Here we are at the #LibertyAGM getting ready for a day of camaraderie and civil liberties!
The essence of a great #LibertyAGM: tea and voting.
I resisted the temptation to offer an emergency motion to resolve @libertyhq staff’s conflicting opinions about Amal Clooney’s #RoyalWedding dress. #LibertyAGM
It starts a week earlier. Our team in the Civil Rights Division sent letters to North Carolina saying HB2 is illegal. But notice the letters (which are in the public domain) never threaten a lawsuit. That’s because the AG still hadn’t authorised the suit. 2/
She’d ok’d the letters, of course, but there was still a debate raging inside DOJ about whether to give the political process more time, whether the feds suing a state over trans issues would provoke a backlash, whether it was better to leave the suit to rights groups, etc. 3/
This morning Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) released two reports that raise grave concerns for anyone who thinks torture is wrong and we have an obligation to avoid complicity in it. A thread:
The reports are here: isc.independent.gov.uk/news-archive/2…. One is a backward-looking attempting to address the UK's involvement in torture from 9/11 until 2010. The second looks at ongoing concerns about the current rules, first published in 2010, meant to prevent a repeat of past mistakes.
The bottom line is this: the ISC's report is a damning indictment of the UK's complicity in torture. The UK has "direct involvement in detainee mistreatment administered by others." At least one of these cases has never been fully investigated.
The Commons just voted in a razor thin majority to take away the Charter of Fundamental Rights after Brexit, eroding equality, privacy and fairness in the U.K. and caving to the Government’s exploitation of Brexit to advance an anti-human rights agenda.
Twenty MPs took away the rights of millions of people. Twenty.
Morning all. Court starts at 10 this morning with some housekeeping. Check back in around 10:30 for an update.
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Housekeeping over. Government forced to “unreservedly apologise” for blowing court deadlines before hearing. Court currently considering sanctioning Government.
We’re back: Court orders Government to pay @libertyhq’s costs as consequence of blowing pre-hearing deadlines. The theme of Govt thinking rules don’t apply to them, and the Court needing to remind that they do, guaranteed to resurface later today.
Court rules that the laws wrongfully "permitted access to retained data, where the objective pursued by that access was not restricted solely to fighting serious crime, or where access was not subject to prior review by a court or an independent administrative authority.”
Holds for another day whether the regime is "general and indiscriminate," whether the national security rationale is too broad, and whether people are entitled to notice when their data is retained or accessed.