Are you a complete and utter moron? Of course our security services have been bugging and spying upon interesting people. That’s what we pay them for!
Well … actually, we pay them to defend our national security.
Which sort of suggests that their resources would be better expended on bugging and spying on people who might, reasonably, be expected to pose a threat to our national security.
I’m not 100% sure that the Secretary-General of the United Nations actually falls into this category.
I, for one, would like to stop paying government employees to undermine the UN in the name of that accursed, greedy beast called “the national interest”.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? asks Juvenal. And me.
It would be naive to think they weren’t doing it. But I do agree with the two posters above me that doing it to the Sec Gen of the UN could be seen as a waste of resources and rather dubious given the circumstances under which he was bugged - i.e. the lead-up to the Iraq War.
I don’t particularly like her, but I think Ms Short is sacrificing her political career and risking prosecution to make a moral point. It’s not stupidity.
All the same, i don’t think it was a particularly well judged point on which to potentially sacrifice whats left of her political career. This won’t have come as news to Kofi Annan, or anyone at the UN. While some Brits may feel this is an outrage most people will just mildly disapprove for a few days while it’s still in the news and then forget about it. It won’t have too much impact, IMO.
Have you seen the news that Richard Butler (former Weapons Inspector) has said he was bugged by at least four permanent members of the UN Security Council? You’d think all the different bugs and phone taps would somehow interfere with each other wouldn’t you?!
You could argue that in doing this, Short is helping rekindle what was a career; she’s one of Brown’s key players, if they do manage to get rid of Blair, she’ll be back in the cabinet.
It’s the duplicity that I find interesting - she didn’t mention this when in Office, yet now there’s an opportunity to get mileage out of it . . . she’s no better than the rest and can stick her moral high ground up her spaghetti junction.
As to the UN, well, it’s a shambles at the best of times. At least we get to know what we have to bribe people with sooner . . . maybe it’ll help more people understand the problems the organisation has.
As far as I’m concerned, the UN is white man’s law with a superficial we-are-the-world sugar-coated Humanitarian topping to make us white, western, Christian capitalists feel all gooey and warm inside as we stride around the globe pissing on whoever we like. Fuck ‘International Law’. YMMV.
Yep, it does good work beyond the Security Council but it could do a fuck lot more.
Yeah, I’d expect that, at some stage of the game, someone would inadvertently set up a huge, multinational feedback loop, producing quite a howl, literally and figuratively! 
[QUOTE=London_Calling]
It’s the duplicity that I find interesting - she didn’t mention this when in Office, yet now there’s an opportunity to get mileage out of it . . . she’s no better than the rest and can stick her moral high ground up her spaghetti junction.
[QUOTE]
I heard that she was a witness in the GHCQ case which collapsed, and couldn’t comment until now . .
Gartog - If that’s correct, it obviously affects the timing of the duplicity.
I thought this was frank:
*"But former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said he was “not surprised” by the claims because he had been warned his office would be bugged.
“From the first day I entered my office they told me: ‘Beware, your office is bugged, your residence is bugged and it’s a tradition member states who have the technical capacity to bug will do it without hesitation’,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. "*
I think the whole thing is a waste of time, and money would be far better spent elsewhere, it also makes me wonder at the competancy of our ‘intelligence’ services.
The major, if not the whole, point of surveillance is to gain information of high quality, and if your subject expects to be bugged, well it kind of negates any value of the material gained.
Add to that, it could actually hamper certain sensitive issues if the participants understand that they cannot speak freely, it’s almost a form of intellectual terrorism.
Maybe the cash could be spent on more immediate threats, such as monitoring airport staff, or ensuring customs searches cover a greater percentage of movements of goods in and out of the country.
It’s ridiculous, we are guilty of a form of colonialism when we treat respected leaders from third world, and minor nations in this way, just because we have the technical ability to do so.
To get respect perhaps we should learn to treat others with it.