Never under-estimate the British

They taught the Americans most of what they know.

Fox's parent company is in deep doodoo.

News International, the stable of that Australian blight on the human race, Rupert Murdoch, has been discovered in Britain (courtesy of News of the World) to have tapped the phones of murder and terrorism victims and, now, soldiers killed in Afghanistan as well as a multitude of "celebrities" ("celebrated" primarily only because News of the World tapped their phones).

And Britain doesn't even have a Patriot Act that News of the World can use to justify these noxious intrusions.

Caught up in this are the British police who accepted bribes to feed News of the World titbits they thought the British public should know about for a fee in addition to the cost they already paid for actually running police activities.

The British PM was seen yesterday orgasmically venting fury in Parliament about stuff he had known about for years. And then, with a vehemence not seen in the British parliament since Blair promised his troth to George W Bush, he ordered the setting up of a Police enquiry to examine the corruption of .. er .. the Police.

And I thought the Americans were weird.

No matter. Rupert Murdoch is in the gun, primed, and about to be detonated. I must watch more Fox News for a minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow analysis and outcome of the enthralling saga about to unravel.

It could be another Casey Anthony drama of tragedic and comical proportions.

 

I'm pretty sure this has been posted already. Like, days ago.
I guess things don't filter out to the sheep patch as fast as they use to.

 

So Thursday 7 July was several days ago, was it?

And not, as most Americans are currently enjoying, Wednesday 6 July?

 

Nothing quite like seeing one's own vassal state flounder about in a condition of general nonplussance and incompetence.

 

In a gallant effort to avoid the possibly unhappy intrusion of an independent authority into the business of examining, er, Police business, the British PM - in the tradition of that renowned naval hero, Vice Admiral The Rt Hon. Horatio Cameron - held a telescope to his blind eye:

... into itself.

 

Indeed.

The Chinese are writhing in laughter.

 

On the surface, it looks as though Murdoch is doing a principled thing in abolishing News of the World.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/07/news-of-the-world-to-close

The principle being that when your advertisers and readers are deserting you in droves and you and your staff are under investigation for sundry criminal behaviours, things can probably only get worse. Best to remove as much evidence as possible before that day arrives.

 

I'd hardly say we're a vassal.

 

The Murdoch style of journalistic depravity exhibited by News of the World in the UK is unlikely not to be also pursued in Murdoch's US media outlets.

"Nothing to say" is hardly a resounding denial that Americans are not also being subjected to phone-hacking.

No doubt we will find out if Murdoch treats Americans any differently from the way he treats Brits.

And the extent to which he is prepared to lie about it.

 

Hold on...

I thought the Left championed criminal hackers like Wikileaks, Anonymous and the Lulzsec gang who exposed the supposed "truth"??

 

Do you need a Patriot Act when your subjects don't have a written constitution?


_

 

Are you seriously going to defend an organisation that hacked into a dead girl's phone, hacked into the phones of dead soldier's families, hacked into the phones of families of people who died in a terrorist attack?

Seriously?

 

But Fox is just "fear and bluster", isn't it? Nothing illegal there.

Is there?

 

This is the face of Britain's hacker-in-chief.



How many more gloomy but defiant Murdoch faces will we see scurrying away in fast cars?

 

did that sound like a defense??

because it wasn't.

I hate criminal hacking...whether it's done by The News of The World, Wikileaks, Anonymous or some teenager in his mom's basement.

it's seems that the Left are the hypocrites here...and that was my point.

 

It's funny how a New Zealander will attack an Australian for something done in the UK...and then tries to tie it to the Americans at FOX News

you can't make this (*)(*)(*)(*) up!

 

No sure why that is humorous. The Australian owns Fox News.

I assume he applies the same standards there as he does at the News of the World.

Why would you expect something different?

 

Piers Morgan, also a former NoW editor, is currently trying to redeem himself on CNN.

Meanwhile, the British PM, who is mates with Murdoch, Brooks and of course Coulson, isn't looking too flash as a leader of his countrymen - though, thanks to the phone-hacking his close friends indulge in, he probably knows a lot about them.
.

 

... is the lowest of the common denominators in British and American "news".



Only question is: how long will it be before he joins his denominees behind bars?

 

Pffft. The Patriot Act would be redundant in the UK.

Actually, I take that back. If the Patriot Act were passed in the UK today it might actually give Brits slightly more protections for their rights than they have now, oddly enough.

 

The Carlyle group was always in the know when it came to scoring a good investment before any other company.

 

Ummm...no it wouldn't! What the Patriot Act allows effectively unaccountable government agencies to do is more invasive than what government agencies in the UK could get away with doing. Our Data Protection laws seem to be considerably stronger in the EU and UK than anything the USA has.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_privacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive

The Patriot Act actually conflicts with our data protection laws where the two meet internationally. It actually compells legally protected customer data from the EU to be handed over to US authorities.
http://www.itworld.com/government/179977/eu-upset-microsoft-warning-about-us-access-eu-cloud

The EU laws also have to be something US lawyers have to be aware of if dealing with international cases, in case they find themselves in violation by trying to use personal data as they would be able to do in the US:
http://articles.technology.findlaw.com/2007/Jun/19/10884.html

Not everything that may be heard about comparative 'freedom' between the USA and the EU (and UK) is actually true. The EU and UK view privacy as a 'human right', and it's protected by law.
http://www.yourrights.org.uk/yourrights/privacy/telephone-tapping-and-interception-of-communications/

In the US generally there is no such protection. When it comes to privacy of personal data and the like, we have a greater level of protection in the EU than the law, including the Patriot Act, allows in the US. Of course, some in the US will continue to claim that we have less 'rights' and less 'freedoms' than people do in the USA. That doesn't actually make it true, though!

The system isn't perfect, of course, and the legality of the UK govenment's past levels of phone tapping, for example (and some of the measures of post 9/11 anti-terrorism legislation), have been questioned, but they can be questioned in the context of legislation which is intended to prevent such things, rather than in the context of legislation, like the Patriot Act, which is intended to actually enable such things.

 

Yeah, and no judge is required to tap a phone line in the UK. A cabinet minister approves them...to the tune of one every few seconds. I'm sure quite a bit of thought goes into each one.
http://www.slate.com/id/2136147/

The bottom line is that the Patriot Act is not necessary in the UK since they've had similar measures in place for years. The only reason that the Patriot Act gets a lot of flack in the US, and well deserved, is that the measures are a novelty here. Americans aren't used to having their long protected rights trampled on.

Here's a measure that the UK implemented in 2001 that is just now getting traction in the US. Here it has met with quite a bit of opposition. It flew through the UK Parliament. Also, a court issued warrant is required in the US for such actions, not so in the UK. Brits don't even bat an eye.
https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/silenced-united-kingdom

Like I said, the UK has no need for the Patriot Act. They already have their own, in piecemeal fashion.

 

If you're going to criticise us at least use laws and acts and whatever else that are actually still around.

ATCSA isn't around anymore.

 

The key point is not the law - Murdoch and co were fairly evidently acting illegally, by paying serving policemen, for instance - but the steady destruction, particularly by the Labour Party which had a democratic tradition once, of political parties in which the members could raise and decide issues. These wicked people, however, kept raising issues that got in the way of careerism, so after Shirley Williams and a few other scumbags had sabotaged the Party by putting up phoney 'Social Democrat' candidates to split the vote the careerist decided democracy must go - it resulted in 'suicide notes' instead of good capitalist lies, apparently. This left the careerists totally dependent on trash such as the Sun for their feeble notion of 'public opinion' and handed power to such crooks. I'll say nothing about the particular crimes of the hacks because even Murdoch deserves a fair trial, but this is our opportunity to chuck out the flabby fuhrers and get back to deciding serious issues democratically, and I hope we use it,