I think we can guess we're about to be told the North Koreans used TOR so decisive action needs to be taken against the network as part of the retaliation measures just announced.
My understanding is that it was this facility (in part) which was used to track & monitor ex-US Marine Toby Studabaker when he went "missing" around 12 years ago with 12 year old Shevaun Pennington. He was 'found' in a hotel room in Germany - despite his phone being turned off.
Sounds like a fun way to practice deep scuba techniques - learning 'for real' in large water bodies is full of additional risks. However I'm a bit concerned at the 'caves' [not shown on the diagram]. Martyn Farr's book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkness_Beckons a rather short, blunt and to the point entry which makes sobering reading) makes it pretty clear that cave diving is pretty incompatible with long life (many people he talks about were killed on cave dives). Anyone I know who has done any sort of confined space dives has a terror story of things going wrong in even the most benign of holes. I think adding caves to the pool is a disaster waiting to happen - regardless of whether they are there to train techniques or not.
Whether or not you like cave diving, some scuba divers need to know how to handle confined spaces. It's useful for search and rescue, and for retrieval or repair in underwater structures.
Luckily they're building this in Italy rather than in the US. So they can treat people like adults, inform them of the risks, and let them make the decision about whether to go into the caves-- without being sued out of existence.
I feel sure that it will be much safer for divers to learn these skills in a commercial pool, surrounded by people and equipment that can help in the event of a crisis.
Technicalities such as whether actions are 'legal' are of little concern to the UK Security Service (their real name - for some reason, they don't like to use their initials publicly as other departments do).
There is absolutely no possibility of any court review (not even in the new secret courts the UK has started for trials [1]) so debate about ensuring legislative cover is pure theatre probably to bolster the only press statement they ever release in response to questions which always states their actions are legally authorized and nothing else.
What this really looks like is a move to shift the data storage burden away from CGHC offices and place it onto ISPs, Telco's etc. Direct access can then be made to the data without any of the associated costs of maintaining multi-PB databases which grow at eye-watering rates every day.
Passing this legislation is a simple government way of saving them money and passing the cost on to business as a 'compliance requirement'.
They also get the added bonus of plausible deniability - 'don't be crazy - the Government does not store that sort of information on you!'. They don't - they force your ISP to keep if for them.
Sadly the UK seems a great starting point for such measures - experience is people are gullible and swallow the anti-terrorist cool-aid more easily than most.
If the situation is as you describe, sending unsolicited email and then charging you for receiving it (that's essentially what you're describing) when you have clear evidence you hired via the prior contact with another agency (they have that documented, right ?) is something which can be easily fought - albeit in court with some initial costs if they're going to be ass-ish.
You would win both your case and the legal costs if things are as cut and dried as you suggest.
However, if you replied to the unsolicited email (establishing you saw it) and there is no evidence of the prior agency being before that, you have a more difficult case. My personal experience of two agencies being involved was that the agencies sorted it out amongst themselves how to split the single fee which was paid to one of them - this was in the UK as you seem to be.
Only an experienced lawyer familiar with the details of your situation can properly advise you. I'm curious that you've been advised to settle if you've consulted a lawyer and appraised them of the situation you describe. Normally lawyers like slam-dunks like this.
My experience is recruiters don't send unprompted candidates because, without a prior agreement/contract, they will have difficulties in establishing they made an initial introduction and hence qualify to get paid. Otherwise they can just mailbomb you with millions of name variations and claim they introduced you to everyone on the planet and you owe them $$$$$s. [I think you realize this with your 'proposed' new business venture. ;-) ]
It's not really silly at all. It is there for two reasons.
(1) The law requries it to be stated in contracts [at least partially because of (2) below].
(2) Case law develops and can mean that something in a contract was previously enforceable but due to a test case or other development, it is no longer enforceable. Rather than companies having to watch every test case go through the courts and have lawyers rewrite contracts every few weeks just in case something needs updated, the catch-all allows for a more reasonable update cycle with rewrites only happening when there is a significant change to legislation or a number of cases has resulting in significant numbers of terms being invalidated. Pending the rewrite, the term makes it clear any updates to legal interpretation are honored.
In the EU there is also a choice of venue available to consumers so often the 'rules of country X' are not so readily enforceable for companies when they deal with consumers across EU borders. But that's a whole other complicated area.
The hotel made a strategic error so no need for court.
Under the UK Consumer Credit Act, when a credit card charge of £100 (or more) is made, the credit card company becomes 'jointly and severally liable'. A charge for a bad review also falls foul of UK Fair Trading legislation which means the couple can pursue the credit card company for the unfair trade breach and reclaim their money that way. Credit card companies don't argue in these cases and refund pretty damn fast (from experience) and just charge-back the business (so they lose the £100 and have additional charge-back fees of around 25% added on top).
If the hotel charged £99.99 instead, it would be a very different story and would need the Trading Standards people at the local municipal council to take action. (They already stated they will be regardless of the refund since these are unfair trade practices.) A refund would happen but would take longer and may well need a local county court action.
Which is presumably the intention of the fanfare around the smears - pollute the jury pool as much as possible to avoid the inconvenience of people making a decision based on the facts or evidence presented in court; get out the jury deliberations quickly, just go for whatever knee-jerk guilty feeling you got when you read the headlines about how evil the defendant is; don't bother reading any detail or anything that might hurt your brain and destroy your prejudices !
Despite my reservations, the US would be better served if it had contempt of court laws like England which specifically prohibit discussion of any details of court cases prior to them being heard precisely in order to stop this sort of situation happening.
Pollute the jury pool? If they bring in 100 potential jurors maybe one might have some basic knowledge about Bitcoin if they're lucky. A few might recall hearing about it on the nightly news once. Chances are none will have heard anything about "the Dread Pirate Roberts".
North Americans are probably astonished at what is 'permitted' for UK police to become involved in - there are no constitutional protections and no effective oversight and there never has been in the UK. Even today the Police actively obstruct and frustrate attempts to bring effective controls and oversight of their activities which can be in clear and blatant breach of what limited legislation exists.
This (and other related) stories rolls on with only a few days ago the Metropolitan police in London being forced by a court order to admit the identities of two officers - Jim Boyling and Bob Lambert [who the referenced article is about] - who fathered children (then disappeared leaving the mothers and babies to fend for themselves). http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/15/metropolitan-...
"Last year, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero. In 2012 the figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period."
Have you read that article? It doesn't say what you think it does. It pretty much says only 13 officers in 12 years should have been convicted of foul play.
Taking guns away from average citizens is an efficient way to reduce shootings. Taking privacy away from average citizens may prove to be even more effective in reducing all forms of crime. Just think of all the children we'll save!
I don't think it's just North Americans who are astonished. Most Brits are too. Even the most paranoid and cynical of observers seem to have been shocked by the spy cops revelations.
But on the other hand a UK police force would not be allowed to run out of control as it has in Ferguson and there are much stricter rules on entrapment and agent provocateurs.
In one case an IRA gun runner got of on a very minor technicality over a single informant ( oh they caught they guy bang to rights with the guns) compared to what the FBI seem to get past the radar in encouraging foolish young Muslim Americans
"""
James Olson, a former Chief of Counterintelligence at the C.I.A., who was involved in clandestine operations overseas for many years, described undercover sexual involvements as “something that we should not do in the C.I.A., absolutely not.” He went on, “Our liaison friends in other services think that we Americans are ridiculously puritanical and that we avoid using something that works.” The masters were the East Germans—particularly Markus Wolf, whose Romeo agents seduced government secretaries in the West. As for Bob Robinson, Olson said, “It’s very easy to fall into that trap—the righteousness trap. Some people are so convinced that what they’re doing is for the good of the country that they’re willing to excuse what would ordinarily be gross misconduct on their parts. They lose sight of ethical constraints.”
"""
I note that he doesn't say the US doesn't do this, merely that the CIA shouldn't do it, which UK authorities have also said about the UK police, while seeking to conceal the fact it happened and defend their right to do it again. I doubt the CIA actually refrains entirely from using this effective infiltration technique. If they didn't, they would lie. If it hadn't been for Mark Kennedy being outed by political activists in 2010 this probably wouldn't be widely known about in the UK either.
