Britain’s spies-for-hire are running wild
Lucrative, freewheeling — and largely unregulated — private intelligence and security firms are booming in the land of James Bond and John le Carré.
Hasnain says:
““Surveillance evidence is frequently submitted in court,” they said. “Obviously, there are things like hacking which are just out-and-out illegal, but unfortunately they are just part of the landscape.”
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.”
“I think judges could probably do a better job of being a bit more wide-eyed about what is going on,” they added, citing one case in which information from a stolen tablet was submitted to court — with the legal team doing so claiming it had simply been handed to them in the middle of the night by a whistleblower.
“Everyone knows which firms do it,” the same person said. “The most disturbing thing is it’s all signed off by law firms. There’s still some SRA [Solicitors Regulation Authority]-regulated lawyer somewhere who’s either proactively signed off that hacking or they have not asked the question when the materials come back in of: How the fuck did you get this?””