US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Peter Lemkin]

GCHQ has taken advantage of "an obscure clause" which allows the foreign secretary to sign a certificate for the interception of broad categories of material, as long as one end of the monitored communications is abroad.

These intelligence creeps, worldwide, and their masters know how to skirt the law's intentions, bend the rules, and make whatever they want to do appear legit. GCHQ spys on US Citizens for the NSA and vice-versa; so both can claim they don't spy on their own citizens - and both have law-twisting 'rationales' for their universal collection of data. . Along with, of course, just plain telling a Big Lie about it.

Yes, the issue of blackmail is a very important one, and may be the ultimate power the 'intelligence' agencies hold over all others. Dame Hoover set the example - but technology has really made electronic blackmail all too easy. The real question is who really has power over the intelligence agencies? Or if anyone really does......:mexican: Which reminds me, the poor GCHQ bloke who wound up in a locked Northface Sportsbag in his own bathtub - what did they know he knew and shouldn't? Could it have been related to this general issue of the universal vacuuming/hoovering of electronic data? The fact that that 'investigation' died as unnatural a death as he did, makes me very suspicious of what it was all really about.