Comment by lifeisstillgood 2 days ago
To me the issue is not security agencies use Pegasus, but foreign security agents physically assault British citizen in London, MI6 does bugger all.
I’m not sure what I want from our security services, but security sounds good.
Also I wonder if there is a background level of foreign agent activity they accept and how is that related to the police’s paradox of using confidential informants
Yes, it totally makes sense to blame Khan for what foreign intelligence services are doing in London. This is completely reasonable.
Someone being beaten up on the streets is domestic policing issue.
That the perpetrators may turn out to be foreign agents is neither here nor there, only if they were diplomatic staff would it not be a domestic policing issue. However the UK police have largely withdrawn from certain areas, and this would simply be another symptom.
High Court action suggests there was a civil case pursuing the perpetrators (or their principals), rather than a criminal case. With a properly functioning police system, that should not be necessary.
Kahn is the PCC for London, he sets their priorities.
Doesn’t matter if it’s people being poisoned with polonium or getting beaten up, preventing the activities of foreign intelligence services is generally not the job of the PCC.
It is the job of the British intelligence services to blow someone up in Riyadh to deter these activities.
> if there is a background level of foreign agent activity they accept
Yup, there's constantly a number of known spies in pretty much all countries. If all were ejected, the other country would do the same to their spies and monitoring compliance with projects would become harder - so it seems in everyone's interest to not be too strict. See for example https://johnsontr.github.io/assets/files/spies_current.pdf
Also there's the idea of "the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" which generalises to lots of things - including this one.