{"id":9674,"date":"2015-07-03T08:56:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T13:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9674"},"modified":"2015-07-03T08:56:45","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T13:56:45","slug":"amnesty-international-responds-to-uk-government-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9674","title":{"rendered":"Amnesty International Responds to UK Government Surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"hero\"><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/07\/02\/op-ed-amnesty-international-responds-u-k-government-surveillance\/\" target=\"_blank\">Amnesty International Responds to UK Government Surveillance<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2015\/07\/AP_475751145837-article-display-b.jpg\" alt=\"Featured photo - Amnesty International Responds to U.K. Government Surveillance\" \/><\/h3>\n<div class=\"ti-body\">\n<p><strong>A British tribunal\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/07\/01\/major-reversal-british-tribunal-confirms-surveillance-amnesty-international-violated-rights\/\">admitted on Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0that the U.K. government had spied on Amnesty International and illegally retained some of its communications. Sherif Elsayed-Ali, deputy director of global issues for Amnesty International in London, responds:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Just after 4 p.m. yesterday, Amnesty International received an email from the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which hears cases related to U.K. intelligence agencies. The message was brief: There had been a mistake in the tribunal\u2019s judgment 10 days earlier in a case brought by 10 human rights organizations against the U.K.\u2019s mass surveillance programs. Contrary to the finding in the original ruling, our communications at Amnesty International had, in fact, been under illegal surveillance by GCHQ, the U.K.\u2019s signals intelligence agency.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Incredibly, the initial judgment had named the wrong organization \u2014 the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights \u2014 and it took 10 days to correct the mix-up. The news brought an unexpected and bizarre sense of relief: We strongly suspected that we were being spied on by GCHQ, but having it confirmed in court meant we weren\u2019t just being paranoid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Of course, GCHQ and likely its U.S. counterpart, the NSA, spy on a range of organizations besides Amnesty. The same IPT judgment revealed GCHQ\u2019s unlawful surveillance of the South African Legal Resources Centre. Leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden showed that GCHQ and the NSA have spied on Doctors of the World and UNICEF. And the fact that the IPT did not find in favor of the eight other organizations bringing the case does not necessarily mean their communications were left untouched \u2014 perhaps they were intercepted, but the tribunal considered it had been done legally.<\/span><\/p>\n<div><span class=\"s1\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">This whole process brings to light the problem with the so-called \u201coversight\u201d of U.K. surveillance programs. In the U.K., a government minister, not a judge, issues surveillance warrants; from the very start the executive branch of government authorizes its own spying.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amnesty International Responds to UK Government Surveillance A British tribunal\u00a0admitted on Wednesday\u00a0that the U.K. government had spied on Amnesty International and illegally retained some of its communications. Sherif Elsayed-Ali, deputy director of global issues for Amnesty International in London, responds: Just after 4 p.m. yesterday, Amnesty International received an email from the Investigatory Powers Tribunal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1963,1511,6951,6950,6949,746,765,5567,6948],"class_list":["post-9674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-amnesty-international","tag-gchq","tag-investigatory-powers-tribunal","tag-ipt","tag-signals-intelligience","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-the-intercept","tag-uk-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9675,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions\/9675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}