Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

cs02rm0

Bit of a mess of an article IMHO.

Intelligence agency staff leave their roles, just like anyone else does. Unregulated? They're as regulated as the rest of us. Then you have the article casting aspersions on them for doing so, it must be about money and malign foreign influences. Of course foreign states use proxies; so does the UK. Why's that even mentioned as if it's implying ex-intel staff are the proxies - which as far as I'm aware, they're not?

Should we ban these people from working again, or ensure they only flip burgers for the rest of their lives for daring to leave the public sector?

matthewdgreen

I have no idea how regulated “the rest of us are.” This brush-off does not convince me that private spying is good, or that regulations are sufficient to stop it. In fact, the existence of an article in Politico makes me strongly suspect this is part of a discussion in which someone argues for more regulation. Fortunately I don’t live in the UK. Unfortunately I’m not convinced that is a barrier.

ETA: the argument “what, do you expect these people not to keep engaging in work that we traditionally reserve for governments, how will they feed their kids?” also leaves me quite cold.

Maxious

US veterans have to seek permission to enter employment or invest in companies that do business with foreign governments https://dodsoco.ogc.osd.mil/Portals/102/summary_emoluments_c...

Australia introduced a less onerous 1/5/10 year permission period but for anybody with "training in military tactics and use of software or technology with military applications" https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/news/2024-05-07/new-l...

Most famously due to a former US citizen turned Australian citizen awaiting extradiction back to the US for allegedly training chinese fighter pilots (although this seems to be more of an ITAR violation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Daniel_Duggan

throwawayffffas

> [The company] appointed investigative agencies to surveil me, initially covertly and then overtly with vehicles and cameras placed outside my house.

Isn't that just stalking? Why didn't they just call the cops?

XorNot

I'm guessing because none of it happened. Seriously an anonymous client, talking about an anonymous company, hiring another anonymous company, stating that a credible professional (the senior lawyer) said it was a big issue but not actually confirming with the lawyer that they knew of this case and had said that?

matthewdgreen

I was curious about this so I visited ChatGPT and asked if there are documented cases in the UK where these things have happened, and I was met with a deluge of well-documented cases where corporations hired private intelligence firms to infiltrate activist groups and surveil critics and ex-employees, complete with links to primary and secondary sources which I briefly checked out just to make sure it wasn’t hallucinating. Then it asked me if I wanted a second deluge and I declined.

I don’t know why people have a mental model of the world that is so incompatible with reality that they’ll post skeptical takes to HN when we live in a world where so much data is available at the tip of our fingers.

XorNot

And then you didn't post your prompt, the links you looked at or really anything that would mean anyone could establish a common basis of reality or determine if actual nefarious action was happening.

For example, "infiltrating an organization" is also just joining it, which is quite dissimilar to say, stalking if all they did was not actually believe in the organization, rather the say, menacingly post men and machines outside of someone's residence for the purpose of intimidation via threat of violence.

Did you find any of that? Specifically in the UK, by private investigation organizations, specifically providing stalking for hire? Confirmed by more evidence then "well someone totally said it happened but we won't say who or by who?"

speedbird

Time to reinforce treason legislation.

criddell

High treason in Britain is mostly about attacks on the monarchy.

readthenotes1

Competition of Carmichael Industries.

(Just finished a Chuck rewatch)

mr90210

Irene Demova