Regarding the bugging of politicians in general.

Politicians/MP's are so squeaky clean, above all suspicion and are of such impeccable character that I wonder why anyone would want to bug them in the first place.

Whilst the average Joe/Joanne Soap has his/her liberties eroded and abused in any which way the law sees fit, politicians are above reproach and should be protected from such violations of privacy. They are very special people who always work in the best interest of the populace. I am sure there is not a self-serving member amongst them. And, being politicians they should be treated with the kind of respect the rest of society can only dream of.

In fact I would go as far as to say, that as such a special class of person, they should be above all those laws that the we, the unclean, are abused with daily.

Remember, it is double standards that has put the Great into Great Britain.

Interview.

"it is completely unacceptable for an interview conducted by an MP on a constituency matter - or on any other issue - to be recorded"

Dose this meen we never have to have MP's on TV again?

Watergate

The only rationale I can think of, is that the recordings could easily be used by the opposition to help win elections, which would very anti-democratic. (As if anyone would notice one more perversion of democracy amidst all the others!)

Whistleblower protection

I come back to this whistleblower fix. If you gave protection to whistleblowers in the security services (provided they blew the whistle directly to MPs) then that would give a feedback loop to keep the security services from attacking their own country.

So for a problem to be revealed, both the whistleblower would have to be convinced enough to end their careers AND the MP would need to be sufficiently convinced too and that would prevent cases like this. Plus it has the advantage that normal day to day stuff continues to be kept from MPs, so no extra risk of leaks.

Pretty shocking to see the attitude of the policeman in that story. "ill feeling"??

The Wilson doctrine

"I keep hearing on the news that bugging politicians has been banned for the last 40 years, does anyone know the thinking, if any, behind that rule?"

It stems from when they bugged Wilson because they were afraid of a Labour government introducing communism to Britain. Read spycatcher, or this one puts it simply enough:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson_conspiracy_theories

Interesting to read the regulators comments. He calls for the doctrine to be removed.

"It is fundamental to the constitution of this country that no one is above the law or is seen to be above the law. But in this instance, MPs and peers are anything but equal with the rest of the citizens of this country and are above the law""

So if he's in favour of bugging MPs, whose enforcing the Wilson doctrine?

60% anyone?

It isn't the MP

it's the bugging. There's no need for this tap to be made without a warrant. Whether it was an MP or not is irrelevant (though it IS relevant in that MPs are upset that *MPs* are being taped rather than plebs).

The worst case is that they continue to allow warrantless taps but NO taps on MPs. Best case is that they ban warrantless taps on anyone.

Bugger

A Muslim civil liberties campaigner trying to prevent the Americans kidnapping another body for the CIA perverts to play with. When the police crawled under the table to plant the bug, they probably found at least two already there from the MI5, the CIA and god knows who else.

As for why we don't bug all MPs, the fact is that it wouldn't reveal anything. We already know about their corruption, their stupid policies, their taking of monumental decisions on sofas surrounded by yes-men. Hansard diligently records every stupid argument and every cynical U-turn. The donations and non-executive directorships they receive are usually publicly available, and it doesn't take Private Eye to join the dots between those and the awarding of lucrative contracts. The problem is not that we don't know that MPs are screwing us, the problem is that most people don't care.

It's not a new maccarthy era

It's not a new maccarthy era, honest.

No witch hunts here.

It's interestnig to see though how the public have been poisoned to think "hey what does it matter if a civil rights backing MP gets bugged - their all upto something anyway."

@Dudly Doright

"There are a number of "super-do-gooders" that give legal assistance to those the rest of society would deem undesirable."

Good thing you speak for the rest of society. :) We can do away with juries and democracy altogether and just ask you what you think!

"As the Lynne Stewart affair in the States showed, some of these useful idiots are happily aiding those that want to kill the rest of us,"

Where are those WMDs? Where did that anthrax come from? Who will investigate these things? You?

" and I suspect the UK secret services are keeping a very careful eye on them."

I bet it was an MI5 officer who leaked it to the tories. Who else would know. I bet they're watching you now!.

"the Wilson Convention is not law, it merely was a gentleman's agreement"

Creepy double speak. Are you a lawyer?

@why a ban on bugging politicians?

I also would query that politicians are special cases requiring special exclusion treatment. Counselling would do them no harm and most of them a lot of Good.

<[quote]>Mr Straw has said he has no knowledge of what had happened but that it is "completely unacceptable" for MPs' conversations to be recorded.<[/quote]> ....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7225556.stm

On what valid grounds that secrecy/exclusivity, Jack? It would be Ignorant of us not to consider that at least Arrogant for the Permanent Possibility of Oversight of Public Service would ensure a Conscious Effort to Excel in a Fitness for Purpose and also Provide further Third Party Insight into Future Needs which could then be

Seamlessly Provided.

It would also, at a Stroke, make Senseless and/or Malicious Common Abuse a most unattractive Option and would more than likely Curtail and Prevent it altogether. That can only be a Good thing for everybody and therefore Highly Commendable. To consider it "completely unacceptable" is then rather a disturbing position to be championed by a Minister holding High Public Office. Some may even suggest it is an untenable opinion and especially so in a Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.

@ bringing down the country, etc

The successful parasite does not kill its host. However, it may so weaken the host as to expose it to infestation by other parasites. The smart way to combat parasites would be with phages - parasites which feed on parasites - until the whole perverted ecology simply doesn't work any more. Fortunately the technical limitations of pharmacology do not necessarily apply to sociology.

Just remember - society is not WYSIWYG.

@Matt

Let me make it clearer. You said:

"There are a number of "super-do-gooders" that give legal assistance to those the rest of society would deem undesirable."

You don't speak for 'the rest of society' hence you cannot claim that 'the rest of society' is represented by your viewpoint.

Democracy survives competing viewpoints and wishing the other viewpoint didn't exist doesn't make it so.

@Matt Bryant & Luther Blissett

lol

Same anti-terror police that pressed the case against the guy with the PDA a coat and a rucksack waiting for a tube?

Same anti-terror police who hyped up their ricin case?

The same anti terror forces behind the genius suggestions for scanners at trains stations?

Same anti-terror forces that support the ID card scheme?

Those anti terror forces? I've got more confidence in a wet paper bag providing protection from "terrorism" then those numptys.

As misguided a fool as the MP inevetably is - recording his conversations is one thing - getting caught is just a further embarrasment to an already laughable organisation.

Running websites and funding terrorism? I call bull---- it sounds alot like the guy who police expected to find Hundreds of Thousands of pounds as a result of his piracy busness (Oink) however all they found was alot of used tissue paper.

Re: Matt

Of course they're doing a good job. They've shot two innocent people, one dead, and they've let one terror attack through, but they've foiled dozens of attacks they'd love to tell us about but can't. That puts them about 74-3 up against S.P.E.C.T.R.E, sorry Al-Qaeda, and it's early in the game yet - it's a war of an infinite number of halves.

"A friend in the Met..." bwahahaha, priceless. A friend in Al-Qaeda tells me that the Met consider being refused cheap drinks five minutes after happy hour has ended as 'threatening and aggressive behaviour'. As far as reliability of sources goes, I think I win.

"Would you prefer after the tube bombings that the Police let anyone carry rucksacks onto the tube unchallenged?"

Yes, I would rather like to go about my normal day-to-day life, which includes carrying things onto public transport - sometimes so many things that storing them in my clothing is not practical, and some sort of external receptacle is required, e.g. a backpack - without fear of harrassment from the state. Is that OK with you?

Rucksacks and tubes

If someone wants to blow themselves up and kill people, assuming they can procure/make the explosives, they can achieve their aims just as easily in the queue to get though a checkpoint as on a tube train itself, or they can find a crowd in any number of other public places that simply can't be policed.

Someone can easily board a tube train at an unstaffed/barely-staffed outlying station carrying a couple of huge suitcases, and sit down calmly all the way to their central detonation point.

It seems like a lame reaction to do something where it isn't actually a defence against meaningful terrorism, just against a very small subset of possible acts which are easily avoided by any terrorist with average intelligence. At best it seems to be for some kind of reassurance, but given the history, quite a few people are more nervous when there are armed police around than when there aren't.

Bugging is standard in UK prisons

I don't know why this bugging issue has come as such a shock to everyone. It was common knowledge whilst I was in prison that the visit room was bugged. This is why any sensitive information was exchanged in the form of handwritten notes with the visitor, to avoid the authorities gaining an unfair advantage from having access to my intended legal action.

This interference in communication with those outside the prison was not limited to the visit room. A sequence of several of my solicitor's privileged letters went missing at a critical point in my legal case. Letters to Members of Parliament were not considered "priviliged" and had to be passed unsealed for reading by the prison censor. So any thought that a prisoner could have private correspondence with their MP went right out of the window.

My MP Andrew Mackinlay visited me on two occasions at HMP Full Sutton, and we discussed many issues about sensitive aspects of my conviction for espionage, for which I was serving a sentence of 20 years. It is interesting that shortly after one of these meetings, and following some parliamentary questions by Mr Mackinlay, his home in Tilbury was burgled, and Mr Mackinlay was of the opinion that the Security Service were implicated in this - you can see his cryptic comment in Hansard for 26 October 1999.