
Privacy not Prism – UK legal challenge - jmaskell
https://www.privacynotprism.org.uk/
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AndrewDucker
I just donated £20.

I think it's worth making this as public as possible.

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ksrm
It's times like this that I'm very glad the ECHR exists.

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GunlogAlm
If UKIP had their way, we wouldn't be in the European Union or Council of
Europe and would be withdrawn from the Human Rights Convention.

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lmm
Yeah, but UKIP are nutters.

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cobrophy
Nutters that are becoming increasingly popular.

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arethuza
I don't think UKIP have much support here in Scotland - I suspect most people
see them as the "Little Englander" party:

[http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/why-ukip-
ha...](http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/why-ukip-has-no-
relevance-in-scotland.22300279)

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gadders
Well, if the SNP had had their way you'd be in the Euro instead.

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brackin
Paypal blocked my card when trying to donate, won't start a conspiracy theory.

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joelrunyon
What's the best P2P paypal alternative?

I'm off of paypal for accepting payments but would love a solid alternative to
sending money to people internationally (Chase Quickpay is great but you can't
do international xfers).

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brackin
TransferWise is a great way to transfer money internationally with low fees.

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rayiner
I can't believe anyone still thinks international tribunals are a good idea.
As if not bad enough for unelected judges to subvert democracy in their own
county, but now you can have unelected judges in other countries subvert
democracy in yours!

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SEMW
> unelected judges to subvert democracy...

If your definition of 'democracy' is a system of tyranny of the majority,
where an elected government can do whatever it likes, create law in its own
image without constitutional limit or fetter (for fear of 'subverting
democracy'), then I don't particularly want to live in a democracy. And,
thankfully, I don't.

Liberal democracy (in the classical sense) has the principle of _Rule of Law_
rather than _Rule of Man_ , with associated elements of due process, human
rights, etc. ranking as more important than political will. This necessarily
entails a disinterested, unelected, apolitical judiciary to decide when the
legislature or executive has breached your constitution / human rights
document / etc. This seems to work out a hell of a lot better than the
alternative.

(Even if you reject that - and the UK in theory does have a system of
Parliamentary sovereignty rather than legal sovereignty - it's still hardly
'subverting democracy'. The situation here is still the executive (GCHQ) may
be acting in violation of the will of Parliament (as expressed in the
HRA1998). Parliament delegates the task of deciding when the executive has
violated its law to various judicial bodies, domestic and international).

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rayiner
"Democracy" is tyranny of the majority. In our constitutional republics, we
have courts as a check on democracy, and that's necessary. Sometimes, those
courts strike down programs generally supported by the electorate. Sometimes
that's necessary too, but it's always a subversion of democracy.

However, courts ultimately derive their principles of justice from the values
and traditions of a people. That's why international tribunals can have no
legitimacy. It makes utterly no sense for judges in other countries,
representative of people in other countries with different values and
traditions, to weigh in on the actions of elected officials in your country.
That's why Americans broadly dislike the idea, and I'd guess the majority of
Britons do too.

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SEMW
> However, courts ultimately derive their principles of justice from the
> values and traditions of a people.

That's a valid POV, but it can hardly be stated as fact. For example, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights owes its existence to a broad consensus
that, actually, certain fundamental principles of human rights _are_
universal, and a South African has as much of a right to not be tortured by
his government as an Englishman does. Of course, not everyone agrees, but
denying any kind of universal quality to human rights is a fairly... niche
form of cultural relativism.

> That's why international tribunals can have no legitimacy.

Aaand that's just a non-sequitur. The ECtHR has legal legitimacy to rule on UK
issues because the UK voluntarily signed the ECHR. Its rulings do _not_ have
direct effect in the UK, but have a certain amount of indirect effect
nevertheless because Parliament passed a law in 1998 giving them that. (FWIW,
since then, the ECHR - which was mostly drafted by an Englishman - can also be
enforced domestically in UK courts, and the ECtHR have only rarely overruled
UK courts on ECHR interpretation issues).

So the situation here is the executive (GCHQ) possibly acting in violation of
the will of Parliament (as expressed in the HRA1998). Parliament has delegated
the task of deciding when the executive has violated its law to various
judicial bodies, domestic and international. That's not subverting democracy.
It's enforcing it.

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tptacek
It's probably not enforcing democracy, since polls seem to show a overwhelming
majority of Britons have problems with the ECHR.

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SEMW
I could take issue with this implicit identification of 'democracy' with
'issue-by-issue 50%-majoritarian direct democracy' (i.e. the idea that
democracy is whatever a >50% majority in a referendum would currently show on
each issue taken separately). Many countries flirt with some elements of
direct democracy (Switzerland goes furthest, that I know of), but none go
_that_ far. So the implication that that's the actual true form of democracy
is arguably a bit silly.

...And this is getting perilously close to philosophical wankery over
competing definitions of the word 'democracy', which doesn't make for a very
interesting discussion, so I should probably stop there :)

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jsingleton
You can also donate to the Open Rights Group here:
[https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/)

It's Direct Debit (not credit card / paypal) which means less fees.

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Sprint
Rant on: Why is it that people use "Prism" as synonym for the whole state of
government surveillance? PRISM is one specific program of the NSA, there is
much more and there is much worse (eg TEMPORA).

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sudomal
The less focused the effort, the more diluted the message.

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Sprint
That sounds vague and random. You could also say an un-focused effort misses
the bigger picture.

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rlongstaff
Worth pointing out that they can't make an application to the ECtHR until all
legal appeals have been exhausted in the UK (Supreme Court?). Otherwise the
application will be immediately rejected.

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thenomad
ORG have a lot of very smart legal minds on their team. I've worked with some
of them: I'm 100% sure they already know the legal issues.

They'll do this the right way.

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ommunist
This is very dangerous initiative. Because if you loose such a case in the UK,
British users will be doomed like forever.

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SideburnsOfDoom
So basically you're saying "don't fight it; you might lose"?

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deepvibrations
Donated :) Love seeing this sort of direct action!

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infinity0
comic sans ms, really?

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infinity0
ahh, it looks like that's because I have remote fonts disabled (security) and
it picked comic sans ms as the closest.. for some reason.

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lifebeyondfife
CSS font family defaults should be sensible. I thought the Comic Sans looked
unprofessional until you pointed out that NoScript was blocking a dynamic
font.

