Category Archives: Spies

New Statesman Article, August 2008

Posted on by Annie Machon
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The new spies

Steph­en Armstrong

When
the Cold War ended, it did­n’t spell cur­tains for the secret agent.
Private espi­on­age is a boom­ing industry and envir­on­ment­al protest
groups are its prime target

                  


 

As you hunker down for the last few days of the Camp for Climate
Action, dis­cuss­ing how to force your way into King­s­north power station
in an attempt to pre­vent the con­struc­tion of a new coal facil­ity, cast
your eyes around your fel­low pro­test­ers. Do they look entirely bona
fide to you? And don’t look for the old-school spe­cial branch officers
— Kent Police are a tiny force. It’s the cor­por­ate spies hired by
private com­pan­ies you need to watch out for.

Accord­ing to the private espi­on­age industry itself, roughly one in four of your com­rades is on a mul­tina­tion­al’s payroll.

Rus­sell Corn, man­aging dir­ect­or of Dili­gence, one of a growing
num­ber of “cor­por­ate intel­li­gence agen­cies”, with offices high in the
Canary Wharf glass tower, says private spies make up 25 per cent of
every act­iv­ist camp. “If you stuck an inter­cept up near one of those
camps, you would­n’t believe the amount of out­go­ing calls after every
meet­ing say­ing, ‘Tomor­row we’re going to cut the fence’,” he smiles.
“Eas­ily one in four of the people there are tak­ing the corporate
shilling.”

In April this year, for instance, the anti-avi­ation cam­paign network
Plane Stu­pid, one of the main organ­isers of the eco-camp built to
protest against the expan­sion of Heath­row Air­port, announced that one
of its act­iv­ists, Ken Tobi­as, was actu­ally called Toby Kend­all, was
work­ing for a cor­por­ate espi­on­age firm called C2i, and had been leaking
inform­a­tion about the group to pay­ing cli­ents and the media. He had
been hired by an as yet unknown private com­pany to provide information
and dis­rupt the group’s campaigning.

When Tobi­as first turned up at Plane Stu­pid’s meet­ings in July 2007,
he seemed a com­mit­ted former Oxford stu­dent ded­ic­ated to reducing
air­craft emis­sions. The group gradu­ally became sus­pi­cious because he
showed up early at meet­ings, con­stantly pushed for increas­ingly drama
tic dir­ect action and — the ulti­mate giveaway — dressed a little too
well for an eco­w­ar­ri­or. When they showed his pic­ture around Oxford they
found an old col­lege pal who iden­ti­fied him as Toby Kend­all. A quick
Google search revealed his Bebo page with a link to a corporate
net­work­ing site, where his job as an “ana­lyst” at C2i International,
work­ing in “secur­ity and invest­ig­a­tions”, was pas­ted in full public
view.

Just a month earli­er, a woman called Cara Schaf­fer had con­tac­ted the
Student/Farmworker Alli­ance, an ideal­ist­ic bunch of Amer­ic­an college
stu­dents who lobby fast-food com­pan­ies to help migrant work­ers in
Flor­ida who har­vest toma­toes. Like the cockle-pick­ers of More­cambe Bay,
many of these work­ers are smuggled into the US by gangs which then take
their pass­ports and force them to work without pay to clear often
fic­ti­tious debts to regain their papers.

Digging up dirt

Again, Schaf­fer­’s excess­ive eager­ness aroused sus­pi­cion, and again,
the inter­net revealed her true iden­tity. She owned Dip­lo­mat­ic Tactical
Ser­vices, a private espi­on­age firm which had pre viously hired as a
sub­con­tract­or one Guillermo Zara bozo, today facing murder charges in
Miami for his role in allegedly execut­ing four crew mem­bers of a
chartered fish­ing boat, an alleg­a­tion he denies. Schaf­fer turned out to
be work­ing for Bur­ger King — the home, per­haps appro­pri­ately, of the
Whopper.

The cute thing about these two bozos is that they got caught pretty
early on, but that was because they were young and had no back­ground in
espionage.

The real mar­ket is in prop­er, old-school spies who are suddenly
enter­ing the private sec­tor. For pro­fes­sion­al spooks, the 1990s were no
fun at all. The Cold War was over, defence spend­ing was down and a
detailed know­ledge of cold-drop tech­niques in cent­ral Ber­lin was
use­less to gov­ern­ments look­ing for Arab­ic speak­ers who knew the Quran.

From New York and Lon­don to Moscow and Beijing, any decent-sized
cor­por­a­tion can now hire former agents from the CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6 and
the KGB. The ex-spooks are selling their old skills and con­tacts to
mul­tina­tion­als, hedge funds and olig­archs, dig­ging up dirt on
com­pet­it­ors, uncov­er­ing the secrets of board­room rivals and exposing
invest­ment tar­gets. They are also keep­ing tabs on journalists,
pro­test­ers and even poten­tial employees.

“MI5 and MI6 in par­tic­u­lar have always guided ex-employ­ees into
secur­ity com­pan­ies,” explains Annie Machon, the former MI5 agent who
helped Dav­id Shayler blow the whistle on the secur­ity ser­vices back in
1997. “It’s always use­ful to them to have friends they can tap for info
or recruit for a job that requires plaus­ible deni­ab­il­ity. The big
change in recent years has been the huge growth in these companies.
Where before it was a hand­ful of private detect­ive agen­cies, now there
are hun­dreds of mul­tina­tion­al secur­ity organ­isa­tions, which operate
with less reg­u­la­tion than the spooks them­selves,” she says.

Corn’s com­pany Dili­gence, for instance, was set up in 2000 by Nick
Day, a former MI5 spy, and an ex-CIA agent, Mike Baker. Before long,
the duo had built up a roster of high-pay­ing cli­ents includ­ing Enron,
oil and phar­ma­ceut­ic­al com­pan­ies, as well as law firms and hedge funds.
In 2001, a small invest­ment by the Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ing com­pany Barbour
Grif­fith & Rogers pro­pelled their growth. How­ever, BGR and Baker
sold their stakes in 2005, shortly before a scan­dal shook Diligence.
KPMG, the glob­al pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm, accused Dili­gence staff of
imper­son­at­ing Brit­ish spies to gain inform­a­tion on a cor­por­ate takeover
for a Rus­si­an tele­coms cli­ent called Alfa Group. Dili­gence settled the
law­suit without admit­ting liability.

Since then, it has recruited the former Con­ser­vat­ive Party leader
Michael Howard as chair­man of its European oper­a­tions. And it is that
sort of respect­ab­il­ity and lob­by­ing power that big play­ers are after.
In 2007, the par­ent com­pany of the US private mil­it­ary firm Blackwater,
which hit the head­lines for gun­ning down Iraqi civil­ians in Baghdad
last Septem­ber, entered this mar­ket through Total Intelligence
Solu­tions (TIS), a new CIA-type private oper­a­tion, to provide
intel­li­gence ser­vices to com­mer­cial clients.

Discreet investigations

Black­wa­ter­’s vice-chair­man, J Cofer Black, who runs TIS, spent three
dec­ades in the CIA and the state depart­ment, becom­ing dir­ect­or of the
Coun­terter­ror­ist Centre and co-ordin­at­or for counter ter­ror­ism, a job
with ambas­sad­ori­al rank. He describes the new com­pany as bring­ing “the
intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing meth­od­o­logy and ana­lyt­ic­al skills traditionally
honed by CIA oper­at­ives dir­ectly to the board­room. With a ser­vice like
this, CEOs and their secur­ity per­son­nel will be able to respond to
threats quickly and con­fid­ently — wheth­er it’s determ­in­ing which city
is safest to open a new plant in or work­ing to keep employ­ees out of
harm’s way after a ter­ror­ist attack.”

Black also says TIS will oper­ate a “24/7 intel­li­gence fusion and
warn­ing centre” that will mon­it­or civil unrest, ter­ror­ism, economic
sta­bil­ity, envir­on­ment­al and health con­cerns, and information
tech­no­logy secur­ity around the world.

The estab­lished firms already oper­at­ing in this area include Kroll,
Aegis, Garda, Con­trol Risks, GPW and Hakluyt & Co. More firms are
open­ing every day and there is little reg­u­la­tion of the sector.

Hakluyt & Co was foun­ded in 1995 by former Brit­ish MI6 officers,
with a repu­ta­tion for dis­creet and effect­ive invest­ig­a­tions. The
com­pany but­ler, a former gurkha, greets vis­it­ors to its Lon­don HQ, a
town house off Park Lane. In winter, meet­ings can be con­duc­ted beside
the fire. Com­puters are rarely in sight. Hakluyt’s advis­ory board has
become an exit cham­ber for cap­tains of industry and former government
offi­cials. Mem­bers have included Sir Rod Edding­ton, a former BA CEO,
and Sir Chris­toph­er Gent, former chief exec­ut­ive of Vodafone.

“It is hard to work well for an oil com­pany without know­ing who all
the key decision-makers in a gov­ern­ment are and hav­ing the right
con­tacts to reach them,” explains Stéphane Gérardin, who runs the
French private secur­ity com­pany Géos. “We have an intel­li­gence section
where we employ some invest­ig­at­ive journ­al­ists, people from the finance
sec­tor, from equity banks and some from secur­ity backgrounds.

“It is an import­ant part of image pro­tec­tion for our cli­ents as
well. We have our own track­ing and mon­it­or­ing centre, with analysts
doing risk map­ping and pre­par­ing our cli­ents for every potential
prob­lem. It could be about alert­ing them to loc­al sens­it­iv­it­ies. Or, in
this glob­al­ised inter­net age, it can be a group of stu­dents in
Cam­bridge who have launched a protest web­site, who may be send­ing out a
petition.

“So we need to be able to under­stand and pre­pare our own propaganda
to counter such attacks. This is work we do to pro­tect our clients.”

Trusted friend

Like the state secur­ity ser­vices, which ended up run­ning Class War
in the 1990s after a hugely suc­cess­ful pen­et­ra­tion, these spies work to
become reli­able mem­bers of any protest move­ment. In April 2007, the
Cam­paign Against Arms Trade called in the police after court documents
showed that the weapons man­u­fac­turer BAE Sys­tems had paid a private
agency to spy on the peace group.

BAE admit­ted that it had paid £2,500 a month to LigneDeux
Asso­ci­ates, whose agent Paul Mer­cer — accep­ted as a trus­ted mem­ber of
the cam­paign — passed inform­a­tion, includ­ing a leg­ally privileged
doc­u­ment, to BAE’s dir­ect­or of secur­ity, Mike McGinty.

Unlike the secur­ity ser­vices, how­ever, these ser­vices don’t bother
with pen­et­rat­ing the far left or anti-fas­cist groups. Their cli­ents are
only inter­ested in the protest move­ments that threaten corporations.
And as that is the nature of much protest in these times, it is a wide
field, but with a par­tic­u­lar impact on envir­on­ment­al groups.

At any of this sum­mer­’s green protests the cor­por­ate spies will be
there, out-of-work MI5 agents tap­ping green act­iv­ists’ mobile phones to
sell the inform­a­tion on to inter­ested companies.

Rus­sell Corn knows of incid­ents where a spook at a meet­ing has
sug­ges­ted a high-street bank as a tar­get, then left the meet­ing to
phone the officers of said bank, telling them that he has pen­et­rated an
act­iv­ist camp plan­ning an attack and offer­ing to sell the details. Corn
has no time for such beha­viour, however.

“The thing about a really good private spy,” he tells me, “is that you’ll nev­er know he’s around and he’ll nev­er get caught.

“The fact you can­’t see them … it means noth­ing at all.” 

Fig Leaf to the Spies

Posted on by Annie Machon
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The lack of any mean­ing­ful over­sight of the UK’s intel­li­gence com­munity was high­lighted again last week, when The Daily Mail repor­ted that a cru­cial fax was lost in the run-up to the 7/7 bomb­ings in Lon­don in 2005.

There has yet to be an offi­cial enquiry into the worst ter­ror­ist atro­city on the UK main­land, des­pite the call for one from trau­mat­ised fam­il­ies and sur­viv­ors and the legit­im­ate con­cerns of the Brit­ish pub­lic. To date, we have had to make do with an “offi­cial nar­rat­ive” writ­ten by a face­less bur­eau­crat and pub­lished in May 2006. As soon as it was pub­lished, the then Home Sec­ret­ary, John Reid, had to cor­rect egre­gious fac­tu­al errors when present­ing it to Parliament.

The Intel­li­gence and Secur­ity Com­mit­tee (ISC) also did a shoddy first job, when it cleared the secur­ity forces of all wrong-doing in its ini­tial report pub­lished at the same time. It claimed a lack of resources had hampered MI5’s counter-ter­ror­ism efforts.

How­ever, fol­low­ing a use­ful leak, it emerged that MI5 had not only been aware of at least two of the alleged bombers before the attack, it had been con­cerned enough to send a fax up to West York­shire Police Spe­cial Branch ask­ing them to invest­ig­ate Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehz­ad Tan­weer. This fax was nev­er acted upon.

So the ISC has been forced to pro­duce anoth­er report, this time appar­ently admit­ting that, yes, there had been intel­li­gence fail­ures, most not­ably the lost fax. West York­shire SB should have acted on it. But the intel­li­gence officer in MI5 respons­ible for this invest­ig­a­tion should have chased it up when no response was forthcoming.

This second ISC report, which has been sit­ting on the Prime Minister’s desk for weeks already, is said to be “dev­ast­at­ing”. How­ever, I’m will­ing to bet that if/when it sees the light of day, it will be any­thing but.

The ISC is at best an over­sight fig leaf. It was formed in 1994, when MI6 and GCHQ were put on a stat­utory foot­ing for the first time with the Intel­li­gence Ser­vices Act. At the time the press wel­comed this as a great step for­ward towards demo­crat­ic account­ab­il­ity for the intel­li­gence com­munity. Well, it could not have been worse than the pre­vi­ous set-up, when MI5, MI6 and GCHQ did not offi­cially exist. They were not required to obey the laws of the land, and no MP was allowed to ask a ques­tion in Par­lia­ment about their activ­it­ies. As 1980s whis­tleblower Peter Wright so suc­cinctly put it, the spies could bug and burgle their way around with impunity.

So the estab­lish­ment of the ISC was a (very) lim­ited step in the right dir­ec­tion. How­ever, it is not a Par­lia­ment­ary Com­mit­tee. Its mem­bers are selec­ted by the Prime Min­is­ter, and it is answer­able only to the PM, who can vet its find­ings. The remit of the ISC only cov­ers mat­ters of spy policy, admin­is­tra­tion and fin­ance. It is not empowered to invest­ig­ate alleg­a­tions of oper­a­tion­al incom­pet­ence nor crimes com­mit­ted by the spies. And its annu­al report has become a joke with­in the media, as there are usu­ally more redac­tions than coher­ent sentences.

The ISC’s first big test came in the 1990s fol­low­ing the Shayler and Tom­lin­son dis­clos­ures. These involved detailed alleg­a­tions of illeg­al invest­ig­a­tions, bungled oper­a­tions and assas­sin­a­tion attempts against for­eign heads of state. It is dif­fi­cult to con­ceive of more hein­ous crimes com­mit­ted by our shad­owy spies.

But how did the ISC react? If one reads the reports from the rel­ev­ant years, the only aspect that exer­cised the ISC was Shayler’s inform­a­tion that MI5 had on many MPs and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. The ISC was reas­sured by MI5 that would no longer be able to use these files. That’s it.

For­get about files being illeg­ally held on hun­dreds of thou­sands of inno­cent UK cit­izens; for­get about the illeg­al phone taps, the pre­vent­able deaths on UK streets from IRA bombs, inno­cent people being thrown in pris­on, and the assas­sin­a­tion attempt against Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya. The fear­less and etern­ally vigil­ant ISC MPs were primar­ily con­cerned about receiv­ing reas­sur­ance that their files would no longer be vet­ted by MI5 officers on the basis of mem­ber­ship to “sub­vers­ive” organ­isa­tions. What were they afraid of – that shame­ful evid­ence of early left-wing activ­ity from their fiery youth might emerge? Heav­en for­bid under New Labour.

Barely a day goes by when news­pa­per head­lines do not remind us of ter­rible threats to our nation­al secur­ity. Only in the last week, the UK media has repor­ted that the threat of espi­on­age from Rus­sia and China is at its highest since the days of the Cold War; that resur­gent Repub­lic­an ter­ror groups in North­ern Ire­land pose a graver danger to us even than Al Qaeda; that rad­ic­al­ised Brit­ish Muslim youth are return­ing from fight­ing with the Taliban to wage war on the streets of the UK. We have to take all this on trust, des­pite the intel­li­gence com­munity’s appalling track record of bend­ing the truth to gain more powers and resources. This is why mean­ing­ful over­sight is so vitally import­ant for the health of our demo­cracy. The ISC is a long way from provid­ing that.

Spooks + Politicians + Hacks = War

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I keep return­ing to this sub­ject, but it is troub­ling me deeply. Read­ing the runes, all things point to the fact that we are being act­ively groomed for yet anoth­er Middle East­ern war.

As I’ve said before, the pic­ture is clearly being drawn for those who wish to join the dots. At the end of last year the entire US intel­li­gence infra­struc­ture form­ally assessed that Iran had aban­doned its nuc­le­ar weapons pro­gramme in 2003. This, of course, did not suit the hawk­ish neo-con agenda in the States.

Then Mossad, the Israeli intel­li­gence out­fit, con­veni­ently pops up claim­ing that it has new, shit-hot intel­li­gence that dis­proves the US assess­ment. Mossad passes this on to the heads of MI6 and the CIA, and shortly after­wards the Prime Min­is­ter of Israel, Ehud Olmert, vis­its George Bush on a state vis­it to Amer­ica to dis­cuss his “con­cerns” about Iran.

The third part of the equa­tion fell into place this week. Con Cough­lin, writ­ing in the right-wing UK nation­al news­pa­per, The Daily Tele­graph, unques­tion­ingly regur­git­ates inform­a­tion from anonym­ous intel­li­gence sources who state that Iran is now devel­op­ing weapons grade uranium.

Cough­lin has form. For many years he worked for The Sunday Tele­graph, oth­er­wise known as the in-house journ­al of MI6. Read­ers of this site will know that MI6 has a sec­tion called Inform­a­tion Oper­a­tions (I/Ops), which manip­u­lates the media either by plant­ing false stor­ies or mas­sa­ging the facts to suit MI6’s interests. Well, rather embar­rass­ingly, Coughlin’s involve­ment in one such oper­a­tion was exposed a few years ago.

In 1995 he was shown “inform­a­tion” by an MI6 officer whom he described as “a seni­or bank­ing offi­cial” prov­ing that Col­on­el Gadaffi’s son, Saif Al Islam, was involved in a money-laun­der­ing scam with Iran. Cough­lin duti­fully repor­ted this, and this story was used by the For­eign Office to deny Al Islam a visa to live in the UK.

What Cough­lin, and his then edit­or Domin­ic Lawson (whose broth­er-in-law was a seni­or MI6 officer), didn’t appear to know as he took this story down in short­hand, was the MI6 officer was from I/Ops, and that he was plant­ing this story in the press to ensure that the son of a then Pri­or­ity 1 Joint Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee tar­get could not come over the UK and live high on the hog. Too polit­ic­ally embar­rass­ing, old bean.

Al Islam nat­ur­ally sued, and The Sunday Tory­graph duly settled out of court once it real­ised that intel­li­gence whis­tleblower Dav­id Shayler knew the inside track on this libel­lous story and was pre­pared to give evid­ence in court.

Cough­lin was also instru­ment­al in get­ting stor­ies link­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein to WMD and Al Qaeda into the nation­al UK media in the run-up to the Iraq war, although the vigi­lent read­er will notice these stor­ies often con­tra­dict them­selves. So it’s inter­est­ing that he’s now break­ing more “news” sug­gest­ing pre­cisely what Mossad and gov­ern­ments of the UK and the USA would have us believe: that Iran is a real, devel­op­ing nuc­le­ar threat, and that there is a sound case for war.

Lost Document Débâcle

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So anoth­er intel­li­gence offi­cial has mis­laid some highly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments — this time by leav­ing them lying on a com­muter train depart­ing Water­loo sta­tion. And while the Cab­in­et office (his soon to be former employ­er?) is des­per­ately try­ing to down­play the sens­it­iv­ity of these doc­u­ments, let’s not be fooled. “Top Secret – Strap – Can/Aus/UK/US Eyes Only” is very high level clas­si­fic­a­tion indeed.

In this case, it appears that the offi­cial may not even have had per­mis­sion to remove these doc­u­ments in the first place. Cab­in­et Min­is­ter, Ed Miliband, is quoted in the Daily Mail today as say­ing that there had been ‘a clear breach’ of rules for­bid­ding the remov­al of doc­u­ments without author­isa­tion. Then, hav­ing removed these doc­u­ments illeg­ally, the intel­li­gence offi­cial appears to have taken them out of the secur­ity briefcase and read them in pub­lic, before leav­ing them on the train.

One can only spec­u­late wheth­er he was drunk, simply care­less, or wheth­er this was a tim­id attempt to blow the whistle and draw the BBC’s atten­tion to yet fur­ther proof that the “war on ter­ror” is overhyped.

The secur­ity breach is not unusu­al. Over the years, drunk­en spies have mis­laid count­less doc­u­ments in pubs and on the jour­ney home. In 2000 an MI6 officer even left a laptop in a Vaux­hall bar. How­ever, the secret inform­a­tion usu­ally has a degree of low-level pro­tec­tion – the com­puter is encryp­ted or the doc­u­ments are locked in a secur­ity briefcase, not left lying around in an orange folder.

When I was work­ing for the spooks, the drink­ing cul­ture was endem­ic. Seni­or man­agers set the pace, with some going to the pub most days for lunch – one pub was fam­ously called Base Camp Two – sink­ing a few pints, and then doz­ing the after­noon away. Of course, the young­er officers fol­lowed suit, reg­u­larly meet­ing after work for a drink and a moan. Often, they would have secur­ity briefcases with them to take away the next day for work, and it was a mir­acle that more doc­u­ments were not lost.

There is spec­u­la­tion in the media that the man will be dis­cip­lined. He has already been sus­pen­ded. But the media appears to be miss­ing a trick: this is also a breach of the Offi­cial Secrets Act 1989. In this case, Sec­tion 1(1) will apply:

“A per­son who is or has been—

(a) a mem­ber of the secur­ity and intel­li­gence ser­vices; or

(b) a per­son noti­fied that he is sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions of this subsection,

is guilty of an offence if without law­ful author­ity he dis­closes any inform­a­tion, doc­u­ment or oth­er art­icle relat­ing to secur­ity or intel­li­gence which is or has been in his pos­ses­sion by vir­tue of his pos­i­tion as a mem­ber of any of those ser­vices or in the course of his work while the noti­fic­a­tion is or was in force.”

So, if this offi­cial was drunk and care­less with the nation’s secrets, he deserves to face the music. The doc­u­ments were seen by a mem­ber of pub­lic and by BBC staff, so the “clear bright line” against dis­clos­ure that is always argued in whis­tleblower tri­als had already been breached.

If this was a cov­ert attempt a get­ting the inform­a­tion to the media, as happened, then this per­son is a whis­tleblower and deserves pro­tec­tion. The law makes no dis­tinc­tion based on intent, as the pub­lic interest defence was removed from the OSA in 1989 (des­pite the fact that Blair, Straw and most of the Labour gov­ern­ment past and present voted against this measure).

How­ever, such an action is clearly mor­ally dif­fer­ent from drunk­en care­less­ness, and if that was indeed his intent, he would have done bet­ter to have had the cour­age of his con­vic­tions and gone dir­ectly to the media. He would still not have had any defence under the OSA for his prin­cipled stance, but the impact and poten­tial for change would have been great­er. Bet­ter to be hung for a sheep than a lamb.

The Media and the Spies

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The UK main­stream media has made much this week of Home Sec­ret­ary Jac­qui Smith’s asser­tion that MI5 had not reques­ted the government’s pro­posed exten­sion of the impris­on­ment without charge of ter­ror­ist sus­pects from 28 to 42 days.

This state­ment has caused a furore in the UK, and there is a chance that the PM may lose the key vote in Par­lia­ment on this amend­ment tomorrow.

In fact, such has been the uproar that the Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al of MI5, Jonath­an Evans, is repor­ted by Reu­ters to have made a rare pub­lic statement:

“Since the secur­ity ser­vice is neither a pro­sec­ut­ing author­ity nor respons­ible for crim­in­al invest­ig­a­tions, we are not, and nev­er have been, the appro­pri­ate body to advise the gov­ern­ment on pre-charge deten­tion time lim­its,” he said in a state­ment on the MI5 website.

“We have not, there­fore, sought to com­ment pub­licly or privately on the cur­rent pro­pos­als, except to say that we recog­nise the chal­lenge posed for the police ser­vice by the increas­ingly com­plex and inter­na­tion­al char­ac­ter of some recent ter­ror­ist cases.”

What par­tic­u­larly strikes me about this is an appar­ently insig­ni­fic­ant phrase, “raised pub­licly or privately”.

In con­trast to the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police Com­mis­sion­er Sir Ian Blair, who admit­ted to “unin­ten­tion­ally mis­lead­ing” the par­lia­ment­ary Joint Com­mit­tee charged with assess­ing the need to increase the deten­tion lim­it, Evans had refused to give evid­ence about the 42 day issue. So he has cer­tainly not raised this in a pub­licly account­able way.

It’s the word “private” that intrigues me. It reeks of sotto voce dis­cus­sions between old school chums at the grander gentlemen’s clubs in Lon­don: of unat­trib­ut­able brief­ings between anonym­ous MI5 officers and chosen journ­al­ists; and of cosy lunches with Fleet Street edit­ors in the DG’s din­ing room at Thames House, MI5’s Lon­don HQ.

While Evans denies using this meth­od­o­logy around the 42 day issue, his state­ment con­firms that such private dis­cus­sions do indeed play a part in influ­en­cing policy decisions and media perception.

I saw this approach first-hand in the 1990s dur­ing the whis­tleblow­ing years. In fact, it was then that MI5 stepped up its charm offens­ive with politi­cians and journ­al­ists. It was dur­ing one of the first of these cosy media lunches in Thames House, hos­ted by the then DG Steph­en Lander, that the respec­ted BBC Dip­lo­mat­ic Edit­or Mark Urb­an asked a fate­ful ques­tion about the Gad­dafi Plot and was reportedly told by Lander that “he was not here to answer half-baked ques­tions from smart-arse journ­al­ists”. So there were cer­tain short­falls in the charm, even if the lack of account­ab­il­ity held up well.

But there are oth­er, more sin­is­ter ways for the spies to manip­u­late pub­lic opin­ion. MI6 has a sens­it­ive sec­tion called Inform­a­tion Oper­a­tions (I/Ops), which exists purely to set the news agenda for the spies. I/Ops man­ages this either by mas­sa­ging the facts, spin­ning the tone of the story or, more wor­ry­ingly, plant­ing false stor­ies in a qui­es­cent press.

In the 1990s there was a fam­ous case. Col­on­el Gaddafi’s son, Saif Al Islam, applied for a visa to come to Bri­tain. I/Ops planted a com­pletely false story in The Sunday Tele­graph that he was involved in money laun­der­ing with Iran and, lo and behold, MI5 had the per­fect excuse to deny him a visa. Al Islam sub­sequently sued the news­pa­per which, faced with Shayler­’s evid­ence, settled out of court.

A few months ago the ex-head of MI6, Sir Richard Dear­love, gave a talk at the LSE about the intel­li­gence agen­cies and the media. I went along to have a laugh, and was gra­ciously allowed to ask a ques­tion. Nat­ur­ally I raised the issue of I/Ops, its rela­tion­ship with the media, and wheth­er such a role was accept­able in a mod­ern democracy.

In the con­text of the talk, what could have been more per­tin­ent? How­ever, Dear­love declined to answer. In fact, he went so far as to say that such a mat­ter was “with­in the ring of secrecy”. At which point a journ­al­ist from a pres­ti­gi­ous nation­al news­pa­per who was sit­ting next to me, turned and said glee­fully that this at last proved that I/Ops exis­ted. Grat­i­fy­ing as this was, I shall reit­er­ate my ques­tion: is the role of I/Ops accept­able in a mod­ern demo­cracy, where we are sup­posed to enjoy free­dom of inform­a­tion, trans­par­ency and account­ab­il­ity from the powers-that-be?

Spooks leave UK vulnerable to Russian mafia

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Accord­ing to the Daily Mail this week, Rus­si­an secur­ity expert, Andrei Sold­atov, reck­ons the UK is wide open to the threat of the Rus­si­an mafia. He primar­ily blames the froid­eur that has blighted Anglo-Rus­si­an rela­tions since the Litv­inen­ko affair. How­ever, he also states that MI5 no longer has a role to play in invest­ig­at­ing organ­ised crime, and that has con­trib­uted to our vulnerability.

Nat­ur­ally res­ist­ing the tempta­tion to say that MI5’s involve­ment would not neces­sar­ily have afforded us any mean­ing­ful pro­tec­tion, I would say that this is down to a fun­da­ment­al prob­lem in how we organ­ise our response to threats to the nation­al secur­ity of this country.

The secur­ity infra­struc­ture in the UK has evolved over the last cen­tury into a ter­ribly Brit­ish muddle. For his­tor­ic reas­ons, we have a pleth­ora of intel­li­gence agen­cies, all com­pet­ing for fund­ing, power and prestige: MI5, MI6, GCHQ, the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police Spe­cial Branch (MPSB), spe­cial branches in every oth­er police force, mil­it­ary intel­li­gence, and HM Rev­en­ue and Cus­toms et al. Each is sup­posed to work with the oth­er, but in real­ity they guard their ter­rit­ory and intel­li­gence jeal­ously. After all, know­ledge is power.

MI5 and MPSB have always been the lead intel­li­gence organ­isa­tions oper­at­ing with­in the UK. As such, their cov­ert rivalry has been pro­trac­ted and bit­ter, but to the out­side world they appeared to rub along while MI5 was primar­ily focus­ing on espi­on­age and polit­ic­al sub­ver­sion and the Met con­cen­trated on the IRA. How­ever, after the end of the Cold War, MI5 had to find new tar­gets or lose staff, status and resources.

In 1992 the then Home Sec­ret­ary, Ken Clarke, announced that MI5 was tak­ing over the lead respons­ib­il­ity for invest­ig­at­ing IRA activ­ity on the UK main­land — work that had been done by MPSB for over 100 years. Vic­tory was largely cred­ited to clev­er White­hall man­oeuv­er­ing on the part of the head of MI5, Stella Rim­ing­ton. The Met were furi­ous, and the trans­fer of records was frac­tious, to say the least.

Also, there was a year’s delay in the han­dover of respons­ib­il­ity. So MI5 arti­fi­cially main­tained the per­ceived threat levels posed by polit­ic­al sub­ver­sion in order to retain its staff until the trans­ition was com­plete. This meant that there was no real case for the aggress­ive invest­ig­a­tion of sub­vers­ive groups in the UK – which made all such oper­a­tions illeg­al. Staff in this sec­tion, includ­ing me, voci­fer­ously argued against this con­tin­ued sur­veil­lance, rightly stat­ing that such invest­ig­a­tions were thereby flag­rantly illeg­al, but the seni­or man­age­ment ignored us in the interests of pre­serving their empires.

How­ever, in the mid-1990s, when peace appeared to be break­ing out in North­ern Ire­land and bey­ond, MI5 had to scout around for more work to jus­ti­fy its exist­ence. Hence, in 1996, the Home Sec­ret­ary agreed that they should play a role in tack­ling organ­ised crime – but only in a sup­port­ing role to MPSB. This was nev­er a par­tic­u­larly pal­at­able answer for the spooks, so it is no sur­prise that they have sub­sequently dropped this area of work now that the threat from “Al Qaeda” has grown. Ter­ror­ism has always been per­ceived as high­er status work. And of course this new threat has led to a slew of increased resources, powers and staff for MI5, not to men­tion the open­ing of eight region­al headquar­ters out­side London.

But should we really be approach­ing a sub­ject as ser­i­ous as the pro­tec­tion of our nation­al secur­ity in such a haphaz­ard way, based solely on the fact that we have these agen­cies in exist­ence, so let’s give them some work?

If we are really faced with such a ser­i­ous ter­ror­ist threat, would it not be smarter for our politi­cians to ask the basic ques­tions: what is the real­ist­ic threat to our nation­al secur­ity and the eco­nom­ic well­being of the state, and how can we best pro­tect ourselves from these threats? If the most effect­ive answer proves to be a new, ded­ic­ated counter-ter­ror­ism organ­isa­tion, so be it. We Brits love a sense of his­tory, but a new broom will often sweep clean.

 

IT Defense Conference, Hamburg January 2008

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In Janu­ary 2008 I spoke at the IT Defense Con­fer­ence in Ham­burg in Janu­ary 2008.  This is a sum­mary of my talk.

The Spy­ing Game? – Annie Machon

I gave a present­a­tion about the role of intelligence
agen­cies in the cur­rent era of the unend­ing “war on ter­ror”, how they
mon­it­or us, and the implic­a­tions for our democracies.

In the name of pro­tect­ing nation­al secur­ity, spy agen­cies are being
giv­en sweep­ing new powers and resources. Their intel­li­gence has been
politi­cised to build a case for the dis­astrous war in Iraq, they are
fail­ing to stop ter­ror­ist attacks, and they con­tin­ue to col­lude in
illeg­al acts of intern­ment and tor­ture, euphemist­ic­ally called
“extraordin­ary rendi­tion”. Most west­ern demo­cra­cies have already given
so many new powers to the spies that we are effect­ively liv­ing in
police states. As an informed com­munity, what can we do about this?
t‑style: nor­mal; font-vari­ant: nor­mal; font-weight: nor­mal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: nor­mal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: nor­mal;”> The illeg­al MI6
assas­sin­a­tion attempt against Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya

International Islamic Fair, Malaysia 2007

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In July 2007 I was invited to speak at the Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Fair in Malay­sia along with 9/11 hero Wil­li­am Rodrig­uez.

The Fair is designed to increase under­stand­ing and co-oper­a­tion between Islam­ic and non-Islam­ic com­munit­ies.  Politi­cians, dip­lo­mats and cam­paign­ers from around the world are invited to speak.  Thou­sands of people atten­ded the four day event, and the Fair made head­lines across the Far East.

Here is the photo gal­lery of the 2007 IIF Conference.

I was hon­oured to receive a stand­ing ova­tion, and com­ments included:

“Former Brit­ish MI5 agent & Amer­ic­an depleted urani­um expert among best received paper presenters”

and

“The IIF2007 Con­fer­ence ful­filled most of its pre-event prom­ises – as far as con­tent goes. In addi­tion to the pres­ence of Wil­li­am Rodrig­uez (last sur­viv­or of 9/11) as a ses­sion mod­er­at­or, the con­fer­ence par­ti­cipants were also ‘thrilled’ by the lec­tures of oth­er over­seas speak­ers includ­ing Sheikh Imran Hosein (former N.York mosque imam), H.E. Mahdi Ibrahim Muhammad (Ambas­sad­or / mem­ber of Nation­al Assembly, Sudan), Annie Machon (former Brit­ish Intel­li­gence MI5 agent) and Khaled Taha of Aljaz­eera, Qatar.”

Iran Threat — First the Spooks, now the Politicians

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As I pos­ted on on 7 May, Israeli intel­li­gence is claim­ing it has new intel­li­gence that proves the recent US Nation­al Intel­li­gence Estim­ate wrong in its assess­ment of the nuc­le­ar threat posed by Iran.

Mossad claims to have sol­id intel­li­gence that proves Iran is still try­ing to devel­op a nuc­le­ar mil­it­ary cap­ab­il­ity. There have been recent high-level talks about this between the intel­li­gence agen­cies of the US, UK and Israel.

A report in The Guard­i­an today now indic­ates that the politi­cians are fol­low­ing suit. Israeli Prime Min­is­ter, Ehud Olmert, is set to meet Pres­id­ent Bush today to dis­cuss the threat from Iran. It would not sur­prise me if the US soon announces that it has proof of Iran’s nuc­le­ar intent, and tries to push for anoth­er a “pre-empt­ive”, and highly illeg­al, attack.

Pay peanuts, get monkeys

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So the spooks are yet again try­ing to recruit IT pro­fes­sion­als. MI6 is cur­rently advert­ising for a, quote, “world class enter­prise archi­tect”, but is offer­ing a salary sig­ni­fic­antly below the mar­ket rate. MI5 is con­stantly on the lookout for IT staff –as recent adverts in the press will attest.

My sense is that the agen­cies are still des­per­ately play­ing IT catch-up. In the 1990s, when I worked as an intel­li­gence officer, we were still writ­ing out everything longhand and get­ting our sec­ret­ar­ies to type it up – with all the attend­ant typos, revi­sions and delays. Inform­a­tion data­bases, such the sys­tem code­named Durbar, which held the ter­ror­ist records, could only be accessed via 1970s, beige, mon­it­or-and-key­board, all-in-one computers.

In the early 1990s MI5 did try to devel­op its own inform­a­tion man­age­ment sys­tem from scratch, rightly think­ing that buy­ing off-the-shelf from an Amer­ic­an mega­corp was prob­ably not good secur­ity. How­ever, MI5 man­age­ment still thought IT was a low pri­or­ity – des­pite the fact the effi­cient pro­cessing of inform­a­tion should have been the core work. So, the agency paid sig­ni­fic­antly below the mar­ket rates for IT pro­fes­sion­als, and pos­ted main­stream intel­li­gence officers, with no pro­ject man­age­ment exper­i­ence, to run the depart­ment for 2 year peri­ods. Need­less to say, mor­al was rock-bot­tom. The IT bods were unmo­tiv­ated, the IOs demor­al­ised at being pos­ted to a career grave­yard slot and the unwieldy sys­tem, code­named Grant, nev­er got off the ground.

In the middle of the dec­ade MI5 in des­per­a­tion bought an off-the-shelf pack­age which was based on Win­dows 95. Even then officers had to fight to have access to a ter­min­al to do their work. And, of course, Win­dows is not known as the most stable or secure sys­tem avail­able. I also heard recently that MI5 is still using this pro­pri­et­ary soft­ware, and thinks that it can pro­tect its inform­a­tion sys­tems by patch­ing up secur­ity prob­lems. It gives one such faith that MI5 can really pro­tect this coun­try from ter­ror­ist attack.

But this leads us onto a more ser­i­ous issue regard­ing our nation­al sov­er­eignty. What the hell is our gov­ern­ment doing, shov­el­ling bil­lions of pounds every year over to US IT com­pan­ies to pay for licences that then per­mit our gov­ern­ment depart­ments to use their soft­ware pack­ages? And with the cur­rent con­cerns about ter­ror­ism and the sub­sequent datamin­ing activ­it­ies of a para­noid US admin­is­tra­tion, how can we be sure that the NSA is not sneak­ing a peek at the work of our secur­ity forces via back doors in this software?

So, to pro­tect our sov­er­eignty, as well as devel­op our know­ledge base and grow our eco­nomy, why does the UK gov­ern­ment not encour­age all gov­ern­ment agen­cies and depart­ments to switch from pro­pri­et­ary to open source soft­ware? After all, many oth­er coun­tries around the world are already doing this for pre­cisely these reasons.

No doubt it’s that pesky “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” kick­ing in again.….

MI5 caught with its pants down

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An MI5 A4 sur­veil­lance officer has had to resign because his wife sold a story to The News of the World news­pa­per that the For­mula One boss, Max Mos­ley, son of notori­ous fas­cist Sir Oswald Mos­ley, had indulged in a Nazi-inspired orgy with her and four oth­er pros­ti­tutes in a cel­lar in Chelsea, one of the swanki­est areas of London.

This raises an inter­est­ing ques­tion. Either the A4 officer, reportedly a former Roy­al Mar­ine, had no idea that his wife was work­ing as a pros­ti­tute, in which case, what the hell was he doing work­ing for the sur­veil­lance unit of MI5? Not quite the sharpest knife in the block, then. Or he knew, but chose to keep it quiet – a ser­i­ous vet­ting offence. Which was it?

The move against Mos­ley cer­tainly seems to have been a “hon­eytrap” of sorts – at least on the part of The News of the Screws, which reportedly equipped “Mrs Bond” with the cam­er­as. But bey­ond that? The Screws and its sis­ter paper The Sunday Times asser­ted that the MI5 con­nec­tion was just a coin­cid­ence, as did The Sunday Tele­graph, known in spook circles as the in-house magazine of MI6.

The Mos­ley case does have his­tor­ic­al echoes. A sim­il­ar, and notori­ous case, occurred in the 1970s. Lord Lamb­ton, at the time the RAF Min­is­ter in Edward Heath’s gov­ern­ment, was caught in flagrente with a call girl and, even worse, was caught on film smoking a joint. Lamb­ton had to resign in disgrace.

But there was more to it. The News of the Screws pho­to­graph­er lurk­ing in the ward­robe had been lent the night-vis­ion cam­era by an MI6 agent to obtain nice, clear images.

Why did MI6, the for­eign intel­li­gence gath­er­ing agency, tar­get Lord Lamb­ton? Well, accord­ing to the agent in ques­tion, Lee Tracey who first came to the public’s atten­tion in the Pro­fumo Affair, MI6 was motiv­ated by a desire to embar­rass MI5, which it deemed not to be up to scratch in its domest­ic spy­ing work.

So the “hon­eytrap” is a tried and tested meth­od to com­prom­ise your oppon­ents and score polit­ic­al points. But, unless there is some private feud with the spies, it does seem unlikely in this case. Mos­ley may enjoy an exot­ic sex life, but does the F1 boss really look like he poses a legit­im­ate threat to nation­al security? .

The more fun­da­ment­al issue is surely the effect­ive­ness of MI5’s in-house vet­ting sec­tion. How did the A4 officer­’s mar­riage to a pros­ti­tute escape their notice? The sec­tion respons­ible, C4, checks the back­grounds of employ­ees to the nth degree – a sys­tem called “Developed Vet­ting”. Any char­ac­ter “defects” must be picked up via an extens­ive series of checks.

In the wake of this scan­dal, an inev­it­able unnamed seni­or White­hall source was quoted as say­ing “I can­not talk about indi­vidu­al cases, but we do expect high stand­ards of beha­viour from all staff at all times, both pro­fes­sion­ally and privately”.

Well, sort of….

When I was recruited in 1991, MI5’s primary con­cern was that unknown trans­gres­sions could lead to black­mail. If the mis­de­mean­ours were minor but admit­ted, MI5 ten­ded to turn a blind eye.

In the 1990s MI5 still had an offi­cial policy of not employ­ing homo­sexu­als. As late as the 1980s, homo­sexu­al­ity had been deemed by the ser­vice to be a “char­ac­ter defect”, as well as a poten­tial source of black­mail. As you sign away your employ­ment rights when you join MI5, there was no point in any­one cry­ing “dis­crim­in­a­tion”. The pos­i­tion changed in 1995, and one brave soul did step out of the closet at the time. Also, when I worked there, dope-smoking was com­mon­place amongst young officers – and some coughed (if you’ll par­don the pun) to this dur­ing their vet­ting inter­views. No action was taken. Sim­il­arly, infi­del­ity was a vet­ting offense, but many (mar­ried) officers were at it like the pro­ver­bi­al rabbits.

Per­haps it has tightened up since my day. How­ever, this seems unlikely giv­en the recent scan­dal. How can we expect MI5 to adequately pro­tect this coun­try when it can’t even police its own staff?

Terrorism Act used against Journalist

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A wor­ry­ing art­icle in today’s Guard­i­an by the indefatig­able Duncan Camp­bell, in which he reports that police are using the Ter­ror­ism Act (2000) to try to force a journ­al­ist to hand over inform­a­tion from a source.

This issue is the scared cow of journ­al­ism – that they nev­er reveal their sources. To do so would imme­di­ately deter whis­tleblowers from speak­ing in con­fid­ence to the media, and gov­ern­ment crimes and lies would remain secret. The pro­tec­tion of journ­al­ist­ic sources con­trib­utes to safe­guard­ing our demo­cracy, as legis­la­tion such as the Free­dom of Inform­a­tion Act (2000) is effect­ively tooth­less when up against the inner work­ings of the state.

Because of this, journ­al­ists with integ­rity in this coun­try and abroad are will­ing to risk pris­on rather than hand over their notes. As Camp­bell remarks, this happened to Mar­tin Bright in 2000 when he was Home Affairs Edit­or at The Observ­er. The Met­ro­pol­it­an Police Spe­cial Branch went crash­ing into the offices on Far­ring­don Road, demand­ing that he hand over all his notes on the Shayler case. More bizar­rely, they also deman­ded a let­ter Shayler had sent to The Guard­i­an, even though it had already been pub­lished in the news­pa­per. Thank­fully for Mar­tin, the Nation­al Uni­on of Journ­al­ists sup­por­ted him, and the police even­tu­ally backed off.

The fact that the police are using the Ter­ror­ism Act as is a wor­ry­ing new devel­op­ment. But it’s not just pro­duc­tion orders from the police that journ­al­ists and news­pa­pers have to be wor­ried about. The author­it­ies have a range of weapons in their arsen­al if they choose to sup­press inform­a­tion eman­at­ing from inner gov­ern­ment circles or the intel­li­gence world. And yet it is with­in these very circles that the most hein­ous crimes and viol­a­tions are com­mit­ted, and whence the most sig­ni­fic­ant whis­tleblowers tend to emerge. Think Dr Dav­id Kelly, Dav­id Shayler, Kath­er­ine Gun.

So, what else can the author­it­ies use to sup­press val­id cri­ti­cism? Well, firstly and most notori­ously, we have the Offi­cial Secrets Act in the UK. This does not just pre­vent intel­li­gence officers and noti­fied gov­ern­ment offi­cials from ever speak­ing to any­one out­side the agency about any­thing, ever (Sec­tion 1(1)). Slightly less well known is Sec­tion 5, which makes it a crime for any journ­al­ist to receive or eli­cit inform­a­tion from these whis­tleblowers that dam­ages “nation­al secur­ity” (the term to this day remains undefined). Of course, as we saw in the Shayler case, the gov­ern­ment is always extremely reluct­ant to cross the media and enforce this, so it is usu­ally just the unfor­tu­nate whis­tleblower who is hung out to dry.

If the threat of the OSA fails, the gov­ern­ment can always find a tame judge to issue an emer­gency injunc­tion. Again, this happened in the Shayler case, when an injunc­tion was taken out both against him and the UK’s nation­al media. Need­less to say, the injunc­tion against the media was dropped (even this gov­ern­ment quailed at the pro­spect of tak­ing on News Inter­na­tion­al and the Mail group), but remains in place to this day against the hap­less whistleblower.

This injunc­tion is no small thing. The government’s law­yers have used it to fright­en off pub­lish­ers from even look­ing at a nov­el (that’s right – a work of fic­tion) that Shayler wrote in 1998. Let­ters winged their way from gov­ern­ment law­yers to UK pub­lish­ers in Lon­don in 1999. And when Shayler built a web­site, hos­ted by Tab­net in Cali­for­nia, the gov­ern­ment wrote to them point­ing out that there was an injunc­tion in place and ask­ing for the site to be taken down. Tab­net gently poin­ted out that per­haps the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment had for­got­ten about 1776, and con­tin­ued to host the site.

If the OSA and injunc­tions are not enough, we also have the notori­ous D Notice Com­mit­tee (now rebranded as the Defence Press and Broad­cast­ing Advis­ory Com­mit­tee), a body that can block pub­lic­a­tion of a story by issu­ing a notice at the say-so of the gov­ern­ment. Very appro­pri­ate in a so-called demo­cracy. What makes it worse is that the Com­mit­tee is made up of volun­teers from amongst the great and the good from the media world, as well as rep­res­ent­at­ives from gov­ern­ment depart­ments. These guys, seni­or edit­ors and TV exec­ut­ives, enter the charmed inner circle and start to police their own industry. It’s amaz­ing how quickly new appointees go nat­ive and fight the government’s corner.

So there you have it – a whole bat­tery of laws to pro­tect the Brit­ish Estab­lish­ment from the scru­tiny and con­struct­ive cri­ti­cism of the media. When a journ­al­ist of integ­rity stands up to the author­it­ies, we should all sup­port them. They are provid­ing a cru­cial ser­vice of vent­il­a­tion and account­ab­il­ity for our retreat­ing demo­cracy. I wish Shiv Malik, the freel­an­cer at the eye of the cur­rent storm, the very best.

 

Straw Man

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The gov­ern­ment is push­ing through yet anoth­er piece of legis­la­tion designed to provide “pub­lic ser­vice hon­esty, integ­rity and inde­pend­ence” to the Brit­ish people. As part of this strategy, the draft Con­sti­tu­tion­al Renew­al Bill even con­tains a sec­tion to provide pro­tec­tion for gov­ern­ment whis­tleblowers. Need­less to say, spies are auto­mat­ic­ally excluded (see sec­tion 25 (2) of the draft Bill).

The draft Bill states that any whis­tleblowers from with­in the ranks of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ will be dealt with intern­ally. This has always been the case for MI5 and 6 (des­pite the government’s breath­tak­ing lies dur­ing the Shayler case that he could have gone to any crown ser­vant with his con­cerns). How­ever, in the case of GCHQ, this Bill will take away employ­ees’ rights to go to an inde­pend­ent Com­mis­sion­er, to bring it into dra­coni­an line with its sis­ter agencies.

So, to put this bluntly, those in our intel­li­gence agen­cies who exper­i­ence eth­ic­al qualms about their work or, even worse, wit­ness crimes, will have to take their con­cerns to the head of the very agency com­mit­ting these crimes. Let’s guess how far these com­plaints will go.

Now, some might say that it’s naïve to think that the intel­li­gence agen­cies don’t com­mit illeg­al or uneth­ic­al acts. All I can say to that is — grow up. James Bond is a myth. Even the bad old days of the Cold War when, as former MI5 officer Peter Wright put it, MI5 could “bug and burgle its way around Lon­don” with impun­ity are long gone. The 1985 Inter­cep­tion of Com­mu­nic­a­tions Act (and sub­sequent legis­la­tion), the 1989 Secur­ity Ser­vice Act, and the 1994 Intel­li­gence Ser­vices Act, have put paid to that. In line with basic human rights, the spies now have to apply for min­is­teri­al per­mis­sion based on, ahem, a sol­id intel­li­gence case, to aggress­ively invest­ig­ate a target.

Dur­ing the 10 month peri­od of my recruit­ment to MI5 in 1990, I was repeatedly told that the organ­isa­tion had to obey the law; that it was evolving into a mod­ern counter-ter­ror­ism agency. If that is indeed the case, then why is MI5 still to this day not account­able in the same way as the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police Spe­cial Branch, which does the same work?

And who is the brave politi­cian ensur­ing that our intel­li­gence com­munity can remain shrouded in secrecy and pro­tec­ted from cri­ti­cism by the full force of the law? Stand up Justice Min­is­ter Jack Straw.

It just remains for me to say that Straw has a cer­tain his­tory in this area. In 1997, when Shayler blew the whistle, Straw was the Home Sec­ret­ary, the gov­ern­ment min­is­ter charged with over­see­ing MI5. One of Shayler’s early dis­clos­ures was that MI5 held files on a num­ber of politi­cians, includ­ing Straw him­self. Did Straw demand to see his file in angry dis­be­lief? No, he meekly did the spies’ bid­ding and issued a blanket injunc­tion against Shayler and the UK’s nation­al media.

But think about it — this is a clas­sic Catch 22 situ­ation. Either MI5 was right to open a file on Straw because he was a polit­ic­al sub­vers­ive and a danger to nation­al secur­ity – in which case, should he not have imme­di­ately resigned as Home Sec­ret­ary? Or MI5 got it wrong about Straw. In which case he should have been invest­ig­at­ing this mis­take and demand­ing to know how many oth­er inno­cent UK cit­izens had files wrongly and illeg­ally opened on them.

But Straw did neither. Per­haps he was wor­ried about what the spies could reveal about him? It’s inter­est­ing that he is yet again rush­ing to pro­tect their interests….

 

CCTV doesn’t prevent crime

Posted on by Annie Machon
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So, the argu­ment about CCTV and our big broth­er soci­ety rumbles on. A seni­or police­man, Detect­ive Chief Inspect­or Mick Neville of the Visu­al Images, Iden­ti­fic­a­tions and Detec­tions Office (Viido) at New Scot­land Yard, has been quoted as say­ing that only 3 per cent of crimes have been solved by CCTV evid­ence. Des­pite the UK hav­ing the highest per cap­ita num­ber of CCTVs in the world, this brave new world has failed to make us safer.

A few oth­er police forces, and nat­ur­ally the secur­ity com­pan­ies flog­ging the kit, say that CCTV has at least dra­mat­ic­ally reduced oppor­tun­ist­ic crimes. Who should we believe?

What can­not be dis­puted is the fact that there are well over 4,000,000 CCTVs in this coun­try, and the organ­isa­tion, Pri­vacy Inter­na­tion­al, assesses that we are the most watched cit­izenry in Europe.

While some law-abid­ing cit­izens say they feel intim­id­ated by CCTV and how the inform­a­tion could poten­tially be mis­used, most people seem not to care. In fact, the major­ity appar­ently feel safer if they can see CCTV on the streets, even if this per­vas­ive sur­veil­lance has in no way dis­cour­aged crimes of viol­ence. So why this gap between per­cep­tion and reality?

One of my pet the­or­ies has always been to blame Big Broth­er. No, not the book. I have always been flum­moxed by the pop­ular­ity of the TV show and the pleth­ora of real­ity TV spin-offs. My instinct­ive reac­tion was that it was sim­il­ar to being “groomed” to accept round-the-clock intru­sion into our per­son­al lives. More than accept – desire it. The clear mes­sage is that such sur­veil­lance can lead to instant fame, wealth and access to the Z‑list parties of Lon­don. And for that we are sleep-walk­ing into a real Orwellian nightmare.

Slightly flip­pant the­or­ies aside, it is inter­est­ing that one of the most cited examples of the need for CCTV was the Bish­opsgate bomb­ing in Lon­don in 1993. In this case a lorry bomb, filled with a tonne of home made explos­ive (HME) was det­on­ated in the heart of the city of Lon­don by the IRA. One per­son was killed, many were injured, and hun­dreds of mil­lions of pounds worth of dam­age was caused, not to men­tion the fact threat the IRA scored a huge pub­li­city coup.

But this had noth­ing to do with the lack or oth­er­wise of CCTV in the streets of the City. It was an intel­li­gence fail­ure, pure and simple.

This attack could and should have been pre­ven­ted. It occurred while I was work­ing in MI5, and it was widely known in the ser­vice at the time that the bomber should have been arres­ted six months before dur­ing a sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion. Des­pite the fact that he was seen check­ing out anoth­er lorry bomb in stor­age, he was allowed to walk free and escape to the Repub­lic of Ire­land due to pro­ced­ur­al cock-ups. Months later, he returned to the City and bombed Bishopsgate.

By rely­ing increas­ingly on tech­no­lo­gies to pro­tect us, we are fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the Amer­ic­ans. They have always had an over-reli­ance on gad­gets and giz­mos when seek­ing to invest­ig­ate crim­in­als and ter­ror­ists: satel­lite track­ing, phone taps, bugs. But this hoover­ing up of inform­a­tion is nev­er an adequate replace­ment for pre­cise invest­ig­at­ive work. Plus, any crim­in­al or ter­ror­ist worth their salt these days knows not to dis­cuss sens­it­ive plans electronically.

Scat­ter-gun approaches to gath­er­ing intel­li­gence, such as blanket sur­veil­lance, still at this stage require human beings to pro­cess and assess it for evid­en­tial use. That, accord­ing to DCI Neville, is part of the prob­lem. There is just too much com­ing in, not enough staff, insuf­fi­cient co-oper­a­tion between forces, and the job lacks per­ceived status with­in the police.

The oth­er prob­lem of an over-reli­ance on tech­no­logy is that it can always be hacked. The most recent hack­ing has broken the RFID chips that we all carry in our pass­ports, Oyster cards and the planned ID cards. New tech­no­lo­gies can­not guar­an­tee that our per­son­al data is secure, so rather than pro­tect­ing us, they make us more liable to crimes such as iden­tity theft.

So once again nation­al and loc­al gov­ern­ment bod­ies have rushed to buy up tech­no­logy, without fully think­ing through either its applic­a­tion or its use­ful­ness. And without fully assess­ing the implic­a­tions for a free soci­ety. Just because the tech­no­logy exists, it does not mean that it is fit for pur­pose, nor that it will make us safer.