to existing legal claims filed in 2015 by 2,335 residents of the Nigerian community of Bille — bringing the total to over 13,000 people from the Niger Delta taking Shell to court. These claims are demanding damages from oil spills that have devastated the local communities and their environment.

A large white oil storage tank with the yellow and red Shell logo and a thick band of rainbow stripes around it
Shell’s Pernis refinery in the Netherlands. Credit: Steven LekCC BY-SA 4.0

And in May 2021 the Dutch chapter of Friends of the Earth, Milieudefensie, won a landmark climate court case against Shell claiming the company’s business was not aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goals and human rights obligations. The court ordered Shell to slash emissions across its entire supply chain by 45 percent by 2030. Shell is appealing the verdict and appears to be ignoring its duty to comply, as the company has publicly committed to reducing only part of its supply chain emissions — not those released from using their products — by 2030 while continuing to invest in new oil and gas development. 

According to ClientEarth, Shell’s board “has since rebuffed parts of the verdict, indicating that it is unreasonable and essentially incompatible with Shell’s business.” The case against Shell’s board of directors aims to compel the company to comply with the Dutch court verdict and with its legal obligations under the UK Companies Act. Additionally, Shell faces a raft of climate lawsuits in the U.S. brought by states and municipalities over its alleged deception and efforts to derail meaningful climate action despite advanced knowledge of climate risks decades ago.

In response to the new lawsuit targeting the company’s directors, Shell denied that it has acted improperly and said it would oppose ClientEarth’s efforts to pursue its claim through the court.

“We do not accept ClientEarth’s allegations. Our directors have complied with their legal duties and have, at all times, acted in the best interests of the company,” a Shell spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“We believe our climate targets are aligned with the more ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement: to limit the increase in the global average temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” the spokesperson continued. “Our shareholders strongly support the progress we are making on our energy transition strategy, with 80% voting in favour of this strategy at our last Annual General Meeting. ClientEarth’s attempt, by means of a derivative claim, to overturn the board’s policy as approved by our shareholders has no merit.”

Telling a Different Story Inside Shell

While Shell claims to support the Paris Agreement and says it will achieve net zero emissions by 2050, internal corporate communications obtained through subpoena by a U.S. congressional committee suggest that the company has no intention to genuinely pursue these objectives.

According to documents released in September by the U.S. House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into Big Oil and climate disinformation, Shell privately urged caution in communicating about the energy transition due to litigation risk.

In an internal company slide deck on messaging around the energy transition, Shell clarifies that the net zero emissions goal is a “collective” ambition and challenge for society and is not a Shell goal or target. The company states that it “has no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio over our investment horizon of 10-20 years.”

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

Shell further advised its employees to refrain from suggesting the company would take climate action that risked its fundamental business strategy, writing: “Please do not give the impression that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do not make business sense.”

In ClientEarth’s view, the oil giant’s failure to advance its own transition to net zero will only harm the company in the long run. “Long term, it is in the best interests of the company, its employees and its shareholders — as well as the planet — for Shell to reduce its emissions harder and faster than the Board is currently planning,” Benson said.

The High Court will next decide if it grants permission for ClientEarth’s case to proceed.

Original article by Dana Drugmand republished from DeSmog according to its republishing agreement.

Continue ReadingLawsuit Targets Shell’s Board of Directors Over Energy Transition Plans

‘The Writing Is on the Wall for Fossil Fuels’: Activist Investors Sue Shell Board Over Climate Failures

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Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.

\Original article by JAKE JOHNSON Feb 09, 2023 republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

“The shift to a low-carbon economy is not just inevitable, it’s already happening. Yet the board is persisting with a transition strategy that is fundamentally flawed.”

A group of activist investors sued Shell’s board of directors on Wednesday for failing to “deliver the reduction in emissions that is needed to keep global climate goals within reach.”

ClientEarth, an environmental law charity and institutional investor in Shell, described the case as the first time a company board is facing a shareholder lawsuit for inadequately preparing to transition away from fossil fuels.

“Shell may be making record profits now due to the turmoil of the global energy market, but the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels long term,” Paul Benson, a senior lawyer at ClientEarth, said in a statement. “The shift to a low-carbon economy is not just inevitable, it’s already happening. Yet the board is persisting with a transition strategy that is fundamentally flawed, leaving the company seriously exposed to the risks that climate change poses to Shell’s future success—despite the board’s legal duty to manage those risks.”

The lawsuit, which is backed by large institutional investors that collectively hold 12 million shares of Shell, alleges that the oil giant’s 11 directors are violating the Companies Act, a U.K. law that requires corporate boards to “promote the success” of the business.

By failing to sufficiently manage climate risks and implement “an energy transition strategy that aligns with the Paris Agreement,” Shell is flouting its legal obligations, the lawsuit contends.

“Shell’s Board on the other hand maintains that its ‘Energy Transition Strategy’—including its plan to be a net-zero emissions business by 2050—is consistent with the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement,” ClientEarth notes. “It also claims that its plan to halve emissions from its global operations by 2030 is ‘industry-leading,’ however this covers less than 10% of its overall emissions.”

“It is in the best interests of the company, its employees, and its shareholders—as well as the planet—for Shell to reduce its emissions harder and faster than the board is currently planning.”

ClientEarth and its backers are asking the High Court of Justice in London to force Shell’s board to “adopt a strategy to manage climate risk in line with its duties under the Companies Act” and in compliance with a 2021 Dutch court ruling ordering the oil giant to cut its total carbon emissions by 45% by 2030.

“Long term, it is in the best interests of the company, its employees, and its shareholders—as well as the planet—for Shell to reduce its emissions harder and faster than the board is currently planning,” Benson said.

Jacqueline Amy Jackson, the head of responsible investment at London CIV—one of the institutional backers of ClientEarth’s lawsuit—said that “we do not believe the board has adopted a reasonable or effective strategy to manage the risks associated with climate change affecting Shell.”

“In our view,” Jackson added, “a board of directors of a high-emitting company has a fiduciary duty to manage climate risk, and in so doing, consider the impacts of its decisions on climate change, and to reduce its contribution to it.”

Shell said in response that ClientEarth’s suit “has no merit.”

ClientEarth filed its complaint a week after Shell announced that its profits doubled in 2022, surging to a record $40 billion as households across Europe and around the world struggled with high energy costs. The company said it returned $26 billion to shareholders last year through dividends and stock buybacks.

Earlier this month, the advocacy group Global Witness filed a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accusing Shell of “lumping together some of its gas-related investments with its spending on renewables to inflate its overall investment in renewable sources of energy,” misleading investors and authorities.

“Shell’s so-called renewable and energy solutions category is pure fiction,” said Zorka Milin, a senior adviser at Global Witness. “The company is living in fantasy land if it thinks fossil gas has any place in the much-needed energy transition. Shell’s business model has always been, and continues to be, overwhelmingly based on climate-polluting fossil fuels.”

Shell is also facing lawsuits from nearly 14,000 Nigerians whose communities have been devastated by the company’s pollution and oil spills.

\Original article by JAKE JOHNSON Feb 09, 2023 republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Continue Reading‘The Writing Is on the Wall for Fossil Fuels’: Activist Investors Sue Shell Board Over Climate Failures

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.

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