Fascism 2012 — the ongoing merger of the corporate and the state

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

I’m gradually coming to after a knock-out blow last October — the unexpected death of my beloved and only brother, Rich. Words cannot describe.

But looking forward to the delights that 2012 will no doubt offer: Julian Assange remains trapped in a legal spider’s web, but all credit to Wikileaks — it keeps on providing the goods.

The recent publication of the SpyFiles should have been a massive wake-up call, as it it highlighted the increasing use and abuse of mercenary spy tech — all without any effective oversight, as I recently wrote in my article for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Needless to say, the issue of massive commercial surveillance capabilities usually remains confined to a niche media market, although the Daily Mail did rouse itself to report that shoppers were being tracked via mobile phones as they consumed their way around malls. Well, I suppose it’s a start.

With the growth of mercenary spy companies in our minds, we should be even more concerned about the accelerated shredding of our civil liberties, particularly in the US and UK. Despite earlier promises that he would veto any such legislation, President Obama signed into law the invidious NDAA on 31^st December. This means that the US military is now empowered to seize and indefinitely detain, with no recourse to traditional due process, not only potentially all non-Americans across the planet à la the Guantanamo/extraordinary rendition model, but can now also do this to US citizens within their own country.

Despite the passionate internet debate, the issue has unsurprisingly been largely ignored by most of the mainstream corporate media. But the predominantly US-based internet commentary displays a breathtaking hypocrisy: yes, the NDAA is a terrible law with awful implications for American citizens. However, people around the world have been living with just this fear for a decade, with whole communities afraid of being snatched and disappeared into black CIA torture facilities. Where was the US outrage then? The Pastor Martin Niemoeller poem remains as relevant today as when it was written 70 years ago.

That said a couple of brave voices have spoken out: Naomi Wolf recently described how the US legislators could ironically find themselves on the receiving end of this law, if we go by all historic precedents. Paul Craig Roberts was on frothing good form too, inveighing against the war crimes of the US military, the persecution of Wikileaks for exposing those very crimes, and the evolving totalitarianism of our countries.

In a digital mirror of the NDAA, the entertainment industry and their pet lobbyists are successfully ramming through the invidious SOPA law. As acclaimed digital rights activist and author, Cory Doctorow, described in his keynote at the recent CCC geekfest in Berlin, these ostensibly commercial laws are in effect a stalking horse for governments to seize control of the internet. As he wrote in the Guardian “you can’t make a system that prevents spying by secret police and allows spying by media giants”.

With this in the back of our minds, the Wikileaks SpyFiles revelations about the increasing globalisation and commercialisation of corporate spy technology are even more alarming. The government spy agencies work with little effective oversight, but the mercenaries have a completely free legal rein. Intriguingly, it appears that unlike our own governments Afghanistan is alive to this problem and is reportedly booting out foreign contractors.

Yet the balance of power in certain western countries is sliding overwhelmingly towards police states — or, indeed, fascism, if you take into consideration Benito Mussolini’s definition: “the merger of state and corporate power”.

Our line of defence is slender — organisations like Wikileaks, one or two politicians of conscience, a few remaining real investigative journalists and perhaps the odd whistleblower. Beyond that, we must individually get to grips with the threat, get informed, teched up, and protect ourselves, as we can no longer rely on our governments to uphold our basic rights — you know, privacy, freedom of expression, habeas corpus, and all those other delightfully old-fashioned ideas.

If we do not act soon, we may no longer be able to act at all in the near future.… So I wish everyone an informed, productive and active 2012!

Global Investigative Journalism Conference, Kiev

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

Off to do a keynote at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Kiev. Should be interesting — watch this space.

Libyans caught between a rock and a hard place

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

This article in today’s New York Times, particularly these following two paragraphs, sent a shiver down my spine for the fate of the Libyan people:

“The most powerful military leader is now Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of a hard-line group once believed to be aligned with Al Qaeda.The growing influence of Islamists in Libya raises hard questions about the ultimate character of the government and society that will rise in place of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s autocracy.….

.…Mr. Belhaj has become so much an insider lately that he is seeking to unseat Mahmoud Jibril, the American-trained economist who is the nominal prime minister of the interim government, after Mr. Jibril obliquely criticized the Islamists.”

The Libyans, finally free of Gaddafi’s 42-year dictatorship, now seem faced with a choice between an Islamist faction that has stated publicly that it wants to base the new constitution on Sharia — a statement that must have caused a few ripples amongst Libya’s educated and relatively emancipated women — or a new government headed up by an American-trained economist.

And we all know what happens to countries when such economists move in: asset stripping, the syphoning off of the national wealth to transnational mega-corps, and a plunge in the people’s living standards. If you think this sounds extreme, then do get your hands on a copy of Naomi Klein’s excellent “Shock Doctrine” — required reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the growing global financial crisis.

Of course, this would be an ideal outcome for the US, UK and other western forces who intervened in Libya.

Mr Belhaj is, of course, another matter. Not only would an Islamist Libya be a potentially dangerous result for the West, but should Belhaj come to power he is likely to be somewhat hostile to US and particularly British interests.

Why? Well, Abdul Hakim Belhaj has form. He was a leading light in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a terrorist organisation which bought into the ideology of “Al Qaeda” and which had made many attempts to depose or assassinate Gaddafi, sometimes with the financial backing of the British spies, most notably in the failed assassination plot of 1996.

Of course, after 9/11 and Gaddafi’s rapprochement with the West, this collaboration was all air-brushed out of history — to such an extent that in 2004 MI6 was instrumental in kidnapping Belhaj, with the say-so of the CIA, and “extraordinarily rendering” him to Tripoli in 2004, where he suffered 6 years’ torture at the hands of Libya’s brutal intelligences services. After this, I doubt if he would be minded to work too closely with UK companies.

So I’m willing to bet that there is more behind-the-scenes meddling from our spooks, to ensure the ascendency of Jibril in the new government. Which will be great for Western business, but not so great for the poor Libyans.….

Spy documents found in Libya reveal more British double dealing

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

A cache of highly classified intelligence documents was recently discovered in the abandoned offices of former Libyan spy master, Foreign Minister and high-profile defector, Musa Kusa.

These documents have over the last couple of weeks provided a fascinating insight into the growing links in the last decade between the former UK Labour government, particularly Tony Blair, and the Gaddafi régime. They have displayed in oily detail the degree of toadying that the Blair government was prepared to countenance, not only to secure lucrative business contracts but also to gloss over embarrassing episodes such as Lockerbie and the false flag MI6-backed 1996 assassination plot against Gaddafi.

These documents have also apparently revealed direct involvement by MI6 in the “extraordinary rendition” to Tripoli and torture of two Libyans. Ironically it has been reported that they were wanted for being members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the very organisation that MI6 had backed in its failed 1996 coup.

The secular dictatorship of Col Gaddafi always had much to fear from Islamist extremism, so it is perhaps unsurprising that, after Blair’s notorious “deal in the desert” in 2004, the Gaddafi régime used its connections with MI6 and the CIA to hunt down its enemies. And, as we have all been endlessly told, the rules changed after 9/11…

The torture victims, one of whom is now a military commander of the rebel Libyan forces, are now considering suing the British government. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary at the time, has tried to shuffle off any blame, stating that he could not be expected to know everything that MI6 does.

Well, er, no — part of the job description of Foreign Secretary is indeed to oversee the work of MI6 and hold it to democratic accountability, especially about such serious policy issues as “extraordinary rendition” and torture. Such operations would indeed need the ministerial sign-off to be legal under the 1994 Intelligence Services Act.

There has been just so much hot air from the current government about how the Gibson Torture Inquiry will get to the bottom of these cases, but we all know how toothless such inquiries will be, circumscribed as they are by the terms of the Inquiries Act 2005. We also know that Sir Peter Gibson himself has for years been “embedded” within the British intelligence community and is hardly likely to hold the spies meaningfully to account.

So I was particularly intrigued to hear that the the cache of documents showed the case of David Shayler, the intelligence whistleblower who revealed the 1996 Gaddafi assassination plot and went to prison twice for doing so, first in France in 1998 and then in the UK in 2002, was still a subject of discussion between the Libyan and UK governments in 2007. And, as I have written before, as late as 2009 it was obvious that this case was still used by the Libyans for leverage, certainly when it came to the tit-for-tat negotiations around case of the murder in London outside the Libyan Embassy of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984.

Of course, way back in 1998, the British government was all too ready to crush the whistleblower rather than investigate the disclosures and hold the spies to account for their illegal and reckless acts. I have always felt that this was a failure of democracy, that it seriously undermined the future work and reputation of the spies themselves, and particularly that it was such a shame for the fate of the PBW (poor bloody whistleblower).

But it now appears that the British intelligence community’s sense of omnipotence and of being above the law has come back to bite them. How else explain their slide into a group-think mentality that participates in “extraordinary rendition” and torture?

One has to wonder if wily old Musa Kusa left this cache of documents behind in his abandoned offices as an “insurance policy”, just in case his defection to the UK were not to be as comfortable as he had hoped — and we now know that he soon fled to Qatar after he had been questioned about the Lockerbie case.

But whether an honest mistake or cunning power play, his actions have helped to shine a light into more dark corners of British government lies and double dealing vis a vis Libya.…

Spies and the Media — my recent talk at the Centre for Investigative Journalism

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

Here’s the film of my talk at the recent summer school at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London a month ago:

Many thanks to Gavin and the rest of the CIJ team for such a stimulating and thought-provoking weekend!

UK spies get a B+ for intrusive surveillance in 2010

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

The quangocrats charged with overseeing the legality of the work of the UK spies have each produced their undoubtably authoritative reports for 2010.

Sir Paul Kennedy, the commissioner responsible for overseeing the interception of communications, and Sir Peter Gibson, the intelligence services commissioner, both published their reports last week.

Gibson has, of course, honourably now stood down from his 5‑year oversight of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ in order to head up the independent enquiry into spy complicity in torture.

And both the reports say, naturally, that it’s all hunky-dorey. Yes, there were a few mistakes (well, admistrative errors — 1061 over the last year), but the commissioners are confident that these were neither malign in intent nor an indication of institutional failings.

So it appears that the UK spies gained a B+ for their surveillance work last year.

Both commissioners pad out their reports with long-winded descriptions of what precisely their role is, what powers they have, and the full, frank and open access they had to the intelligence officers in the key agencies.

They seem sublimely unaware that when they visit the spy agencies, they are only given access to the staff that the agencies are happy for them to meet — intelligence officers pushed into the room, primped out in their party best and scrubbed behind the ears — to tell them what they want to hear.

Any intelligence officers who might have concerns have, in the past, been rigorously banned from meeting those charged with holding the spies to democratic account.….

.…which is not much different from the oversight model employed when government ministers, the notional political masters of MI6, MI6 and GCHQ, sign off on bugging warrants that allow the aggressive investigation of targets (ie their phones, their homes or cars, or follow them around). Then the ministers are only given a summary of a summary of a summary, an application that has been titrated through many managerial, legal and civil service filters before landing on their desks.

So, how on earth are these ministers able to make a true evaluation of the worth of such an application to bug someone?

They just have to trust what the spies tell them — as do the commissioners.

UK Intelligence and Security Committee to be reformed?

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

The Guardian’s spook commentator extraordinaire, Richard Norton-Taylor, has reported that the current chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in the UK Parliament, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, wants the committee to finally grow a pair. Well, those weren’t quite the words used in the Grauny, but they certainly capture the gist.

If Rifkind’s stated intentions are realised, the new-look ISC might well provide real, meaningful and democratic oversight for the first time in the 100-year history of the three key UK spy agencies — MI5, MI6, and GCHQ, not to mention the defence intelligence staff, the joint intelligence committee and the new National Security Council .

For many long years I have been discussing the woeful lack of real democratic oversight for the UK spies. The privately-convened ISC, the democratic fig-leaf established under the aegis of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act (ISA), is appointed by and answerable only to the Prime Minister, with a remit only to look at finance, policy and administration, and without the power to demand documents or to cross-examine witnesses under oath. Its annual reports are always heavily redacted and have become a joke amongst journalists.

When the remit of the ISC was being drawn up in the early 1990s, the spooks were apoplectic that Parliament should have any form of oversight whatsoever. From their perspective, it was bad enough at that point that the agencies were put on a legal footing for the first time. Spy thinking then ran pretty much along the lines of “why on earth should they be answerable to a bunch of here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians, who were leaky as hell and gossiped to journalists all the time”?

So it says a great deal that the spooks breathed a huge, collective sigh of relief when the ISC remit was finally enshrined in law in 1994. They really had nothing to worry about. I remember, I was there at the time.

This has been borne out over the last 17 years. Time and again the spies have got away with telling barefaced lies to the ISC. Or at the very least being “economical with the truth”, to use one of their favourite phrases. Former DG of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander, has publicly said that “I blanche at some of the things I declined to tell the committee [ISC] early on…”. Not to mention the outright lies told to the ISC over the years about issues like whistleblower testimony, torture, and counter-terrorism measures.

But these new developments became yet more fascinating to me when I read that the current Chair of the ISC proposing these reforms is no less than Sir Malcolm Rifkind, crusty Tory grandee and former Conservative Foreign Minister in the mid-1990s.

For Sir Malcolm was the Foreign Secretary notionally in charge of MI6 when the intelligence officers, PT16 and PT16/B, hatched the ill-judged Gaddafi Plot when MI6 funded a rag-tag group of Islamic extremist terrorists in Libya to assassinate the Colonel, the key disclosure made by David Shayler when he blew the whistle way back in the late 1990s.

Obviously this assassination attempt was highly reckless in a very volatile part of the world; obviously it was unethical, and many innocent people were murdered in the attack; and obviously it failed, leading to the shaky rapprochement with Gaddafi over the last decade. Yet now we are seeing the use of similar tactics in the current Libyan war (this time more openly) with MI6 officers being sent to help the rebels in Benghazi and our government openly and shamelessly calling for régime change.

But most importantly from a legal perspective, in 1996 the “Gaddafi Plot” MI6 apparently did not apply for prior written permission from Rifkind — which they were legally obliged to do under the terms of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act (the very act that also established the ISC). This is the fabled, but real, “licence to kill” — Section 7 of the ISA — which provides immunity to MI6 officers for illegal acts committed abroad, if they have the requisite ministerial permission.

At the time, Rifkind publicly stated that he had not been approached by MI6 to sanction the plot when the BBC Panorama programme conducted a special investigation, screened on 7 August 1997. Rifkind’s statement was also reported widely in the press over the years, including this New Statesman article by Mark Thomas in 2002.

That said, Rifkind himself wrote earlier this year in The Telegraph that help should now be given to the Benghazi “rebels” — many of whom appear to be members of the very same group that tried to assassinate Gaddafi with MI6’s help in 1996 — up to and including the provision of arms. Rifkind’s view of the legalities now appear to be somewhat more flexible, whatever his stated position was back in the 90s.

Of course, then he was notionally in charge of MI6 and would have to take the rap for any political fall-out. Now he can relax into the role of “quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”. Such a relief.

I shall be watching developments around Rifkind’s proposed reforms with interest.

Guardian article: the role of the spies in the UK

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

Here’s the text of an article I wrote for The Guardian a while ago, where I suggest we need a fresh perspective and some clear thinking on the role of the spies in the UK.

Worth reiterating, following the pre-emptive arrest of protesters:

The cascade of revelations about secret policemen, starting with PC Mark Kennedy/environmental activist “Mark Stone”, has highlighted the identity crisis afflicting the British security establishment. Private undercover police units are having their James Bond moment – cider shaken, not stirred – while MI5 has become ever more plod-like, yet without the accompanying oversight. How has this happened to our democracy without any public debate?

From the late 19^th century the Metropolitan Police Special Branch investigated terrorism while MI5, established in 1909, was a counter-intelligence unit focusing on espionage and political “subversion”. The switch began in 1992 when Dame Stella Rimington, then head of MI5, effected a Whitehall coup and stole primacy for investigating Irish terrorism from the Met. As a result MI5 magically discovered that subversion was not such a threat after all – this revelation only three years after the Berlin Wall came down – and transferred all its staff over to the new, sexy counter-terrorism sections. Since then, MI5 has been eagerly building its counter-terrorism empire, despite this being more obviously evidential police work.

Special Branch was relegated to a supporting role, dabbling in organised crime and animal rights activists, but not terribly excited about either. Its prestige had been seriously tarnished. It also had a group of experienced undercover cops – known then as the Special Duties Section – with time on their hands.

It should therefore come as little surprise that Acpo, the private limited company comprising senior police officers across the country, came up with the brilliant idea of using this skill-set against UK “domestic extremists”. Acpo set up the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). This first focused primarily on animal rights activists, but mission creep rapidly set in and the unit’s role expanded into peaceful protest groups. When this unaccountable, Stasi-like unit was revealed it rightly caused an outcry, especially as the term “domestic extremist” is not recognised under UK law, and cannot legally be used as justification to aggressively invade an individual’s privacy because of their legitimate political beliefs and activism. So, plod has become increasingly spooky. What of the spooks?

As I mentioned, they have been aggressively hoovering up the prestigious counter-terrorism work. But, despite what the Americans have hysterically asserted since 9/11, terrorism is not some unique form of “eviltude”. It is a crime – a hideous, shocking one, but still a crime that should be investigated, with evidence gathered, due process applied and the suspects on trial in front of a jury.

A mature democracy that respects human rights and the rule of law should not intern suspects or render them to secret prisons and torture them for years. And yet this is precisely what our spooks are now allegedly doing – particularly when colluding with their US counterparts.

Also, MI5 and MI6 operate outside any realistic democratic oversight and control. The remit of the intelligence and security committee in parliament only covers the policy, administration and finance of the spies. Since the committee’s inception in 1994 it has repeatedly failed to meaningfully address more serious questions about the spies’ role. The spooks are effectively above the law, while at the same time protected by the draconian Official Secrets Act. This makes the abuses of the NPOIU seem almost quaint. So what to do? A good first step might be to have an informed discussion about the realistic threats to the UK. The police and spies huddle behind the protective phrase “national security”. But what does this mean?

The core idea should be safeguarding the nation’s integrity. A group of well-meaning environmental protesters should not even be on the radar. And, no matter how awful, the occasional terrorist attack is not an existential threat to the fabric of the nation in the way of, say, the planned Nazi invasion in 1940. Nor is it even close to the sustained bombing of government, infrastructure and military targets by the Provisional IRA in the 70s-90s.

Once we understand the real threats, we as a nation can discuss the steps to take to protect ourselves; what measures should be taken and what liberties occasionally and legally compromised, and what democratic accountability exists to ensure that the security forces do not exceed their remit and work within the law.

The Age of Transparency?

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

Well, this is an interesting case in the US. Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the American National Security Agency (NSA), the US electronic eavesdropping organisation, is being charged under the 1917 US Espionage Act for allegedly disclosing classified information to a journalist about, gasp, the mismanagement, financial waste and dubious legal practices of the spying organisation. These days it might actually be more newsworthy if the opposite were to be disclosed.…

However, under the terms of the Espionage Act, this designates him an enemy of the American people on a par with bona fide traitors of the past who sold secrets to hostile powers during the Cold War.

It strikes me that someone who reports malpractice, mistakes and under-performance on the part of his (secretive) employers might possibly be someone who still has the motivation to try to make a difference, to do their best to protect people and serve the genuine interests of the whole country. Should such people be prosecuted or should they be protected with a legal channel to disclosure?

Thomas Drake does not sound like a spy who should be prosecuted for espionage under the USA’s antiquated act, he sounds on the available information like a whistleblower, pure and simple. But that won’t necessarily save him legally, and he is apparently facing decades in prison. President Obama, who made such a song and dance about transparency and accountability during his election campaign, has an even more egregious track record than previous presidents for hunting down whistleblowers — the new “insider threat”.

This, of course, chimes with the British experience. So-called left-of-centre political candidates get elected on a platform of transparency, freedom of information, and an ethical foreign policy (think Blair as well as Obama), and promptly renege on all their campaign promises once they grab the top job.

In fact, I would suggest that the more professedly “liberal” the government, the more it feels empowered to shred civil liberties. If a right-wing government were to attack basic democratic freedoms in such a way, the official opposition (Democrats/Labour Party/whatever) would be obliged to make a show of opposing the measures to keep their core voters sweet. Once they’re in power, of course, they can do what they want.

One stark example of this occured during the passing of the British Official Secrets Act (1989) which, as I’ve written before, was specifically designed to gag whistleblowers and penalise journalists. The old OSA (1911) was already in place to deal with real traitors.

And who voted against the passing of this act in 1989? Yes, you’ve guessed it, all those who then went on to become Labour government ministers after the 1997 Labour election landslide — Tony Blair, Jack Straw, the late Robin Cook and a scrum of other rather forgettable ministers and Attorney Generals.…. And yet it was this very New Labour government in the UK that most often used the OSA to halt the free-flow of information and the disclosures of informed whistleblowers. Obama has indeed learnt well.

It’s an oldie but still a goodie: as one of my lawyers once wryly told me, it doesn’t matter whom you vote for, the government still gets in.….

Can the product of bugs be used as court evidence in the UK?

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

An interesting story on Channel 4 TV news today: four London police officers are being prosecuted for beating up Babar Ahmad in 2003 while arresting him on suspicion of terrorism charges. And it turns out that the key evidence for the prosecution comes not from Ahmad’s complaint, nor from photographs of his injuries, but from the product of an eavesdropping device, more commonly known as a bug, planted in his home by the UK Security Service, MI5.

It’s interesting in itself that MI5 has released this information for court proceedings against Met counter-terrorism officers. I shall resist speculating now, but shall be watching developments with interest.

But the point I want to make quickly today is about the use of intercept material as legal evidence in UK courts. This can potentially be crucial for lawyers when speaking to their clients, journalists who wish to protect their sources, polticial activists, and those who simply wish to protect their inherent right to privacy as the encroaching electronic surveillance state continues to swell.

It can also be potentially useful information for MPs talking to their constituents. Indeed, returning to the years-long case of Babar Ahmad, there was a media furore in 2008 when it was revealed that the Met had authorised the bugging of his conversations with his MP Sadiq Khan during prison visits.

And who was the commanding officer who authorised this? Step forward former Met Counter Terrorism supremo, Andy Hayman, that much esteemed defender of British civil liberties who recently suggested “dawn raids” and “snatch squads ” be used against political activists.

Unlike most other western countries, the UK does not allow the use of telephone intercept as evidence in a court of law. As I’ve written before, it’s a hangover from the cold war spying game. MI5 has traditionally seen phone taps as a source of intelligence, not evidence, despite the fact that much of their work is notionally more evidentially based in the 21^st century. It also still remains a subject of debate and a fiercely fought reargard action by the spies themselves, who claim telecheck is a “sensitive technique”.

As if we don’t all know that our phones can be bugged.….

However, eavesdropping devices that are planted in your property — your home, your office, even your car — can indeed produce evidence that can be used against you in a court of law. All this requires a Home Office Warrant (HOW) to make it legal, but Home Secretaries are traditionally reluctant to refuse a request in the interests of “national security”. Moreover, if the owner of the property agrees to a bug, even without a HOW, they can be legally used. So if you live in rented accommodation, befriend your landlord!

Not a lot of people know all that — but we should.

How the Light Gets In — speaking in Hay-on-Wye, May 30 2011

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

I did two sessions at Hay-on-Wye philosophy and music festival — How the Light gets In in May 2011.

The first was a debate called “An Age of Transparency” with neo-conservative commentator Douglas Murray, and philosopher Nigel Warburton.

The second was my talk about “Spies, Lies, and Life on the Run”.

Here’s a link to a video of my talk.

So wasn’t the royal wedding lovely?

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

Well, yes, for some perhaps, and no doubt for the happy couple.

However, others spent the glorious day in a bare, concrete police cell, pre-emptively arrested for what they might do and untraceable to their loved ones and lawyers. Effectively they were “disappeared”, taken off the streets in case they uttered something that might mar the great day or, heaven forbid, caused some embarrassment.

A few days ago I wrote a piece highlighting my concerns about the threatened security response to possible protesters — drawing comparisons with the mindset, if not the violent tactics, of the thugs in Syria’s security apparatus. But still, in some deep recess of my mind and against all the accumulated evidence from my last 15 years, I found I still had an emotional, residual echo of the notion of British fair play that, really, we don’t do those kinds of things in the UK. Well, then I was a child, and spoke as a child.…

In the run up to the happy nuptials, the Metropolitan Police stated that it had no specific intelligence of any terrorist threat from either dissident Irish republicans, nor from any possible grouping emerging from the Middle East. Despite this, the security forces had launched a massive intelligence-gathering operation to hunt down known “anarchists” who might want to voice their protest against the concept of the monarchy. Activist pages on Facebook were suddenly deleted with no warning, but the company said it was because of registration issues, and not because of the police.

Yes, there may well have been some who wanted to cause violence — after which they could have been arrested legitimately under the terms of the law . However, what the police did in this case was in an altogether different league. Using the methodology if not the brutality of the Syrian mukhabarat, they organised house raids and snatch squads. They banned certain activists from London, and arrested others both in the days before the wedding and on the day itself.

Those caught in the security sweep included a Professor of Anthropology, Chris Knight, and his friends who were planning a bit of mildly amusing street theatre involving a fake guillotine and a Prince Andrew dummy (is that tautologous?).

Others swept up by the security forces included a bunch of environmentalist squatters who were busily tending their market garden, according to rightly concerned MP John McDonnell, and some random “zombies” who wanted to go to an alternative “not the royal wedding” garden party. Hardly the stuff of revolutionary nightmares.

And then there’s the case of Charlie Veitch, now denounced across the UK media as the known anarchist. Yes, Charlie is anti-royalist and wanted to voice his views, but he runs an internationally-known activist organisation called the Love Police, for chrissakes. The peaceful intentions of the organisation might possibly be given away by the name.…

So what happened? On Thursday evening two police officers, tooled up with proto-Borg tech, muscled their way into the Cambridge home he shares with his girlfriend, Silkie Carlo, declaring that they were there to arrest him and search the place. They had the presence of mind to film the whole process and ask some pertinent questions.

Charlie’s alleged pre-crime? That he had posted a frighteningly prescient video on Youtube saying that he thought he was being spied on, but still critiquing the royal wedding and suggesting that fellow activists get together in Soho Square, London (quite a distance away from the festivities) on the day. OK, so he had a bit of a rant — but that’s what people do on Youtube. Agree with him or strongly disagree, it’s called his freedom of expression — a much-vaunted, traditional British liberty.

But in the eyes of the police, apparently he was “conspiring to cause a possible breach of the peace”, and needed to be locked up. It’s like we’ve time-travelled back to pre-revolutionary 18^th century France, where the king could issue a lettre de cachet to send people to the Bastille.

So at the very time that Prince William and his blushing bride were created Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, a British citizen was raided, locked up and hidden away in a police cell in that very city for exercising free speech.

On Thursday night he was hauled off to the Cambridge nick, which then refused to confirm to his understandably upset girlfriend where he was being held, before being transfered to the Met Police on Friday morning and held incommunicado for the rest of the day. Family and lawyers then apparently spent fruitless hours ringing around all the London police stations trying to track him down. So Charlie had effectively been “disappeared”, like a dissident in a totalitarian régime.

So let’s get this straight — we’re talking about the Metropolitan Police spying on known activists (as we all now know they do, after the undercover cop scandal earlier this year) to prevent them from expressing their legitimate political views about the wedding of Kate and Wills. The security forces had already stated that there was no specific terrorist threat, so this was all about preventing an embarrassing incident on the big day. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think that Prevention of Embarrassment is covered by the legal code.

Plus, these arrests were pre-emptive to stop a possible crime which might be committed — and let’s face it, only breach of the peace at that. Not a biggy.

So we are basically looking at the police spying on and then pre-emptively arresting campaigners for being potential dissidents, for ThoughtCrime. How much more Orwellian can it get?

I mentioned the tactics of the Syrian security forces and their brutal crack-down. I’ve also previously written about how the slide towards fascism began in Germany in the 1930s with the brutalisation of internal oppositionists and dissidents .

So let’s really stop and think about this — do we really want to let these early indications slide by, uncontested? After all, we have the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee next year, and no doubt the same, or extended, powers will come into force. How far will we let it go before we wake up to the threat?

As I’ve written before, with thanks to Pastor Martin Niemoeller:

First they came for the Irish in the 1980s,

But I was not Irish so I did not speak up.

Then they came for the Muslims after 9/11,

But I was not a Muslim, so I did not speak up.

Then they came for the “domestic extremists”,

But I was not an activist, so I did not speak up.

Then they came for me;

and there was nobody left to speak up for me.

RTTV interview on the royal wedding and arrest of UK activists

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

My interview on 29 April 2011 for RTTV about the pre-emptive arrests of UK political activists in the run-up to the royal wedding.

Thoughtcrime appears to have arrived in the UK — and I accidentally became a royal wedding commentator (sort of).

Well, never say never in life.…

A tale of two countries — pre-emptive policing in Britain and Syria

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Annie Machon
Copy permalink to clipboard

What a difference a mere month makes in the UK media. At the end of March The Independent newspaper produced this article in the wake of the huge TUC anti-cuts protest in London, where the British Home Secretary was castigated for considering greater police powers to prevent such “trouble” again, with particular reference to the forthcoming royal wedding.

At the time former assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, Andy Hayman, who had served as the head of the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism squad and was, umm, reportedly a much-esteemed officer before his early resignation, adopted a muscular tone by calling for “snatch squads” and “dawn raids” to be carried out by police against suspected troublemakers. How terribly un-British.

Perhaps I’m starting at shadows, but with the above in mind two interesting aricles appeared in that very same newspaper today.

The first article that caught my eye confirmed there was indeed just such a security crackdown against suspected dissidents in the UK on the eve of the royal wedding. Lynne Owens, the Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner in charge of the royal policing operation, is quoted as saying:

““We have to be absolutely clear. If anyone comes to London intending to commit criminal acts, we will act quickly, robustly and decisively.” She said the Met was working with forces across the country and would use “spotters” to identify those causing trouble.”

The article goes on to say:

“As police teams step up their process of “pre-event investigation” and “intelligence gathering”, reports have come in from protesters that plain-clothed police are turning up at their homes to warn them against attending Friday’s event.”

It seems that the poor old Met is having conniptions about potentially embarrassing protesters sullying the pageantry of the royal wedding and is putting our money where its mouth is. Last week The Telegraph also reported that counter-intelligence operations were being conducted against “anarchists” to prevent trouble on 29^th April.

Interesting use of language, but I suppose that one newspaper’s “protester” will always be another’s “anarchist”.…

So what of the second article that concerned me? This described the brutal security crackdown in Syria, where the secret police were pre-emptively hunting down and arresting suspected dissidents:

“Syria’s feared secret police raided hundreds of homes yesterday as authorities stepped up attempts to crush the pro-reform movement.….”

UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague is quoted as saying that:

“Syria is now at a fork in the road… it can choose ever-more violent repression which can only ever bring short-term security for the authorities there.”

How much more need I say? Putting aside the fact that Hague seems to have acquired his very own fork(ed tongue), the only discernable difference at this stage is in the sheer scale of the brutality and repression, not the mind-set or intent.

It’s a slippery slope.….

Using Our Intelligence

by Annie Machon

Category Archives: Democracy