Our access to our Church and State website is blocked for the umpteenth time
Our chairman in North Carolina, Dr Stephen Mumford, pays SiteGround $1,000 a year to ensure that our Church and State website runs smoothly, even with 100,000 daily visitors. We actually have a very good Cloud hosting package (2x3.0 GHz CPU Cores, CentOS, 4GB RAM, and 20GB SSD), which is why we shouldn't be experiencing this sort of non-access to our site. Here is paragraph 12 of Declan's recent updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
HEAVEY v. THE UNITED KINGDOM
COMMUNICATION SUBMITTED FOR CONSIDERATION UNDER
THE FIRST OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO THE
INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS
Paragraph 12 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations on the subject of harassment, surveillance and interception of communications by the UK's Security Service (MI5) and/or Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) over a period dating back to September 2003
12. It is important to underscore that the discriminatory surveillance suffered by the Applicant and his wife is not an isolated event. Rather, it is emblematic of a larger pattern of surveillance by law enforcement officials in the UK that has been well-documented by international and domestic human rights bodies. For example, GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) specialises in the "4 D's": deny, disrupt, degrade, deceive. It has been branded by the press as the spy agency's "deception unit". Though its existence was secret until 2014, JTRIG has developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in "dirty tricks" like deploying sexual "honey traps" designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online. Previous reporting on GCHQ established its focus on what it regards as political radicalism. Beyond JTRIG's targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted political activists and groups deemed to be "radical", even monitoring human rights NGOs. Simon Davies, president of the London-based Privacy International, asks: "If spying on human rights NGOs isn't off limits for GCHQ, then what is?"
12. It is important to underscore that the discriminatory surveillance suffered by the Applicant and his wife is not an isolated event. Rather, it is emblematic of a larger pattern of surveillance by law enforcement officials in the UK that has been well-documented by international and domestic human rights bodies. For example, GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) specialises in the "4 D's": deny, disrupt, degrade, deceive. It has been branded by the press as the spy agency's "deception unit". Though its existence was secret until 2014, JTRIG has developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in "dirty tricks" like deploying sexual "honey traps" designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online. Previous reporting on GCHQ established its focus on what it regards as political radicalism. Beyond JTRIG's targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted political activists and groups deemed to be "radical", even monitoring human rights NGOs. Simon Davies, president of the London-based Privacy International, asks: "If spying on human rights NGOs isn't off limits for GCHQ, then what is?"
Related blog post 1 (25 March 2016): "Threat to life: Updated complaint to the United Nations"
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About Church and State
Letter from our Chairman
An overview of the e-books we have published so far is available at Church and State Press here. All proceeds from these four e-books go to Network for Church Monitoring with the authors' permission.
Purchase straight from Amazon's Kindle Store:
From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013 for $4.67
The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy for $6.64
American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security for $4.99
The Pope and the New Apocalypse: The Holy War Against Family Planning for $2.99
Purchase straight from Amazon's Kindle Store:
From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013 for $4.67
The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy for $6.64
American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security for $4.99
The Pope and the New Apocalypse: The Holy War Against Family Planning for $2.99
