
UK’s mass surveillance regime violated human rights law, finds ECHR - sahin-boydas
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/13/uks-mass-surveillance-regime-violated-human-rights-law-finds-echr/
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Zenst
Interestingly the EU recently passed a copyright bill only the other day that
will force many ISP's to install low-level content surveillance of their user-
base due to article 13 making all intermidiatary's liable for user actions.

[https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/09/threat-of-
inte...](https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/09/threat-of-internet-
censorship-remains-as-eu-softens-copyright-law.html)

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mhh__
Is this interesting? The ECHR and European parliament are not the same
organisation or people?

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johnnyfaehell
Well it is interesting that a new law that most people disagree with could be
struck down by the courts.

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boomboomsubban
Is this the end of the case or is there some future sentencing? I find it hard
to believe they weren't aware the programs violated human rights law, and I'm
not sure what we're hoping a court confirming it's bad will accomplish.

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gsnedders
Any penalties against the treaty signatories are done when the the judgment is
made final, either by three months elapsing or by the Grand Chamber declining
a request for referral or appeal, or ultimately by the Grand Chamber
publishing a judgment (and that is by definition final). This judgment was
published by the (lower) Chamber of the Court, so we likely have a while to go
yet.

The important point is the judgment that the UK's domestic law is in violation
of the UK's treaty obligations, but as is common with most treaties there's
little in way of active enforcement (notably the ECtHR doesn't have power to
directly overrule or strike down domestic law).

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Quanttek
Exactly: The countries signing the convention agreed to its binding force but,
except for fines, the ECtHR doesn't have direct to order countries. That
actually foes for most judiciaries: Courts generally can only order
governments to pay fines but these go back into the state budget. Few
countries allow officials to be held in contempt of courts. Both, domestic
courts and the ECtHR, rely on the respect for the rule of law and, at least
for the ECtHR, that has mostly worked out well. Exceptions are Belarussia and
Russia

~~~
candiodari
It gets much worse than that in specific sections of law. It is very common,
for example that for minors and mental health patients decisions work (trying
to translate a french term) "without presupposition".

(this is about Belgium)

This means 2 things:

1) decisions taken by the executive power are not influenced by the court
decision (famously one to keep a minor in solitary confinement for ~2 months
and at one point forgetting to feed him for nearly 2 weeks, he had to drink
from the toilet). The state got convicted ... and he got sent back to the same
institution, never to be heard from again ("that would violate his privacy",
sadly not joking). Legally, they could have prevented him from attending the
trial in the first place. For "some reason" he never filed the open-and-shut
case for monetary compensation that he was sure to win ... Never heard from
again.

But don't worry, that decision was made "in the interest of the child" (says
the organization that kept him in isolation for 2 months and didn't feed him
for 2 weeks. Needless to say, the actual spokesperson at this point asked his
name be kept out of the paper for that statement. The paper obliged)

2) if a defendant goes to a higher court, this does not halt execution of the
decision. For example, a child services employee* takes the decision to take
kids away from their environment and "place" them in an institution (meaning a
child prison, but don't call it that) (note: this is mostly done WITHOUT those
children having committed a crime, 75% of decisions are made because a state
official has decided the parents aren't fit to be parents, though it's true
that it's also done when they do)

* I wish I could say they used psychologists to make these decisions. That WAS true, not anymore. It is not anymore. At this point it's partly high schoolers (high school in Belgium has a social sciences/psychology year, an education with an incredibly bad reputation), and you're lucky to find one psychologist in the entire organization (technically there's 1 per province, but they "never look at individual cases").

Now at this point the parents aren't informed, nor is the child. Then the
police turns up and takes the kid away, often in violent encounters. At some
point this comes to a real judge, and let's say the youth judge decides the
government was wrong to do this. What happens now ?

Nothing. The child is not returned. The current in-progress process is
executed (and if that process is placement in foster care, that means the
child is _never_ returned, or at least not before adulthood). It is a crime to
attempt to make that happen anyway.

3) Let's say child was not taken in the first place, but the youth judge
decides to place the child. The parents or the child decide to appeal the
decision.

What happens next ? The child is taken away by the police and placed. It is a
crime to attempt to stop this.

Similar things can happen to mental patients, even if the court decides they
were wrongfully diagnosed as mental patients in the first place.

And of course, yes, politicians have been convicted of using this to imprison
political opponents.

Judging by the wikipedia page, this is in fact pretty common across the world:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry)

And then I'm not even mentioning the real scandals. For example, youth
services couldn't "place" some children. They weren't with their parents.
After a while they find them: the parents had sent them, with the
grandparents, to Croatia.

Youth services runs into action. Kidnapping (not really, of course) ! They
send agents there, and arrest the grandparents.

It took 2 weeks before someone asked "and the children ?". Well, they left the
children behind in Croatia, and they are still in a mental institution there,
in Zagreb ... 2 years old and 7 years old.

Needless to say, the person to ask this question was the mother of the
children, who had to do this from behind bars (despite that she would not be
convicted). It only worked because her lawyer went to the papers.

The grandparents were convicted of kidnapping. The parents were not convicted
before a court for any wrongdoing (how disgusting is it that they even tried
to convict them after doing that to their children ?). The state, needless to
say, objected to the decision to not convict the parents, and appealed the
decision, without getting a conviction, but they did imprison the parents for
that period. Over 2 years behind bars for those parents, without conviction,
with their children in a mental institution in Zagreb.

Needless to say, nobody in the police or youth services was even internally
disciplined.

Equally needless to say, the power of these services has since been expanded
and oversight reduced, as well as their budgets to hire capable people.

Incredibly offensive fact: due to the fact that youth services take so many
children away from their parents, but don't actually have places to put them,
they've started putting them in boarding schools. There's a tiny problem with
that: those close in the weekends and during school holidays, and mostly
demand those children leave. No alternatives are given to those children, so
they're homeless at that point, have to sleep in the street. This has grown to
be the number one complaint from these children.

If they get help at their parents or family they are punished by youth
services ...

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jhabdas
Aren't they a part of FVEY tho

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pjc50
I have a suspicion that at least part of the drive for Brexit comes from the
determination of the British security services to preserve their last little
island of unaccountable Empire. There have been conflicts with ECHR over
torture, "extraordinary rendition", the treatment of Republicans in Northern
Ireland, and (repeatedly) over mass surveillance.

One former "M", Richard Dearlove, is an overt Brexit campaigner.

(Edit: yes I know leaving the EU does not automatically exit ECHR, but it's a
prerequisite, and the same people are generally campaigning against ECJ and
ECHR as well)

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nicktelford
ECHR is not a part of the European Union, so Brexit won't take us out of it.

However, I believe that the EU requires members be signatories of the ECHR, so
Brexit would make leaving it much easier.

It's well documented that Theresa May wants to leave the ECHR; somewhat
alarming since both Russia and Azerbaijan, countries with comparatively poor
records on human rights, are signatories.

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vidarh
In fact, as far as I know the only European states that are not part of ECHR
and Council of Europe are the Vatican (since they're a theocracy...), Kosovo
since it has limited international recognition, Kazakhstan and Belarus over
human rights violations.

No European state that'd be eligible has chosen to voluntarily stay outside.
Azerbaijan and Russia are the closest to being in trouble of the current
members (Russias voting rights were suspended over the annexation of Crimea;
Azerbaijan is implicated in corruption to step criticism over Aliyev's rule).

The "European states outside the CoE club" is not exactly one to strive for
membership of, to the extent even a lot of Tory MPs in favour of Brexit are
opposed to leave the ECHR; David Davis in fact threatened to rebel over it at
one point.

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monkeynotes
It's surprising to find that the ECHR does not consider same-sex marriage a
human right.

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maze-le
>> Convention for the Protection of Human Rights

>> Article 14 – Prohibition of discrimination:

>> The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Convention shall
be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour,
language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,
association with a national minority, property, birth or other status. [0]

Granted, its not about marriage, but according to the ECHR, its a human right
to live free of discrimination based on sexual orientation.

[0]: [https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-
list/-/conventio...](https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-
list/-/conventions/rms/0900001680063765)

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jaredmosley
I don't see anything about sexual orientation, just sex which would be about
being male/female (possibly transexual depending on the interpretation?).

[Edit] There is this, which seems to leave it to the nations:

>>Article 12 – Right to marry

>> Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a
family, according to the national laws governing the exercise of this right.

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daveFNbuck
Discriminating against sexual orientation isn't possible without
discriminating against sex. A woman is allowed to marry a man, but a man is
not.

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fvdessen
Both man and women have the right to enter marriage, which is defined in the
document as the union between Man and Women (Much clearer in the french
version).

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daveFNbuck
People are starting to realize that this definition is incompatible with rules
against gender-based discrimination.

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jack9
That's only if you believe that discrimination (selection bias) is the same as
discrimination (categorizing). There's no apparent failure of logic until you
start confusing them (eg "starting to realize"). If some people are starting
to believe that the definitions are synonymous, they are wrong and will have
to deal with the issues that naturally occur when you confuse ideals with
reality. Generally some population group suffers for another population group
to be supplicated in an arbitrary way.

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daveFNbuck
This isn't about the kind of discrimination being allowed. This is about which
groups we apply protections to. Do you also think I'm mistaken that a law
defining marriage as the union between two people of the same race is
incompatible with a law forbidding racial discrimination in marriage rights?

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rezeroed
Anjem Choudary is currently in the news. With the likes of him and his
supporters I'm not sure I expect much else. I'd prefer it wasn't done, but
even with that we still have bombs and vehicle rampages. What are the
alternatives?

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pjc50
The key difference is between "surveil known idiots like Choudary" versus
"surveil everyone then try to find terrorism by keyword match". The latter is
not only unlawful and unjust but produces a huge number of false positives.

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accnumnplus1
Not sure why that comment's been voted down. Ultimately it's a question -
voting down a question... Anyway, I'm not convinced surveilling the high
profile people is going to alert you to the people who are off the radar, ie
lone wolves. There might be an association between some, but not all. Again,
(I think some people struggled to read this in the previous comment), I'm not
pro-mass-surveillance, I'm just not convinced that what should be a better
situation would be a better situation, ie maybe an unfortunately necessary
evil.

