It shouldn't be amazing but it is endlessly surprising to me that authorities cannot stop abusing their authority to spy on their fellow citizens. The articles doesn't clarify whether this is a case of "shootings are happening right now and we are spying on the reporters for a day or two because there is an urgent need to protect people and maybe their sources will help us", or whether it was "we were irritated that they figured some things out, it was an easy lazy way to try to find out who was giving them info".<p>Authorities will spy on us when given the opportunity for expediency. With everyone carrying around phone/tracking device, your recent vintage car comes with one and then there are just things like tagging devices, apple tags etc.<p>What we need are serious penalties for this spying, but ha ha we are going in the opposite direction. I'm not even in the UK, but I figure authorities in the US are doing this kind of thing too. They try to get text messages, all kinds of surveilance is going on.
"This was one of a number of difficult decisions on a complex and fast moving day," he added.<p>Um, okay. So maybe you made a bad decision rashly on the day, but then every day after that was an opportunity for someone to realize the bad decision and undo it. Instead, they allowed it to continue. That means the fog-of-war type excuse is crap
Tangentially related, but the old Official Secrets act (1920) made this exception for Journalism:<p>5 (5): "Nothing in this section shall apply to postal packets -addressed to any office where any newspaper or periodical is published, being postal packets in reply to advertisements appearing in such newspaper or periodical."<p>(the rest of the section mandates recording the origin of post or telegrams delivered or forwarded by any business)<p>I've always wondered what caused that exception to be made, but I've not found any historical evidence about it.
This was a norm completely shattered in the West by the Obama administration, and the Trump administration happily did the same to try to stop their leaking. In the West, "reporters" and "activists" are unofficially certified by the government, and those who are not are considered suspected terrorists. The idea that NI police would hold themselves to a higher standard is laughable.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journalists-of-the-associated-press-seized-by-us.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journ...</a><p><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fox-news-reporter-secretly-monitored-by-obama-administration-court-documents/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fox-news-reporter-secretly-moni...</a><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/trump-administration-phone-records-times-reporters.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/trump-administration-p...</a><p>In the US, this attitude has even filtered down to local bosses:<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/kansas-marion-newspaper-police-raid.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/kansas-mar...</a>
Of all the places to broach tyranny, you'd think Northern Ireland would know better. I refer to the IRA and the old folks who knew about calculated murder and car bombs to dissuade certain political actions.<p>I am not advocating violence, simply stating that the peoples of Northern Ireland are well familiar with tyranny, and are mentally equipped to do something about it. They used to be, anyway.