"…the Law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public. For this to happen efficiently, the activities of the legal services have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible.."
That was 1970, but if you think the UK security services have clean hands you are seriously underinformed about Northern Ireland. More recently there's Spycatcher, Zircon, Matrix-Churchill, police infiltrators in environmentalist groups ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_%28police_officer... ), and so on.
Effective oversight of the intelligence services is really hard because it can't be done in public, and it's easy enough for them to convince politicians that it's all fine really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_courts
"…the Law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public. For this to happen efficiently, the activities of the legal services have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible.."
That was 1970, but if you think the UK security services have clean hands you are seriously underinformed about Northern Ireland. More recently there's Spycatcher, Zircon, Matrix-Churchill, police infiltrators in environmentalist groups ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_%28police_officer... ), and so on.
Effective oversight of the intelligence services is really hard because it can't be done in public, and it's easy enough for them to convince politicians that it's all fine really.