- Theresa May issued an obscure-sounding statement to parliament on Thursday.
- It revealed the text of secret instructions she gave to Britain's MI5 domestic intelligence agency last year.
- It included rules for the oversight of agents committing criminal acts in the line of duty.
- This is the first time the government has explicitly admitted that its agents commit crimes.
- The government made the admission after a campaign by human rights activists.
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The British government has quietly admitted it lets MI5 break the law for national security
An oblique reference to "agents who participate in criminality" was the first time Britain acknowledged that it breaks UK law to get the job done.
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LONDON — The British government has quietly acknowledged for the first time that it lets agents break domestic law to keep the country safe.
The admission was contained in a formal statement describing secret instructions issued by the Prime Minister to Britain's security agencies, which include MI5 (domestic intelligence), MI6 (foreign intelligence) and GCHQ (signals intelligence).
Officials delivered the written statement to the UK parliament with little fanfare. It contained an oblique reference to the civil servant who oversees MI5's rules on "
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That reference to "criminality" is the first time that the government has said publicly that agents sometimes break the UK's own laws.
The full statement was submitted in the name of Prime Minister Theresa May, and describes an instruction she issued on August 22, 2017, designed to expand the powers of a government official, The Investigatory Powers Commissioner, to oversee MI5.
Here's a picture of the memo, signed by hand:
The full instruction was "
UK legislation already explicitly allows MI6 and GCHQ to break the law in countries.
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Section 7 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994 mandates the Foreign Secretary (currently Boris Johnson) to approve criminal acts by either agency so long as they are "necessary" and "reasonable."
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