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Emergency surveillance laws to be brought in
#3
Quote:

Juncker: UK can reclaim powers while staying in EU





Leaked recording suggests thaw in relations between UK and EU president

LAST UPDATED AT 11:59 ON Wed 9 Jul 2014
Britain will be allowed to reclaim powers from the EU while remaining within it, Jean-Claude Juncker has said.
In a leaked recording of a meeting with MEPs, Juncker insists that he does "not want the EU without Britain". Using the EU term for powers, he says he is ready to return "competences" back to Britain ahead of the in-out referendum promised by David Cameron if he wins the next election.
Juncker tells the MEPS: "I would like Britain to stay as an active constructive member of the European Union. If Britain puts forward a proposal it will be taken under consideration."
In the recording, obtained by the Daily Telegraph, the EU head continues: "I am not in principle saying that no kind of repatriation can take place. If Westminster wants to recover competences, OK. If the others agree, it shall be done."
He also says that Britain is "an essential element of policy-making in Europe because the British are a common sense and down to earth people".
The comments will be welcomed by David Cameron, who failed to prevent Juncker becoming president of the European Commission last month. Cameron had warned fellow European leaders that the former Luxembourg premier would halt attempts to reform the bloc.
Following Juncker's successful election, the prime minister said that keeping Britain in the EU had "got harder" because of Juncker's nomination, which he described as a "bad day for the EU".
Earlier this week, relations between the two men were strained further when Juncker gave a thumbs-up gesture in response to a call from a Labour MEP for David Cameron to be dumped at the next general election. ·

http://www.theweek.co.uk/europe/59370/ju...ying-in-eu

And then there is this which does tie into it:
Quote:

Britain pledges to fight Europe's Right to be Forgotten bad law

July 10, 2014 By Stuart Lauchlan
[Image: dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls_-300x201.jpeg]House of Lords

The contradictory nature of politics is such that a government can seek to take a stand against one policy while preparing to implement one that's potentially equally damaging at the same time.
So it is this week that the UK government prepares to sneak through beefed-up emergency surveillance legislation to enable phone tapping and online communications interception on a grand scale while simultaneously hitting out at pan-European threat to freedom of information.
The reason it will be emergency legislation is because earlier in the year the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the highest legal authority in the European Union, ruled that telcos and internet companies didn't have to keep records of calls, texts and emails.
So today the Prime Minister will chair a session of the Cabinet at Downing Street to drum up emergency laws, that will only run through to 2016 (they say) to restore the right to the police and security services to get access to online data, all in the name of liberty and security of course. The new laws, which have cross-party support, will be pushed through Parliament next week.

No right to be forgotten

But while this incursion into privacy rights is taking place, at the same time the UK government is taking a stand against another ECJ ruling, that of the so-called Right to be Forgotten which came into force in May.
This enables EU citizens to demand that the likes of Google remove search engine links to things that the complainant would rather not have on public view murder charges, corruption convictions, paedophilic tendencies, that sort of thing.
The creation of what is effectively a blunt instrument to rewrite history was of course welcomed in Brussels, where an over-excited Commissioner for Justice Vivian Reding declared it a massive victory, while most EU states are currently working out how to enforce the ruling.
Not for the first or the last time, the UK finds itself out of step with the rest of Europe and this time that's to be applauded without reservation.
When the ruling was first announced, Prime Minister David Cameron fudged taking a stand on the matter, despite his close links to Google and his working relationship with Google CEO Eric Schmidt who is one of his advisors.
[Image: 62958757_62958754-300x168.jpg]Simon Hughes

But yesterday UK Justice Minister Simon Hughes drew a line in the political sand when he told a committee in the British upper legislative assembly the House of Lords that the Right to be Forgotten is technically unenforceable, would lead to thousands of misconceived complaints and is tantamount to the kind of censorship seen in communist dictatorships.
Hughes did not mince his words, accusing the EU of acting like communist China rather than a federation of democratic states:
We have criticised the government of China… for closing down people's right to information. There are other countries with strict information access.
It is not a good position for the EU to be in to look as if it is countenancing restrictions in the access of the citizen to access to information because it could be a very bad precedent.
The ruling only covers search engines on European sites, which means that, for example, something erased from Google.co.uk will still be visible in Europe if the user switches to Google.com. This means in practice that there is no technical way for complainants to erase information no matter what they may believe.
Hughes said:

If politicians think they can delete findings about their expenses, that's not going to happen. If people think they can delete their criminal history, it won't occur.

It looks to me as if it may be an unmanageable task. It will be a phenomenal task. It's not technically possible to remove all traces of data loaded on to the internet from other sources. You can't exercise the right to be forgotten. The information system could not be made to do it.

http://diginomica.com/2014/07/10/britain...n-bad-law/
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Emergency surveillance laws to be brought in - by Magda Hassan - 10-07-2014, 12:20 PM

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