Annie Machon

DoubleThink Disorder - a new pathology

An update is apparently due of the 1994 edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", the psychiatrists' bible that allows them to tick-box their patients into a disorder, and then, no doubt, prescribe Big Pharma industry drugs or an expensive form of therapy.  Anyone who has ever watched Adam Curtis's excellent "Century of Self" will be aware of the pathologising of society to the benefit of the psychiatric professions and far beyond.

I am not making light of serious mental illnesses requiring specialised and long term treatment such as bipolar, schizophrenia or chronic depression.  These are crippling and soul-destroying conditions and many families, including my own, have been touched by them.

But I am concerned by the appalling Pharma-creep that has been going on over the last few decades where, for example, increasing numbers of children are labeled with ADHD and ladled full of Ritalin (which can also lead to a thriving black market in the onward sale of said drug). And we are apparently about to see ever more divaricating disorders added to the shrinks' bible.  

As this recent article in The Independent states, stroppy teens will now have "oppositional defiance disorder", and adults who think of sex more than every 20 minutes are suffering from "hypersexual disorder". (How on earth will this be diagnosed - will potential sufferers have to keep a thought crime diary as they go about their daily lives? Management meetings could be so much more diverting as people break off to write an update every so often - although they might have to pretend they're playing buzzword bingo.)   And those suffering from shyness or loneliness will suffer from "dysthymia".  Well, as a classicist, I'm glad to see that ancient Greek still has a role to play in today's lexicon.

I know that such behavioural traits can be debilitating, but to pathologise them seems rather extreme - enough to give a person a complex.....

On another somewhat facetious note I was intrigued to see this doing the internet rounds recently.  It appeared to suggest that having a robust distrust of your government was also about to be pathologised as Anti-Government Phobia, which I presume would mean that vast swathes of the world's population were mentally ill.  However, I think the clue to the legitimacy of the piece was in the name of the supposed author: Ivor E. Tower MD.....

However, back to the point of this article. This was the paragraph in the Indie report that really got my goat:

"More worrying, according to some experts, are attempts to redefine crimes as illnesses, such as "paraphilic coercive disorder", applied to men engaged in sexual relationships involving the use of force. They are more commonly known as rapists."

So it appears that crime will now be explained away as a disorder.  

But, but, but.... the key point LEAPing out at me, if you'll forgive the clumsy link, is that this seems to be in direct, sharp contrast to how we deal with an immense and ongoing problem in the world today: namely the 50 year old failed "war on drugs".  In this phoney war millions of people across the world have been, and against all expert advice, continue to be treated as criminals rather than as patients.

Rather than rehash (sorry) all the well-known articles about why this war is such a failure on every conceivable front, let me just make three key points: prohibition will always fail (as this classic "Yes Minister" scene depicts), and the regulation and taxation of recreational drugs (in the same way as alcohol and tobacco) would be good for society and for the economy; it would decapitate organised crime and, in some cases, the funding of terrorism; and, most pertinently for the purposes of this article, it would make the use and possible abuse of recreational drugs a health issue rather than a criminal matter.

Many people at some point in their lives experiment with drugs such as dope, E, coke, or whatever and have fun doing so, just as many like to have a drink to unwind after work.  A small percentage will go on to develop medical problems.  

That is the crux of the argument here. Excessive abuse of drugs, both licit and illicit, is manifestly a health issue and yet some people are criminalised.  Compare and contrast the proposed new shrinks' bible, where what were formerly deemed to be crimes will now be seen as medical disorders.

I would call this rank hypocrisy, but perhaps the shrinks can come up with a more high-brow name?  I propose Societal DoubleThink Disorder.  

The Bankers' Bonus being that it would conveniently (psycho)pathologise all our "peace-speaking" war-mongering politicians, "free market" monopolistic big businesses, and "publicly owned but private profit" banks.

Praise the Government and pass the Ritalin....

"Subversion" old and new

An interesting article in yesterday's Telegraph by political commentator Peter Oborne about Abu Qatada.  This case has caused much sound and fury amongst the British political and media classes over the last couple of days.  Oborne's article strips out the bombast and takes us back to basic principles - as did this other recent article in the Independent a day or two ago by Christina Patterson.

However, what really grabbed my attention in Oborne's article was his reference to David Maxwell Fyfe, the British politician and lawyer who was tasked by Sir Winston Churchill to lay the foundations of the European system of human rights after the atrocities of World War Two - a period when the need for basic rights was seared into people's minds.  

While Maxwell Fyfe laid some good foundations for European law, his name also has resonance to all who worked for the UK domestic Security Service, MI5, during or in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War.  It was Maxwell Fyfe's directive, issued in 1952, that was instrumental in allowing MI5 to spy on British political activists subversives.  This directive remained in place until 1989, when MI5 was placed on a legal footing for the first time in its then 80 year history, with the Security Service Act 1989.  Here is a segment about the Maxwell Fyfe directive from my old book, "Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers":

"Background to subversion

At this time MI5 was still using the same criteria for recording individual subversives and their sympathisers as was set out by Home Secretary David Maxwell-Fyfe in 1952.  He called on the services to identify any individual engaged in undermining Parliamentary democracy, national security and/or the economic well-being of the UK by violent, industrial or political means.  In fact, many would argue that groups who used only political means to get their point across were merely exercising their democratic rights.  In fact, MI5 used photos of demonstrations, copies of election lists and even lists of subscribers to radical left-wing book clubs as indicators of subversive sympathy and membership.  Of course, the world was a very different place when I joined the section, almost 40 years after Maxwell-Fyfe’s declaration, not least because of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies.  

From Maxwell-Fyfe’s statement to Parliament, which was never made law, MI5 and subsequent governments used to argue that all members of certain parties –such as the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) or later the bewildering array of Trotskyists, with names like the International Marxist Group (IMG), Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) Major and Minor, Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), anarchists and the extreme right — were threats to the security of the state or our democratic system.  This in itself is a contentious proposition.  None of these Trotskyist groups was cultivating Eastern bloc finance or building bombs in smoky back rooms, but were instead using legitimate democratic methods to make their case, such as standing in elections, organising demonstrations and educating 'the workers'.  They certainly had no allegiance to a foreign power, the primary raison d’etre for the investigation of subversion, because, unlike the Communist Party, they abhorred the Eastern bloc.

Since MI5 was effectively investigating individuals for holding opinions the government did not like — a very un-British position — it was always at pains to point out that it took its responsibilities with regard to human rights very seriously, although not seriously enough to ensure that these activities were regulated by a legal framework.  All the service’s phone taps prior to the passing of the Interception of Communications Act (IOCA) in 1985 were unlawful because there was no legislation governing the interception of communications." 

The directive was not a legally binding document, but it was the basis for the work of F Branch, MI5's massive section tasked with hunting "subversives" during those decades.  It allowed intelligence officers great latitude in interpreting what was deemed subversive activity and who were "legitimate' targets.  And yet there were many, many instances of the abuse of this system by paranoid, senior intelligence officers over the years.  More information can be found in this chapter on subversion from the book.

So my point is, yes, Britain ostensibly led the way in developing a system to protect human rights in the aftermath of the Second World War.  But the very architect of that system then produced the directive that gave British spies carte blanche to investigate political dissidents within their own country, which they abused for decades.

And now we have commentators rightly saying that we should uphold basic human rights' values in cases such as Abu Qatada.  But what about all the UK activists who were illegally investigated by MI5 from 1952 to the 1990s? And, more pertinently today, what about all the activists and protesters who have been aggressively spied upon by the unaccountable, undercover police of the NPOIU since the 1990s, under the illegal category of "domestic extremists"?

I was heartened to see 87 year old artist and peace activist John Catt is suing the NPOIU for intrusive surveillance over the last 6 years.  Perhaps he should quote Maxwell Fyfe on human rights during his case?

The Official Secrets Act - when will the Britsh media learn?

I have been watching with a certain cynical interest the unfolding of Operation Weeting, one of the plethora of Metropolitan Police investigations into the UK phone hacking scandal, involving many of our favourite players: shady private investigators, predatory journalists, bent coppers, and politicians contorting themselves in an effort to protect both their own reputations and their Friends in High Places.  And the ripples are spreading internationally.  Nothing like a little bit of globilisation....

The Guardian newspaper has made most of the early running in exposing the corrupt practices of the now defunct News of the Screws, highlighting all the dubious tabloid practices of hacking, blagging, pinging, and god knows what else.  All this done with the help of bottom-feeding private investigators, but also manifestly with the help of corrupt police officers who were not averse to the idea of taking a bribe to help their friends in Wapping.  And how far might this "trickle down corruption" might have gone, um,  up?

Despite the self-righteousness of other UK newspapers, it has also now become apparent that these dubious and potentially illegal practices were common throughout Fleet Street, and other national newspapers are also under investigation.

And yet it appears that all this could have been nipped in the bud over a decade ago, when Steven Nott, a concerned British citizen, tried to expose the vulnerability of mobile phones after he stumbled across the practice by accident.  He took his findings to a variety of national newspapers, all of whom seem to have initially thought there was a good story, but every time the news was buried.  Well, I suppose it would be, wouldn't it - after all, why would hacks expose a practice that could be so useful?

But back to the dear old OSA and the media.

In yesterday's Observer newspaper, it was reported that the police have threatened the journalists at The Guardian with the Official Secrets Act (1989) to force them to disclose the identity of their source amongst the police officer(s) in Operation Weeting who leaked useful information to the newspaper to help its exposure of illegal practices.  And, rightly, the great and the good are up in arms about this draconian use of a particularly invidious law:

"John Cooper, a leading human rights lawyer and visiting professor at Cardiff University, echoed Evans's concerns. "In my view this is a misuse of the 1989 act," Cooper said. "Fundamentally the act was designed to prevent espionage. In extreme cases it can be used to prevent police officers tipping off criminals about police investigations or from selling their stories. In this instance none of this is suggested, and many believe what was done was in the public interest.

"Cooper added: "The police action is very likely to conflict with article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of speech."

But I think he's missing a bit of recent legal history here.  The UK had the 1911 OSA which was supposed to protect the country from espionage and traitors, who faced 14 years in prison upon conviction.  Needless to say this provision was rarely used - most of the cold war Soviet moles in the establishment were allowed to slink off to the USSR, or at the very most be stripped of their "K".

However, as I've written before, the revised 1989 OSA was much more useful for the establishment.  It was specifically put in place to stop whistleblowing after the embarrassment of the 1980s Clive Ponting/Belgrano case. 

The new act was specifically designed to strip away the "public interest" defence used by Ponting in his trial, and also to penalise journalists who had the temerity to report leaks and whistleblowing from the heart of the establishment.  The OSA (1989) has been used extensively since the late 1990s, despite the fact that many senior figures in the former Labour government opposed its provisions when it went through Parliament.   Journalists are just as liable as whistleblowers or "leakers" under the provisions of this act (the infamous Section 5).

So, back to The Guardian and its legal champions.  I agree with what they are saying: yes, the 1989 OSA  has a chilling effect on freedom of speech that unduly victimises both the whistleblower and the journalist; yes, it is a uniquely draconian law for a notional Western democracy to have on its books; yes, there should be a defence of "acting in the public interest"; and yes, the OSA should be deemed to be incompatible with Section 10(2) of the European Convention of Human Rights, guaranteeing free speech, which can only be circumscribed in the interests of "national security", itself a legally undefined, nebulous, and controversial phrase under British law.

But if all the outraged lawyers read up on their case law, particularly the hearings and legal dogfights in the run up to Regina v Shayler cases, they will see that all these issues have been addressed, apparently to the satisfaction of the honourable m'luds who preside over British courts, and certainly to the establishment figures who like to use the OSA as their "get out of jail free" card.

So I wish The Guardian journalists well in this confrontation.  But I have to say, perhaps they would not have found themselves in this situation today vis a vis the OSA if, rather than just a few brave journalists, the media institutions themselves had put up a more robust fight against its provisions during its bastard birth in 1989 and its subsequent abuse.

It has been reported today that the police may have downgraded their investigation to a purely criminal matter, not the OSA.  Whatever happens does not obviate the need for the media to launch a concerted campaign to call for reform of the invidious OSA.  Just because one of their own is no longer threatened does not mean the chilling threat of this law has gone away.  As Martin Luther King said while imprisoned in 1963:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

I would also suggest the new generation working in the British media urgently read this excellent booklet produced by John Wadham of Liberty and Article 19 way back in 2000 Download Article_19_Liberty_on_OSA_2000,  to remind themselves of fundamental arguments against draconian legislation such as the OSA and in favour of the freedom of the press.

Alastair Campbell - guilty of breaching the OSA?

I have long suspected that Alastair Campbell, Labour's former Director of Communications, may potentially have broken the UK's Official Secrets Act.  Now prima facie evidence is beginning to emerge that he did indeed breach the "clear bright line" against unauthorised disclosure of intelligence. 

I know that the Metropolitan Police have their hands full investigating the meltdown that is the News of the World hacking scandal - and also trying to replace all those senior officers who had to resign because of it - but they do have a duty to investigate crime.  And not just any old crime, in this case, but one that has potentially threatened the very basis of our national security.

Why do I say this? 

You'll no doubt have some vague recollection that, in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, the British government produced a couple of reports "making a case for war".  The first, the September Dossier (2002), is the one most remembered, as this did indeed sex up the case for war, as well as include fake intelligence about Saddam Hussein trying to acquire uranium from Niger.  Most memorably it led to the "Brits 45 minutes from Doom" front-page headline in Rupert Murdoch's The Sun newspaper, no less, on the eve of the crucial war vote in Parliament.

There was also the notorious leaked Downing Street Memo, where the then-head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove (C), was minuted as saying that the intelligence and facts were being fitted around the [predetermined war] policy.

However, for the purposes of a possible Regina v. Campbell day in court, it is the second report that requires our attention.

It was published in February 2003, just before "shock and awe" was launched to liberate the grateful Iraqi people.   This report became known as the "Dodgy Dossier", as it was largely lifted from a 12 year old PhD thesis that the spin doctors had found on the internet.  However, it also included nuggets of brand-new and unassessed intelligence from MI6.  Indeed, even the toothless Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament stated in paragraph 82 of its 2002-2003 Annual Report ( Download ISC_2003) that:

"We believe that material produced by the [intelligence] Agencies can be used in publications and attributed appropriately, but it is imperative that the Agencies are consulted before any of their material is published. This process was not followed when a second document was produced in February 2003. Although the document did contain some intelligence-derived material it was not clearly attributed or highlighted amongst the other material, nor was it checked with the Agency providing the intelligence or cleared by the JIC prior to publication. We have been assured that systems have now been put in place to ensure that this cannot happen again, in that the JIC Chairman endorses any material on behalf of the intelligence community prior to publication."

At the time it was reported that Blair and Campbell had spontaneously distributed this report to journalists travelling with them on a tour of the Far East.   The ISC confirmed that the intelligence had been passed to journalists without the permission of MI6 in its September 2003 special report - "Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction: Intelligence and Assessments" (see pars 131 to 134):

"The document was originally given to a number of journalists over the weekend of
1 and 2 February and then placed in the Library of the House on 3 February. The Prime
Minister described the document as follows:

“We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of
concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports, but I hope
that people have some sense of the integrity of our security services. They are not
publishing this, or giving us this information, and making it up. It is the intelligence
that they are receiving, and we are passing on to people. In the dossier that we
published last year, and again in the material that we put out over the weekend, it is
very clear that a vast amount of concealment and deception is going on.”

"Conclusions:

"The Committee took evidence on this matter from the Chief of the SIS on both
12 February and 17 July and separately from Alastair Campbell on 17 July. Both agreed
that making the document public without consulting the SIS or the JIC Chairman was
a “cock-up”. Alastair Campbell confirmed that, once he became aware that the
provenance of the document was being questioned because of the inclusion of
Dr Al-Marashi’s work without attribution, he telephoned both the Chief of the SIS and
the JIC Chairman to apologise.

"We conclude that the Prime Minister was correct to describe the document as
containing “further intelligence... about the infrastructure of concealment.... It is the
intelligence that they [the Agencies] are receiving, and we are passing on to people.”

"However, as we previously concluded, it was a mistake not to consult the
Agencies before their material was put in the public domain. In evidence to us the
Prime Minister agreed. We have reported the assurance that we have been given
that in future the JIC Chairman will check all intelligence-derived material on
behalf of the intelligence community prior to publication."

Crucially, Blair and Campbell had jumped the (old Iraqi super-) gun by issuing this information, but Campbell seems to have got away with it by describing such a breach of the OSA as a "cock-up".  Or perhaps just another precipitous "rush of blood to the head" on his part, as recently described in the long-suppressed testimony of SIS2 revealed around the Chilcot Enquiry and reported in The Guardian:

"Papers released by the Chilcot inquiry into the war show that an MI6 officer, identified only as SIS2, had regular contacts with Campbell: "We found Alastair Campbell, I think, an enthusiastic individual, but also somewhat of an unguided missile." He added: "We also, I think, suffered from his propensity to have rushes of blood to the head and pass various stories and information to journalists without appropriate prior consultation" (my emphasis).

So why do I suggest that Campbell could be liable for prosecution?  It appears that he was a "notified person" for the purposes of Section 1(1) of the OSA.  While not employed by the intelligence agencies, notified persons have regular access to intelligence material and are subjected to the highest clearance - developed vetting - in the same way as the full-time spooks.  As such, they are also bound by the law against disclosure of such material without the prior written permission of the head of the agency whose intelligence they want to disseminate.  There is no room for manoeuvre, no damage assessment, and no public interest defence.  The law is clear. 

And a report in today's Telegraph about Andy Coulson and the phone-hacking scandal seems to show clearly that Campbell was just such a notified person:

"Unlike Alastair Campbell and other previous holders of the Downing Street communications director role, Mr Coulson was not cleared to see secret intelligence reports and so was spared the most detailed scrutiny of his background and personal life.....

"The only people who will be subject to developed vetting are those who are working in security matters regularly and would need to have that sort of information.

"The only special advisers that would have developed vetting would be in the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and maybe the Home Office. Andy Coulson's role was different to Alastair Campbell's and Jonathan Powell.

"Alastair Campbell could instruct civil servants. This is why [Coulson] wasn't necessarily cleared. Given [the nature of] Andy Coulson's role as more strategic he wouldn't have necessarily have been subject to developed vetting."

So it would appear that Alastair Campbell is bang to rights for a breach of the Official Secrets Act under Section 1(1).  He released new, unassessed and uncleared MI6 intelligence within the dodgy dossier.  This is not just some technical  infraction of the law - although even if it were, he would still have a case to answer.

No, this report led inexorably to our country going to war against Iraq, shoulder to shoulder with the US, and the resulting deaths, maimings, poisonings and displacement of millions of innocent Iraqi people.  It has also directly increased the terrorist threat to the UK, as Tony Blair was officially warned pre-Iraq war by the then-head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller.  With the dodgy dossier, Campbell has directly harmed countless lives and our national security.

Of course, many of us might fantasise about warmongers getting their just deserts in The Hague.  But perhaps the OSA could prove to be Al Campbell's Al Capone-style tax evasion moment.

Now, what about The Right Honourable Tony Blair?

RTTV interview: Murdoch's ex-CEO arrested

How the Light Gets In festival - my talk

My recent talk at the excellent How the Light Gets In philosophy festival at Hay-on-Wye.  With credit and thanks to IAI TV and the staff of the Institute of Art and Ideas, the organisers the event.

 

Fair trials in the UK courts? Anyone?

This article in today's Guardian about the ongoing repercussions of the Mark Kennedy undercover cop scandal earlier this year piqued my interest.  

It appears that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has suppressed key evidence about the all-too-apparent innocence of environmental protesters in the run-up to their trials.  In this case Mark Kennedy aka Stone, the policeman who for years infiltrated protest groups across Europe, had covertly recorded conversations during the planning sessions to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.

Kennedy offered to give evidence to prove that the unit he worked for at the time, the private and unaccountable ACPO-run National Public Order Investigations Unit (NPOIU), had witheld this key evidence.  It now appears that the police are claiming that they passed all the information on to the CPS, which then seems to have neglected  to hand it over to the protesters' defence lawyers. 

Which makes it even more fascinating that in April this year the Director of Public Prosecutions, famous civil liberties QC Keir Starmer no less, took the unprecedented step of encouraging those same protesters to appeal against their convictions because of potential "police" cover-ups.

It's just amazing, isn't it, that when vital information can be kept safely under wraps these doughty crime-fighting agencies present a united front to the world?  But once someone shines a light into the slithery dark corners, they all scramble to avoid blame and leak against each other?

And yet this case is just the tip of a titanic legal iceberg, where for years the police and the CPS have been in cahoots to cover up many cases of, at best, miscommunication, and at worst outright lies about incompetence and potentially criminal activity. 

A couple of months ago George Monbiot provided an excellent summary of recent "misstatements" (a wonderfully euphemistic neologism) by the police over the last few years, including such blatant cases as the death of Ian Tomlinson during the London G20 protests two years ago, the ongoing News of the World phone hacking case, and the counter-terrorism style execution, sorry, shooting of the entirely innocent Jean Charles de Menezes, to name but a few. 

Monbiot also dwelt at length on the appalling case of Michael Doherty, a concerned father who discovered that his 13 year-old daughter was apparently being groomed by a paedophile over the internet.  He took his concerns to the police, who brushed the issue aside.  When Doherty tried to push for a more informed and proactive response, he was the one who was snatched from his house in an early morning raid and ended up in court, accused of abusive and angry phone calls to the station in a sworn statement by a member of the relevant police force, sorry, service.

And that would have been that - he would have apparently been bang to rights on the word of a police secretary - apart from the fact he had recorded all his phone calls to the police and kept meticulous notes on the progress of the case.  Only this evidence led to his rightful acquittal.

As Monbiot rightly concludes, "justice is impossible if we cannot trust police forces to tell the truth".

It appears that the notion of "citizen journalists" is just sooo 2006.  Now we all need to be not only journalists but also "citizen lawyers", just in case we have to defend ourselves against potential police lies.  Yet these are the very organisations that are paid from the public purse to protect civil society.  Is it any wonder that so many people have a growing distrust of them and concerns about an encroaching, Stasi-like, police state?

This is all part of engrained, top-down British culture of secrecy that allows the amorphous "security services" to think they can get away with anything and everything if they make a forceful enough public statement: black is white, torture is "enhanced interrogation", and war is peace (or at least a "peacekeeping" mission in Libya....).  Especially if there is no meaningful oversight.  We have entered the Orwellian world of NewSpeak.

But plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.  This all happened in the 1970s and 80s with the Irish community, and also in the 1990s with the terrible miscarriage of justice around the Israeli embassy bombing in 1994.  If you have the time, please do read the detailed case here: Download Israeli_Embassy_Case

We need to remember our history.

Guardian article: the role of the spies in the UK

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 19th 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.

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

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 21st 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

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?

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 18th 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 regime.

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

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

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 29th 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.....

Security forces endanger agent lives, not whistleblowers...

Our esteemed governments, intelligence agencies and police forces always attack whistleblowers and organisations such as Wikileaks on the grounds that unauthorised disclosure of classified information puts the lives of agents and informants at risk.

Agent identities, along with ongoing operations (as Former Assistant Commissioner of Special Operations at the Metropolitan Police, Bob Quick, found to his cost two years ago) and sensitive investigatory techniques, are indeed in need of protection.  Much else is not - particularly information about lies, cover-ups, incompetence and crime.

Indeed, once you delve behind the screaming headlines that whistleblower disclosures have risked agent lives, you often find that this is absolutely not the case - in fact their motivation is usually to prevent further needless torture, death and war crimes.  So the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, was forced to admit that Wikileaks had indeed not endangered lives with the publication of the Afghan War Logs last year, and David Shayler's trial judge, in his formal ruling, stated that "no lives had been put at risk" by his whistleblowing.

Instead, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the security forces are the very organisations not taking the protection and aftercare of their agents seriously.

Mark Kennedy, the undercover police officer who spied on UK environmental protest groups, has gone on the record to say that the supervision, care and psychological support provided to him was woefully lacking.   Kevin Fulton, a serving soldier who infiltrated the IRA on behalf of the notorious Forces Research Unit, has similarly been hung out to dry and is now attempting to sue the British Government to provide the promised, adequate aftercare.

Martin McGartland, who worked as a source in Northern Ireland at the height of "The Troubles" and is credited with saving 50 lives, has also borne the brunt of this laissez faire attitude since he stopped working for intelligence.  He has the scars to prove it too, having survived assassination attempts, and once blindly leaping out of a third floor window in an frantic attempt to escape torture at the hands of the IRA.  As he says:

“Who would put their lives on the line nowadays when they can read what happens to those who did?”, McGartland says. “I can’t go home and the IRA are supposed to be a former terrorist group. Nobody is hunting down my attackers and nobody in authority seems to care. That has a direct impact on recruiting agents...."

The most egregious case is of Denis Donaldson, Sinn Fein's Head of Administration at Stormont in Northern Ireland who was outed as a MI5 and police spy by Gerry Adams in 2006.  He was brutally murdered a few months later, allegedly by the Real IRA, having received little protection or support from his erstwhile spook handlers.

So who is really more likely expose current agents to the risk of psychological damage, torture and death, or to deter future agents from volunteering to work with the security forces?  Principled whistleblowers who expose crime and incompetence with due care for protecting real secrets, or the spooks who take a cavalier approach to the pastoral care of their agents, and then hang them out to dry once their usefulness is at an end?

If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide....

"Well, if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.  Why object to increasing state surveillance powers?"

I speak regularly at international events about basic freedoms, civil liberties and encroaching police states, and this is one of the most frequently asked questions.

This question is usually posed in the context of the ubiquitous CCTV cameras that infest the streets of Britain, where it is estimated that you can be photographed hundreds of times a day going about your daily business in London. 

Not to mention the talking CCTV cameras in the North of England, nor the increasing use of spy drones (as yet, reportedly, unweaponised - at least lethally)  over the skies of Britain.  Nor the fact that the police officers in charge of CCTV units admit that the technology is only useful as evidence in 3% of cases, and that violent crime has actually gone up since the spread of CCTV, so we're certainly no safer on our streets.

Nor do the well-meaning people asking this question (who, one presumes, have never-ever done anything wrong in their lives, even to the extent of not dropping litter) seem to grasp the historical evidence: they retain an optimistic faith in the long-term benign intentions of our governments.

Yet as we've seen time and time again in history, more dubious, totalitarian and malignant governments can indeed gain power, and will abuse and extend the surveillance laws and available technology against their own peoples.  And I'm not just talking about Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s or the East German Stasi, although I'm in agreement with UK Education Secretary Michael Gove at the moment in saying that history lessons are never a waste....

But we also need to learn more recent lessons: the UK in the 1970s-1990s, where the Irish community as a whole was targeted because of fringe Republican terrorism; or the Muslim community post-9/11, which lives with the real fear of of being arrested, extraordinarily rendered, tortured, or even assassinated on the say-so of unaccountable intelligence agencies; or even peaceful protest groups in the USA and UK who are infiltrated and aggressively investigated by Stasi-like police officers.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was put in place for a very good reason in 1948: to prevent the horrors of state terrorism, violence and genocide from ever happening again.  Amongst the essential, internationally-agreed core principles are the right to life, the right not to be tortured, freedom of expression, and the right to individual privacy. 

Which brings me neatly back to the start of this article.  This is precisely why increasing state surveillance is a problem.  Because of the post-9/11, over-inflated, hyped-up threat from soi-disant terrorist groups, we are all being penalised.  The balance of power is shifting overwhelmingly in favour of the Big Brother state.

Well, almost.  The Wikileaks model is helping to level the playing field, and whatever happens to this trail-blazing organisation, the principles and technology are out there and will be replicated.  The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.

So, why not pose the very question in the title of this piece back on those who want to turn back the clock and eradicate Wikileaks - the governments, mega-corporations, and intelligence agencies which have been outed, shamed and embarrassed, and which are now trying to suppress its work?

If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.....

My article in The Guardian, 24 January 2011

Here's a link to my article in The Guardian today, exploring the confused roles of modern British spies, and looking at some ways to sort out the mess. 

Both the police and the spooks seem to be having a bit of an identity crisis at the moment...

Blitz Spirit?

The most senior police officer in the UK, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Paul Stephenson no less, is saying that the British citizens are not taking the threat of terrorism seriously enough.  "Al Qaeda" could strike at any minute, the enemy is within etc, etc....

Now, for a man of his seniority, one presumes that he has served as a policeman for a fair few years - possibly in the 1970s, certainly the 80s and 90s.  Which means that he should have a memory of what it means to be under the real, daily threat of bombs exploding that aimed to maim, kill and terrorize the civilian population of London and the rest of the UK.  After all, throughout those decades the Provisional IRA, backed by the fund-raising activities of certain American citizens and Colonel Gaddafi of Libya - that erstwhile patron of freedom fighters everywhere, now a staunch ally of the West in the "war on terror" - was pretty much putting bombs down at will on UK streets.

During these years the UK has endured Lockerbie, Omagh, Bishopsgate, Canary Wharf, and Manchester, to name but a few major atrocities.  A good summary of the terrorist attacks against London alone over the last 150 years can be found here, with the first Tube bombing occurring in 1885.  A pilot, Patrick Smith, also recently wrote a great article about aircraft security and the sheer scale of the terrorist threat to the West in the 1980s - and asks a very pertinent question: just how would we collectively react to such a stream of atrocities now? 

Putting aside my professional life at the time, I have personal memories of what it was like to live and work in London in the 1990s under the shadow of terrorism.  I remember making my way to work when I was a fledging MI5 intelligence officer in 1991 and commuting through Victoria train station in London 10 minutes before a bomb, planted in a rubbish bin, exploded on the station concourse.  One person was killed, and many sustained severe injuries.  One person had their foot blown off - the image haunted me for a long time.

I also vividly remember, two years later, sitting at my desk in MI5's Mayfair office, and hearing a dull thud in the background - this turned out to be a bomb exploding outside Harrods department store in Knightsbridge.  And let's not forget the almost daily disruption to the tube and rail networks during the 90s because of security alerts.  Every Londoner was exhorted to watch out for, and report, any suspicious packages left at stations or on streets.  Yet because of the preceding couple of decades, this was already a normal way of life in the city. 

Londoners have grown used to inconvenience; they grumble a bit about the disruption and then get on with their lives - echoes of the "keep calm and carry on" mentality that evolved during the Blitz years.  In the 1990s the only noticeable change to London's diurnal rhythm was that there were fewer US tourists clogging up the streets - an early indication of the disproportionate, paranoid US reaction to a perceived terrorist threat.

Separate from the IRA, in 1994 a car bomb exploded outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington, London.  Despite initial reports that Iranian-backed groups were responsible (and, it turns out, MI5 may have dropped the ball), Palestinian activists were blamed and convicted, wrongly it turns out, as MI5 assessed that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, had pulled a dirty trick.

Terrorism on the streets of London was nothing new.  In the early 1980s my father was in London attending an investigative journalism course and narrowly missed two bombings - one in a restaurant at Marble Arch a couple of hours after he and the rest of the course members had been eating there, and another later that night close to the hotel he was staying in at Lancaster Gate. 

My Pa had another near miss in 1970 when he was a young airline pilot flying VC-10s around the world for BOAC. He was supposed to be the pilot of the VC-10 that ended up at Dawson's Field in Jordan - hijacked by members of the PFLP and eventually blown up.  He had been prevented from flying from Bahrain that day as he was suffering a bad dose of the 'flu.

To this day, his view about both these incidents is to shrug and carry on.  Yes, it was a close shave, but if you allow incidents like that to colour the rest of your life, then the concept of terrorism has already won.

The UK and its citizens have had plenty of hands-on experience of living with the reality of war, political violence and terrorism.   As a result, I'm constantly flabbergasted by the global security crackdown since 9/11 and particularly in the UK after 7th July 2005.  It was ghastly, and my heart bleeds for the victims, families, and survivors, but major terrorist atrocities are hardly new to the UK. 

The UK government seems now to have forgotten hard-learned lessons from the 1970s and 80s in the war in Northern Ireland: that draconian measures - torture, shoot to kill, internment, military-style tribunals -  not only don't work, but also are counter-productive and act as recruiting grounds for terrorist groups.  The flagrant miscarriages of justice around cases like the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six reinforced this perspective.  

And the UK has not been alone in Europe when it comes to living with the daily reality of terrorism: the Spanish have endured Basque separatist attacks for four decades, as have the French - in addition to those perpetrated in Paris with devastating results by Algerian Islamic groups in the 1990s.  Germany successfully dealt with the Baader-Meinhof Gang (Red Army Faction), and other European countries, such as Belgium and Italy, have endured Operation Gladio style terrorist attacks over recent decades.

But in all those years, none of our countries gave up on the concept of basic values and freedoms - indeed they seemed to learn useful lessons from the repressive, failed experiment in Northern Ireland.  So why are we now falling in line, unthinkingly, with the hysterical and brutal US response post 9/11? 

In the UK we are effectively living under a Big Brother surveillance state, as I have previously and extensively written.  Other Northern European countries are constantly pressured to fall in line with the US "war on terror" fear mentality.  To its credit Germany is reacting cautiously, even in the face of the current, hyped-up terror threat.  But then we Europeans know the lessons of history - we've lived them, and Germany more than most.  The ghosts of the Gestapo and the Stasi still create a frisson of fear in the collective Germanic memory.

But returning to that doughty crime fighter, Sir Paul Stephenson.  The day after he ticked off the UK public for not taking terrorism seriously enough, he is once again in the media, predicting an era of growing civil unrest in the wake of the student riots in London, and chillingly stating that the rules of the game had changed.  Forget about trying to negotiate with campaigners - now the only way to deal with them is to spy on them, as The Guardian reported:

"We have been going through a period where we have not seen that sort of violent disorder," Stephenson said. "We had dealt with student organisers before and I think we based it too much on history. If we follow an intelligence-based model that stops you doing that. Obviously you realise the game has changed. Regrettably, the game has changed and we must act."

Last year the same newspaper revealed that ACPO, the senior police officers' private association, was running an illegal unit to spy on "domestic extremists" (read politically active citizens).  In response to the public outcry, the head of ACPO, Sir Hugh Orde, promised to stop this Stasi-like practice.  In the wake of the student protests, Sir Paul will probably see a renewed need for the unit, no doubt under another name.  Big Brother grows apace - because, of course, we all know that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia......

Spy drones coming soon to a place near you.

For a long time now I have been giving speaking out at conferences and in interviews around the world about the encroaching nature of our surveillance states. 

One aspect of this, the endemic CCTV coverage in the UK, is notorious internationally. Not only the estimated 4 million+ public CCTV cameras on British streets, but also all the traffic cameras and private security cameras that sneak a peak onto our public spaces too.  As if that were not enough, earlier this year it was also reported that local councils are investing in mobile CCTV smart spy cars too.

Additionally, of course, we had the issue of Google Street View invading our privacy, and the camera cars also just happened to coincidentally hoover up the private internet traffic of those too trusting to lock their wireless internet access.  Unlike the UK, the Germans have thankfully said a robust "nein" to Google's plan.

All this, as I've previously noted, despite the fact that the head of the Metropolitan Police department responsible for processing all this surveillance information went on the record to say that CCTV evidence is useless in helping to solve all but 3% of crimes, and those merely minor.  In fact, since CCTV has been rolled out nationally, violent crime on the streets of Britain has not noticeably reduced.

But, hey, who cares about facts when security is Big Business?  Someone, somewhere, is getting very rich by rolling out ever more Orwellian surveillance technology. 

On the streets of Britain, it is getting progressively worse.  Audiences across Europe and North America have responded with shocked laughter when I have mentioned that police trials had been conducted in the UK using talking CCTV cameras that barked orders at apparent transgressors.

In 2007 Middlesbrough, a town in the north east of the UK with a zero-tolerance policy, began a trial using these talking cameras.  In line with a government review of civil liberties this year, it was reported over the summer that the use of these cameras might be phased out.  Needless to say, the council is fighting a fierce rearguard action against the removal of talking CCTV - an obvious example of the inherent difficulty of trying to wrest established power from the authorities.

Then earlier this year it emerged that various British police forces and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA),  have ordered military-style drones to spy on the citizenry from the skies.  One drone manufacturer said that there had been enquiries about the potential for militarisation of these drones: thankfully, his response was reported as follows in The Guardian:

"Mark Lawrence, director of Air Robot UK, said: "UAVs will, to an extent, replace helicopters. Our air robots cost £30,000 compared with £10m for a fully equipped modern helicopter. We have even been asked to put weapons on them but I'm not interested in getting involved in that."

However, Wired has reported that "non-lethal" weapons could be installed, to facilitate crowd control.

There is also the other side of the security coin to consider, of course.  If these drones are implemented in the skies of Britain, how soon before some enterprising young "Al Qaeda" cadre cottons on to the idea that this could be an effective way to launch an attack?  So much for all our wonderfully effective airport security measures.

Plus, these little airborne pests will prove to be a real hazard for other aircraft, as has already been noted.

Despite all this, no widespread indignation has been voiced by the UK population.  When will the tipping point be reached about this incipient Orwellian nightmare?

But hope may be at hand.  A somewhat frivolous article appeared today, stating that small spy drones will become the new paparazzi: Version 2.0, no doubt.

Perhaps, finally, we shall now see some meaningful opposition to this encroaching Big Brother state. 

Once Bono, Sting, Saint Bob and the assembled celeb corps get on their high horses about their enshrined, fundamental right to privacy, it might finally become fashionable to discuss the very basic principles underpinning our civilisation.....

....you remember, those fuddy-duddy ideas like the right to life, not to be tortured, not to be unlawfully imprisoned or kidnapped, free speech, fair trials, free conscience etc ..... oh, and privacy of course!

Remember, remember the 5th of November....

November 5th has long had many levels of resonance for me: Bonfire Night of course, when I was a child - fireworks in the garden and burnt baked potatoes from the fire; since the age of seven, celebrating the birthday of my oldest friend; and, since 2002, the memory of having to stand up in the witness stand in an Old Bailey court room in London to give a mitigation plea at the trial of my former partner, seeing his sentence reduced from the expected thirteen months to a "mere" six, and then having to deal for weeks with the media fall-out.  A strange mix of memories.

David Shayler endured a "Kafkaesque trial" in 2002 in the sense that he was not allowed to make a defence due to government-imposed gagging orders, despite all the relevant material already having been widely pubished in the media.  The issues were summed up well in this New Statesman article from that time. 

But the current debate about control orders used against so-called terrorist suspects - my emphasis - adds a whole new dimension to the notorious phrase.

This recent, excellent article in The Guardian by lawyer Matthew Ryder about control orders sums it up.  How can you defend a client if you are not even allowed access to the information that has led to the original accusation?

The Liberal Democrats, in the run-up to the General Election earlier this year, pledged to do away with control orders, as they are an affront to the British model of justice.  However, MI5 is putting up a strong defence for their retention, but then they would, wouldn't they? 

Much of the "secret" evidence that leads to a control order appears to come from telephone intercept, but why on earth can this evidence not be revealed in a court of law?  It's not like the notion of telephone bugging is a state secret these days, as I argued in The Guardian way back in 2005.

Bearing all of the above in mind, do have a read of this interview with Paddy Hill, one of the victims of the notorious wrongful convictions for the IRA Birmingham pub bombings in 1974.  After being arrested, threatened, tortured and traumatised, he was forced to confess to a terrible crime he had not committed. 

As a result, he had to endure sixteen years in prison before his innocence was confirmed.  He is still suffering the consequences, despite having found the strength to set up the "Miscarriages of Justice Organisation" to help other victims.

And then have a think about whether we should blindly trust the word of the security forces and the police when they state that we have to give away yet more of our hard-won freedoms and rights in the name of the ever-shifting, ever-nebulous "war on terror". 

Do we really need to hold terrorist suspects in police cells for 28 days without charge?  Will we really continue to allow the head of MI6 to get away with blithely asserting, unchallenged, that British intelligence does its very best not to "benefit" from information extracted via unthinkable torture, as former UK ambassador Craig Murray so graphically described in his blog on 29th October?

I've said it before, and I shall say it again: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was put in place for a reason in 1948.  Let's all draw a breath, and remember, remember.....

 

Boiling Frogs

This Saturday, October 2, I'll be speaking at the Southwark Playhouse in London, in between the matinee and evening performances of an excellent new play by Steven Bloomer called "Boiling Frogs".  The play looks at the erosion of civil liberties in the UK, in the name of protecting us from the "war on terror", and is being performed by The Factory, an innovative theatre troupe.

My talk will be called "Are We There Yet?", and will assess how far down the road the UK has moved towards being a de facto police state: what do we mean by this, and what are the indicators we should watch out for?