> Private intelligence firms claim that illegally obtained information is routinely submitted to courts in the U.K., with the third industry figure telling POLITICO there are “ludicrous cover stories put in front of judges” where people are trying to “launder stolen information into court proceedings.”
This sounds like "parallel construction" with fewer steps.
The world seems to be moving away from long-established (and established slowly over a long time) rules and regulations around law and due process due to it feeling slow and inconvenient.
Haven't crime rates been declining in the West for quite a while now?
Other than a few small relative blips like we had around 2020 and other big events, crime rates have been falling since around the 1400s across the western world, regardless of how stringent or lax law enforcement has been. It is near a worldwide phenomenon other than places experiencing a total collapse of local government or active war.
I can't speak for all of western civilization but one of my favorite facts is that violent crime has been plummeting in the US and the trend started with the release of Doom
Violent crime, sure, but white collar crime and blatant corruption of our institutions hasn't abated and our inability to grapple with it is the fundamental cause of all of the other issues in our society today.
>Haven't crime rates been declining in the West for quite a while now?
Yes but not for the reasons you think. More crime is going unreported, unsolved, unenforced than ever before. It started during Covid and hasn’t really gotten any better. The Leo’s that are die hard are now out there wearing masks looking for people of a specific skin color.
There's really no way to know so it's silly to ask for a source. The only crime statistic that's fairly reliable (at least in developed countries) is murder because it's hard to hide a body. Lesser crimes are heavily under reported but no one knows by how much, and the reporting rates vary widely by location and time. In many places the police actively discourage victims from reporting minor crimes because it creates more work for them and looks bad in their statistics.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (formerly the British Crime Survey) should provide some insight, since it's based on interviewing a random sample of the general public.
It suggests that around a third of violent crimes are not recorded by police - but, contrary to the gp's assertion, that proportion doesn't seem to have changed significantly since the BCS began in 1982.
> “We don’t do things like that here at all. So, Vauxhall [MI6] will almost never outsource meaningful intelligence work to the private sector,” they said.
That one explains that "Vauxhall" is a metonym for MI6, whose headquarters is in Vauxhall.
> Still, trading in knowledge is commonplace. The same person added that there is a “lot of frustration from both sides of the river [Thames] that the old boys’ network was getting a bit too informal, with people telling their clients that they can call their old buddies.”
That one completely fails to explain that "both sides of the river" means MI6 and MI5 (whose headquarters are on different sides of the Thames).
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?
Allegedly involved are Hong Kong government, multiple private security and private investigators from the UK with ex-military/law enforcement background, and a mysterious death after the whole scandal was exposed.
Which sounds exactly like what the article is describing.
While I agree that the author clearly has to keep the details private from the press for their own safety, the whole article frames the alleged victims as powerless, but in truth they are not.
The behaviors described are mostly criminal, they have legal recourse, it's not like civil cases where they would be buried from the other sides legal team.
And speaking of the other side they are private companies employing ex intelligence people they don't have the immense backing of a state behind them, if they get caught doing illegal things a few times thats it their whole business could be under threat.
I am guessing they are very chummy with law enforcement, have good lawyers and may be in bed with politicians but the whole thing looks extremely precarious it would only take a couple of cases to stick for real prison time for these folks.
I did, I just don't think the particulars really much what the politico article discusses.
The private security companies in the case in your link are in my opinion incidental.
In your link a state actor recruited a bunch of people to do it's dirty work. Typical state sponsored intelligence stuff. The security companies were really a former marine and a couple of former Hong Kong cops. They could have been hired ad hoc.
In the politico article it discusses shops run from groups of former intelligence agencies (MI5 and MI6 presumably) running intelligence operations for companies.
It's an entire different kind of thing in my opinion.
Sure if a van rolls up across your home with a bunch of dudes in it you can't know which case you are dealing with, but either way calling the cops is the right way to go.
"In the last year, government ministers and intelligence agencies have warned that foreign states are using the industry to “carry out their dirty work” in the U.K. — sometimes through the surveillance and harassment of dissidents that have fled to Britain as a safe haven."
I guess the article discusses other things too, but even if your argument makes sense here, it doesn't negate the fact that once powerful foreign entities are involved, ones that have enough resources and motivation to hire ex-spies to do dirty work, calling the police can lead to disastrous outcomes.
I guess you're lucky in a sense since apparently you haven't experienced the situations where you know there are times where the normal law enforcement / emergency services process won't work.
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.
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?"
Why are you asking me for a prompt that would be effortless to formulate yourself, and why are you asking questions that would also be effortless to formulate yourself? It’s not because the information will be of higher quality when you filter it through me, it’s because you’re afraid that if you do these very easy things, you’ll learn that things are much worse than you believe.
> Why are you asking me for a prompt that would be effortless to formulate yourself, and why are you asking questions that would also be effortless to formulate yourself? It’s not because the information will be of higher quality when you filter it through me, it’s because you’re afraid that if you do these very easy things, you’ll learn that things are much worse than you believe.
Please have better faith in your interlocutor. We are not ostriches with our heads in the sand. Say your piece, so that then if we ignore it, you may find fault in good faith after. You're beating around the bush now, as you've been asked for sources plainly and directly, and have refused, which leads me to deploy the following:
> Hitchens's razor is an epistemological razor that serves as a general rule for rejecting certain knowledge claims. It states:
> > What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
> The razor is credited to author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, although its provenance can be traced to the Latin Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur ("What is asserted gratuitously is denied gratuitously"). It implies that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
I didn’t say that ChatGPT said. I said I used ChatGPT as a search engine because it’s incredibly easy and slightly better than Google. And then I visited the links it gave me to see the primary and secondary sources.
Again, the only reason we’re having this conversation as though there’s a debate here is that people have decided to believe in one inaccurate version of the world instead of using the extensive tools available to figure out what’s going on. This level of conversation is fine for Reddit, it’s embarrassing for HN where having an accurate mental model of the world (and a willingness to learn an update) is kind of essential.
> 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
does indeed sound exactly like you were using chatGPT as a primary source rather than a search engine, and thus are being met with cynicism.
HN is a place where you typically post links to sources that support your claim. We could all Google it (or ChatGPT it), but we may not come out with the same results. Why not post your sources so that we can discuss a common set of evidence?
HN is also a place that is intended to be a place that promotes intellectual curiosity rather than argument. When the evidence is this extensive and easily accessible, the decision to argue about it reflects intransigence and an unwillingness to be curious.
I genuinely don’t care about being right on the Internet or HN karma, I would be genuinely happy if one reader/participant in this argument came out of it thinking “huh, I can actually do better than this.”
The good folks here have absolutely demonstrated intellectual curiosity - that's what all the requests for prompt details and links are. Your refusal to simply provide them, especially after opening with what boils down to "ChatGPT told me...", and choice to get all smug and self-righteous when pressed, does not imply that you actually have the best handle on HN culture.
When you write hundreds of words to avoid typing twelve or so into a search engine, you’re not pursuing intellectual curiosity. I’m happy to die on this hill because it’s so completely absurd, and because I’m curious about what pathology is causing people even to argue about this.
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?
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.
I don't buy that it's work traditionally reserved for governments, or that it's all bad.
There are people offering their services to find kidnapped children, I struggle to see that as a bad thing. Private investigatory work has a long history in the country of Sherlock Holmes (or at least Dr Joseph Bell). You have figures as far back as Harry Philby flirting with foreign governments after their time within the UK government.
They're not offering government services, they're offering their own capabilities.
> Black Cube ... its staff had snooped on journalists and adopted false identities to obtain information about film mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse accusers
That sounds like more or less the opposite of finding kidnapped children.
> Providing home addresses to Russian oligarchs who have a history of topping people — particularly journalists
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
“Retired military personnel” have completed their 20+ years of service and retired with full pension. “Veteran” refers to anyone who has served in the armed forces.
I'm not sure that it is a distinction with a difference in this specific case, because to my reading, the only folks who might not be covered publicly were those who were not officially, formally, regularly, or directly employed by military agencies, while doing the work alongside those who were so employed. Contractors, for example, may not be bound by the clause if they were not previously a reservist, a civilian DoD employee, an enlisted solider, or an officer in the armed forces. I am narrowly reading this to steelman their position, and it seems there might be some narrow wiggle room there, but I'm not sure if that's what they meant of if they're quibbling simply to have something to say. They might be technically right though, you be the judge:
> APPLICATION OF THE EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE TO DoD CIVILIAN EMPLOYEES
AND MILITARY PERSONNEL
[The following paragraph is from the conclusion, and I think this might be Justice Department interpretations, as I don't think these issues have been tested before the Supreme Court. I am not a lawyer, nor do I speak for the military or Justice Department.]
> The Emoluments Clause to the Constitution applies to all Federal personnel. The Clause prohibits receipt of foreign gifts unless Congress consents such as in the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act, 5 U.S.C. § 7342. For retired military personnel, the Emoluments Clause continues to apply to them because they are subject to recall. The Justice Department opinions referred to in this paper construe the Emoluments Clause broadly. Specifically, the Justice Department construes the Clause to include not only gifts of travel and food, but also payments such as proportionate profit-sharing. To avoid an Emoluments Clause problem resulting in suspension of retired pay, retired military personnel should seek advance consent through their respective Service consistent with 37 U.S.C. § 908. It is prudent for retired military personnel to obtain advance approval even when there is uncertainty about the Clause’s applicability.
Perhaps there's some nuanced reading of "veterans" that includes folks who aren't armed services, although I think they would likely still fall under the purview of this clause, though I am curious about the factors at play here.
Edit: I think that if you are retired and fail to comply to the Gov's liking, all foreign payments are able to be counted against any military pension you may receive. I am less certain about how non-officers who have no pension are treated, or if they are still beholden to the clause after leaving the armed forces.
Here is additional material from the Commissioned Corps Personnel Manual:
So you think that if you are a pilot that left after 19 years you can go and train Chinese pilots without permission?
Veterans is just another word for retired military personnel. If you were in the military and are not dishonorably discharged you are a veteran. Whether you do 2,3 or 20 years.
I am pretty sure the rule though applies to all regardless of discharge status.
> Veterans is just another word for retired military personnel.
A sergeant who leaves after a three-year enlistment is a veteran, but not a retiree.
The distinction matters because military retirees retain some privileges from their service, most importantly, a pension. Those privileges mean retirees fall under the emoluments clause.
However, a veteran not receiving retired pay is not subject to the emoluments clause as they have no relationship with the federal government. The Congressional Research Service states:
> Former servicemembers with no military status and not entitled to military retired pay can perform [foreign military service] on the same basis as a U.S. national who never served in the armed services. [1]
Interestingly, this implies a retiree could forfeit their retired pay to avoid being subject to the emoluments clause.
It is POLITICO. Always a mess of emotional appeal and misty allegations trying to launder editorials as 'news'.
Run their articles through NLP and ask about facts and cited evidence to support those facts and most of the time their will be 'very' little. Ask which type of audience the articles are written for, and you will find the writing style alligns with an audience driven by emotional appeal rather than fact or reason.
And yes, most of our media has devolved in the same way, but nearly every time I come across a POLITICO article, it seems to go out of its way to confirm this and then some.
I'm not sure this issue is specific to intelligence, as many government employees retire from their posts and respawn as contractors and consultants. how is it different from some retired mandarins greasing institutional and enterprise sales?
Interrupting narrative/consensus construction must be exceedingly rare in America then, since there hasn't been a conviction for treason in the US since the 1950's.
> Private intelligence firms claim that illegally obtained information is routinely submitted to courts in the U.K., with the third industry figure telling POLITICO there are “ludicrous cover stories put in front of judges” where people are trying to “launder stolen information into court proceedings.”
This sounds like "parallel construction" with fewer steps.
Outsourced parallel construction.
The world seems to be moving away from long-established (and established slowly over a long time) rules and regulations around law and due process due to it feeling slow and inconvenient.
Haven't crime rates been declining in the West for quite a while now?
Other than a few small relative blips like we had around 2020 and other big events, crime rates have been falling since around the 1400s across the western world, regardless of how stringent or lax law enforcement has been. It is near a worldwide phenomenon other than places experiencing a total collapse of local government or active war.
I can't speak for all of western civilization but one of my favorite facts is that violent crime has been plummeting in the US and the trend started with the release of Doom
Violent crime, sure, but white collar crime and blatant corruption of our institutions hasn't abated and our inability to grapple with it is the fundamental cause of all of the other issues in our society today.
... and yet don't seem to be much of a priority.
>Haven't crime rates been declining in the West for quite a while now?
Yes but not for the reasons you think. More crime is going unreported, unsolved, unenforced than ever before. It started during Covid and hasn’t really gotten any better. The Leo’s that are die hard are now out there wearing masks looking for people of a specific skin color.
Any source for that?
Many say the opposite. Crimes are more often reported especially if suspects have a „specific skin color“.
There's really no way to know so it's silly to ask for a source. The only crime statistic that's fairly reliable (at least in developed countries) is murder because it's hard to hide a body. Lesser crimes are heavily under reported but no one knows by how much, and the reporting rates vary widely by location and time. In many places the police actively discourage victims from reporting minor crimes because it creates more work for them and looks bad in their statistics.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (formerly the British Crime Survey) should provide some insight, since it's based on interviewing a random sample of the general public.
It suggests that around a third of violent crimes are not recorded by police - but, contrary to the gp's assertion, that proportion doesn't seem to have changed significantly since the BCS began in 1982.
>There's really no way to know so it's silly to ask for a source.
Well then its even sillier to make the claim in the first place, isn't it?
[dead]
The UK has only very limited restrictions on illegally gathered evidence. Poison Tree doctorine is not a thing here. So yes.
There's some funny square bracketing in here.
> “We don’t do things like that here at all. So, Vauxhall [MI6] will almost never outsource meaningful intelligence work to the private sector,” they said.
That one explains that "Vauxhall" is a metonym for MI6, whose headquarters is in Vauxhall.
> Still, trading in knowledge is commonplace. The same person added that there is a “lot of frustration from both sides of the river [Thames] that the old boys’ network was getting a bit too informal, with people telling their clients that they can call their old buddies.”
That one completely fails to explain that "both sides of the river" means MI6 and MI5 (whose headquarters are on different sides of the Thames).
> [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?
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?
In these cases, if you speak too much you get killed.
I'll post one such case to corroborate the article, since it was big news in my community: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Hong_Kong_trade_office_sp...
Allegedly involved are Hong Kong government, multiple private security and private investigators from the UK with ex-military/law enforcement background, and a mysterious death after the whole scandal was exposed.
Which sounds exactly like what the article is describing.
While I agree that the author clearly has to keep the details private from the press for their own safety, the whole article frames the alleged victims as powerless, but in truth they are not.
The behaviors described are mostly criminal, they have legal recourse, it's not like civil cases where they would be buried from the other sides legal team.
And speaking of the other side they are private companies employing ex intelligence people they don't have the immense backing of a state behind them, if they get caught doing illegal things a few times thats it their whole business could be under threat.
I am guessing they are very chummy with law enforcement, have good lawyers and may be in bed with politicians but the whole thing looks extremely precarious it would only take a couple of cases to stick for real prison time for these folks.
Have you even read my link?
> don't have the immense backing of a state
They had backing of a foreign state power, in this case Hong Kong (and by implication China)
> it would only take a couple of cases to stick for real prison time for these folks
The guy just died a mysterious death once the thing was exposed. He must have wished for prison time.
I did, I just don't think the particulars really much what the politico article discusses.
The private security companies in the case in your link are in my opinion incidental.
In your link a state actor recruited a bunch of people to do it's dirty work. Typical state sponsored intelligence stuff. The security companies were really a former marine and a couple of former Hong Kong cops. They could have been hired ad hoc.
In the politico article it discusses shops run from groups of former intelligence agencies (MI5 and MI6 presumably) running intelligence operations for companies.
It's an entire different kind of thing in my opinion.
Sure if a van rolls up across your home with a bunch of dudes in it you can't know which case you are dealing with, but either way calling the cops is the right way to go.
From TFA:
"In the last year, government ministers and intelligence agencies have warned that foreign states are using the industry to “carry out their dirty work” in the U.K. — sometimes through the surveillance and harassment of dissidents that have fled to Britain as a safe haven."
I guess the article discusses other things too, but even if your argument makes sense here, it doesn't negate the fact that once powerful foreign entities are involved, ones that have enough resources and motivation to hire ex-spies to do dirty work, calling the police can lead to disastrous outcomes.
I guess you're lucky in a sense since apparently you haven't experienced the situations where you know there are times where the normal law enforcement / emergency services process won't work.
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.
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?"
Why are you asking me for a prompt that would be effortless to formulate yourself, and why are you asking questions that would also be effortless to formulate yourself? It’s not because the information will be of higher quality when you filter it through me, it’s because you’re afraid that if you do these very easy things, you’ll learn that things are much worse than you believe.
> Why are you asking me for a prompt that would be effortless to formulate yourself, and why are you asking questions that would also be effortless to formulate yourself? It’s not because the information will be of higher quality when you filter it through me, it’s because you’re afraid that if you do these very easy things, you’ll learn that things are much worse than you believe.
Please have better faith in your interlocutor. We are not ostriches with our heads in the sand. Say your piece, so that then if we ignore it, you may find fault in good faith after. You're beating around the bush now, as you've been asked for sources plainly and directly, and have refused, which leads me to deploy the following:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor
> Hitchens's razor is an epistemological razor that serves as a general rule for rejecting certain knowledge claims. It states:
> > What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
> The razor is credited to author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, although its provenance can be traced to the Latin Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur ("What is asserted gratuitously is denied gratuitously"). It implies that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
Well, it's hardly a surprise that Hitchins would claim credit for something that was an established phrase in the 19th century.
Dont understand why you find it so hard to believe. The ebay incident is insane and there are many like it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
Lawyers have gotten into trouble using chatGPT for legal research because it hallucinated court cases.
I'm certainly not trusting what a random person on the Internet says it came up with.
That isn't to say the core assertion is wrong, but that I'll immediately dismiss one for which "chatGPT said" is the primary evidence.
I didn’t say that ChatGPT said. I said I used ChatGPT as a search engine because it’s incredibly easy and slightly better than Google. And then I visited the links it gave me to see the primary and secondary sources.
Again, the only reason we’re having this conversation as though there’s a debate here is that people have decided to believe in one inaccurate version of the world instead of using the extensive tools available to figure out what’s going on. This level of conversation is fine for Reddit, it’s embarrassing for HN where having an accurate mental model of the world (and a willingness to learn an update) is kind of essential.
You'll have to forgive me that this line:
> 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
does indeed sound exactly like you were using chatGPT as a primary source rather than a search engine, and thus are being met with cynicism.
I urge you to re-read the original unedited post to see if there are any words in it about the fact that I checked those sources. :)
HN is a place where you typically post links to sources that support your claim. We could all Google it (or ChatGPT it), but we may not come out with the same results. Why not post your sources so that we can discuss a common set of evidence?
HN is also a place that is intended to be a place that promotes intellectual curiosity rather than argument. When the evidence is this extensive and easily accessible, the decision to argue about it reflects intransigence and an unwillingness to be curious.
I genuinely don’t care about being right on the Internet or HN karma, I would be genuinely happy if one reader/participant in this argument came out of it thinking “huh, I can actually do better than this.”
The good folks here have absolutely demonstrated intellectual curiosity - that's what all the requests for prompt details and links are. Your refusal to simply provide them, especially after opening with what boils down to "ChatGPT told me...", and choice to get all smug and self-righteous when pressed, does not imply that you actually have the best handle on HN culture.
When you write hundreds of words to avoid typing twelve or so into a search engine, you’re not pursuing intellectual curiosity. I’m happy to die on this hill because it’s so completely absurd, and because I’m curious about what pathology is causing people even to argue about this.
Vested interests is why they find it hard to believe.
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?
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.
I don't buy that it's work traditionally reserved for governments, or that it's all bad.
There are people offering their services to find kidnapped children, I struggle to see that as a bad thing. Private investigatory work has a long history in the country of Sherlock Holmes (or at least Dr Joseph Bell). You have figures as far back as Harry Philby flirting with foreign governments after their time within the UK government.
They're not offering government services, they're offering their own capabilities.
> Black Cube ... its staff had snooped on journalists and adopted false identities to obtain information about film mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse accusers
That sounds like more or less the opposite of finding kidnapped children.
> Providing home addresses to Russian oligarchs who have a history of topping people — particularly journalists
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
Former intelligence agents are not veterans
Not sure which country this looks bad on given that
There's a lot of military intelligence for which they are veterans.
> US veterans have to seek permission
Retired military personnel, not all veterans.
This is a very off topic tangent, but that makes me quite curious.
What is the difference between "veterans" and "retired military personnel"?
“Retired military personnel” have completed their 20+ years of service and retired with full pension. “Veteran” refers to anyone who has served in the armed forces.
So if you only did 10 years and have military skills this regulation does not apply?
Ahhh, right. I guess that'a a distinction that makes sense. Thanks.
I'm not sure that it is a distinction with a difference in this specific case, because to my reading, the only folks who might not be covered publicly were those who were not officially, formally, regularly, or directly employed by military agencies, while doing the work alongside those who were so employed. Contractors, for example, may not be bound by the clause if they were not previously a reservist, a civilian DoD employee, an enlisted solider, or an officer in the armed forces. I am narrowly reading this to steelman their position, and it seems there might be some narrow wiggle room there, but I'm not sure if that's what they meant of if they're quibbling simply to have something to say. They might be technically right though, you be the judge:
https://dodsoco.ogc.osd.mil/Portals/102/emoluments_clause_ap... | https://web.archive.org/web/20250422185437/https://dodsoco.o...
> WHITE PAPER
> APPLICATION OF THE EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE TO DoD CIVILIAN EMPLOYEES AND MILITARY PERSONNEL
[The following paragraph is from the conclusion, and I think this might be Justice Department interpretations, as I don't think these issues have been tested before the Supreme Court. I am not a lawyer, nor do I speak for the military or Justice Department.]
> The Emoluments Clause to the Constitution applies to all Federal personnel. The Clause prohibits receipt of foreign gifts unless Congress consents such as in the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act, 5 U.S.C. § 7342. For retired military personnel, the Emoluments Clause continues to apply to them because they are subject to recall. The Justice Department opinions referred to in this paper construe the Emoluments Clause broadly. Specifically, the Justice Department construes the Clause to include not only gifts of travel and food, but also payments such as proportionate profit-sharing. To avoid an Emoluments Clause problem resulting in suspension of retired pay, retired military personnel should seek advance consent through their respective Service consistent with 37 U.S.C. § 908. It is prudent for retired military personnel to obtain advance approval even when there is uncertainty about the Clause’s applicability.
Perhaps there's some nuanced reading of "veterans" that includes folks who aren't armed services, although I think they would likely still fall under the purview of this clause, though I am curious about the factors at play here.
Edit: I think that if you are retired and fail to comply to the Gov's liking, all foreign payments are able to be counted against any military pension you may receive. I am less certain about how non-officers who have no pension are treated, or if they are still beholden to the clause after leaving the armed forces.
Here is additional material from the Commissioned Corps Personnel Manual:
https://dcp.psc.gov/ccmis/ccis/documents/CCPM26_9_1.pdf | https://web.archive.org/web/20250529163709/https://dcp.psc.g...
Found this slideshow that has this test:
https://www.oge.gov/web/OGE.nsf/0/A7C0E4D79F3F6D07852585B600... | https://web.archive.org/web/20250505113229/https://www.oge.g...
> 4-Part test to Determine if the Emoluments Clause Does Not Apply:
> 1. U.S. cannot be a member of a foreign state
> 2. Organization must carry out U.S. foreign policy
> 3. U.S. participates in governance of organization
> 4. Congress approved participation, no concern about divided loyalty
So you think that if you are a pilot that left after 19 years you can go and train Chinese pilots without permission?
Veterans is just another word for retired military personnel. If you were in the military and are not dishonorably discharged you are a veteran. Whether you do 2,3 or 20 years.
I am pretty sure the rule though applies to all regardless of discharge status.
> Veterans is just another word for retired military personnel.
A sergeant who leaves after a three-year enlistment is a veteran, but not a retiree.
The distinction matters because military retirees retain some privileges from their service, most importantly, a pension. Those privileges mean retirees fall under the emoluments clause.
However, a veteran not receiving retired pay is not subject to the emoluments clause as they have no relationship with the federal government. The Congressional Research Service states:
> Former servicemembers with no military status and not entitled to military retired pay can perform [foreign military service] on the same basis as a U.S. national who never served in the armed services. [1]
Interestingly, this implies a retiree could forfeit their retired pay to avoid being subject to the emoluments clause.
[1]: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12068
It is POLITICO. Always a mess of emotional appeal and misty allegations trying to launder editorials as 'news'.
Run their articles through NLP and ask about facts and cited evidence to support those facts and most of the time their will be 'very' little. Ask which type of audience the articles are written for, and you will find the writing style alligns with an audience driven by emotional appeal rather than fact or reason.
And yes, most of our media has devolved in the same way, but nearly every time I come across a POLITICO article, it seems to go out of its way to confirm this and then some.
These articles never talk about the version of "spies for hire" which exists for tech workers, which is "expert networks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network
Get paid 300-2000$+ each for 1 hr calls? I'd be shocked if expert networks weren't being used for subterfuge.
Great point
I'm not sure this issue is specific to intelligence, as many government employees retire from their posts and respawn as contractors and consultants. how is it different from some retired mandarins greasing institutional and enterprise sales?
Time to reinforce treason legislation.
High treason in Britain is mostly about attacks on the monarchy.
Treason in America is interrupting narrative/consensus construction.
Interrupting narrative/consensus construction must be exceedingly rare in America then, since there hasn't been a conviction for treason in the US since the 1950's.
They just cancel you today. Or the FBI comes to your house and threatens you with violence and malicious prosecution.
This was obviously going to happen once they turned the Village into Portmeirion Hotel.
Competition of Carmichael Industries.
(Just finished a Chuck rewatch)
Irene Demova
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