[DanBC]

In theory MI5 / MI6 / GCHQ / etc are also subject to full government oversight and have to obey the laws.

This story is interesting because it shows the police don't obey the law. There are strict rules when using undercover officers and a number of cases show undercover officers flaunting those rules. (To the point where an undercover officer forms a relationship with someone he's watching, and has a child with them, still in his undercover identity.)

The laws are defined in RIPA.

And it's not just MI5 doing it - I'm more alarmed about the private black-listing of individuals. (Which was a driver for data protection laws in the UK; and also a driver to expand those laws to paper based records and not just computer databases).

[w_t_payne]

Whilst I have no particular bones to pick with the security services today, (hi guys!), I am more alarmed by the potential for future abuses; by the possibility that police / MI5 / MI6 / GCHQ will use their powers to cover up scandals, smear people who criticise them, undermine court cases against them, and manipulate politicians and journalists into protecting them and their sources of funding.

Indeed, my concerns are amplified somewhat by recent scandals illustrating improper behaviour on the part of other civil servants: NHS cover ups, covert police smear operations & attempts to undermine the rule of law. When so much is secret, trust must compensate for the lack of information.

I am terribly, terribly afraid that trust is a commodity in desperately short supply. This dearth of trust means that the hackles of suspicion become raised by even seemingly innocuous news. For example, am I the only one to find it (mildly) suspicious that the security services got an extra 100 Million when everybody else got their budgets slashed? What pressure did treasury officials come under? Was it proper, or did something underhand happen?

We will certainly never know the truth, but where the benefit of the doubt may have been given before ... now the supply of trust has been wrung dry.

[gadders]

Unfortunately, thanks to the Leveson Inquiry. Police officers speaking to journalists is already being criminalised so we are far less likely to get a police whistleblower on any of these topics.

Still, it'll help keep Hugh Grant's sex life private so it was well worth it.

[finnw]

> a number of cases show undercover officers flaunting those rules

No, they flouted the rules.

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/01/flaunting-the-rul...