With all the Hacking and Phone tapping fuss, here are a couple of cartoon strips I came across today.

Is the media really so dumb or do they know all this stuff and realise that they are essentially an ignorance factory doing a fantastic job of nurturing ignorance or are they the Ignorant leading the ignorant, or the blind leading the blind?

https://xkcd.com/license.html

On ´´Wire tapping´´, Vault 7 Snowden and all that, demonstrates the fact that all data is harvested by definition and therefore ordering a wiretap or a surveillance is not necessary these days. It´s more like dialling out for a ´pizza´ for john podesta or a ´hot dog´ for president Obama, you might say.

´´Wire Tap ´´ is merely a colloquialism in this digital wirelessly networked age.

For some real Vintage surveillance porn, one has really to become acquainted with the work of Duncan Campbell and his banned television series, ´the Secret Society´. Duncan Continues his stellar brand of Journalism, sadly not practised by the media presstitutes of Neo Liberal Globalism.

First Though a bit of ABC.

ABC Trial

ABC Trial

Date	5 September 1978 – 17 November 1978
Type	criminal trial
Description	An official secrets case of 1977-78 during which the UK Labour government prosecuted 3 people for holding an interview, using the Official Secrets Act 1911, a law they earlier had promised to repeal.

The ABC Trial was an official secrets case of 1977-78, when a Labour government prosecuted two journalists and a former soldier for holding an interview, using the Official Secrets Act 1911, a law they had promised to repeal years before. The ABC case (named after the three defendants: Crispin Aubrey, John Berry and Duncan Campbell) ended in November 1978, causing grave embarrassment for James Callaghan‘s Labour government.^[1]

Aubrey was a journalist for Time Out magazine, Berry a former corporal in Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), and Campbell an investigative journalist. One of the prosecution witnesses, an anonymous SIGINT officer referred to as Colonel B, was in fact Hugh Johnstone.^[2]

Timeline

18 February 1977: Aubrey and Campbell (the two journalists) interviewed Berry
20 February 1977: All three men were arrested and charged under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 (Berry was charged with “communicating classified information to unauthorised persons”, and Campbell and Aubrey with “unauthorised receipt of classified information”)
24 May 1977: Further charges were added under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911
9 August 1977: Additional charge under Section 1 against Duncan Campbell, for collecting information
November 1977: Committal hearing at Tottenham Magistrates Court. First appearance of Colonel B as a prosecution witness.
5 September 1978: Trial opens at the Old Bailey in front of Mr Justice Willis
18 September 1978: Trial stopped after jury foreman exposed as a former SAS officer
3 October 1978: Second trial opens in front of Mr Justice Mars-Jones
24 October 1978: All Section 1 charges dropped
17 November 1978: Aubrey, Berry and Campbell receive non-custodial sentences

References

Campbell, Duncan (1979). Official Secrecy and British Libertarianism
Aubrey, Crispin (1981). Who’s Watching You? Britain’s Security Services & the Official Secrets Act (1st ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-022283-9.
Robertson, Geoffrey (1999). The Justice Game, Vintage Books. ISBN 0-09-958191-4

External links

The ABC Trial via archive.org
Ferrets or Skunks – Chapter Five from Robertson (1999)

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/ABC_Trial

https://player.vimeo.com/video/28019140 Eavesdroppers from Duncan Campbell on Vimeo.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/49487288 Secret Society – In Time of Crisis from Duncan Campbell on Vimeo.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/48987753 Secret Society – A Gap in our Defences from Duncan Campbell on Vimeo.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/48941402 Secret Society – We’re all data now from Duncan Campbell on Vimeo.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/48875894 Secret Society – ACPO from Duncan Campbell on Vimeo.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/44948377 Secret Society – Zircon from Duncan Campbell on Vimeo.

So one sees that there really is very little new under the sun indeed Baruch Spinoza said this in 1676.

Barack Obama had some explaining to do to Chancellor Frau Merkel.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cover-story-how-nsa-spied-on-merkel-cell-phone-from-berlin-embassy-a-930205.html

Duncan Cambell Breaks it down in this article here.

News that Britain is operating a secret embassy-based eavesdropping site in Berlin caused a “serious diplomatic crisis between the two countries,” according to a BBC report.

Ambassador Simon McDonald was “called in” on Tuesday 5 November by the German Foreign Office at the request of Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to respond to the report that a cylindrical structure on the roof of the British embassy in central Berlin housed electronic surveillance equipment monitoring communications signals and phone calls.