Annie Machon

A Tale of Two Cases

The first case, the one hitting the headlines this week, is that of Jordanian-born alleged terrorist supremo Abu Qatada, who arrived in the UK using a forged passport almost 20 years ago and claimed asylum, and has already been found guilty twice in absentia of terrorist attacks in Jordan. He is reportedly also wanted in seven other countries for terrorist-related offences.  He has been labeled Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, and over the last few years in the UK has been variously interned, placed under control order, and held in maximum security prisons.  

The UK courts ruled that he should be deported to stand trial in his native country, but these rulings were recently overturned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), as it had concerns that Jordanian diplomatic assurances that he would not be tortured could not be relied on, and that evidence against him in any retrial there might have been obtained using torture. 

As a result, Mr Justice Mitting of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) has ruled that he should be released under a strict T-PIM (the new control order).  This decision has predictably roused the frothing wrath of the Home Office and the readership of the Daily Mail.  Politicians of all flavours have rushed out their sound bites condemning the ECtHR decision.  

But can they not see that it is the complacency and the very disdain for law that the British political and intelligence infrastructure has displayed for the last decade that has created this mess in the first place?  If, instead of kidnapping, torture, assassination, and indeed internment without trial within the UK, the rule of law had been followed, the country would not currently find itself in this legal quagmire.  

There used to be a notion that you used due process to investigate a terrorist suspect as you would any other suspected criminal: gather the evidence, present the case to the Crown Prosecution Service, hold a trial in front of a jury, and work towards a conviction. 

How quaintly old-fashioned that all seems today.  Instead, since 9/11 and the inception of the hysterically brutal "war on terror" led by the USA, we have seen people in the UK thrown into prison for years on the secret word of anonymous intelligence officers, where even the suspects' lawyers are not allowed to see the information against their clients.  The British legal system has become truly Kafkaesque.

Which leads me to the second case.  This was a quote in yesterday's Guardian about the Abu Qatada ruling:

"The Conservative backbencher Dominic Raab echoed Blunkett's anger: "This result is a direct result of the perverse ruling by the Strasbourg court. It makes a mockery of human rights law that a terrorist suspect deemed 'dangerous' by our courts can't be returned home, not for fear that he might be tortured, but because European judges don't trust the Jordanian justice system.""

In the case of Julian Assange, can we really trust the Swedish justice system? While the Swedish judicial system may have an ostensibly more fragrant reputation than that of Jordan, it has been flagrantly politicised and manipulated in the Assange case, as has been repeatedly well documented. Indeed, the Swedish justice system has the highest rate per capita of cases taken to the ECtHR for flouting Article 6 - the right to a fair trial.

If Assange were extradited merely for questioning by police - he has yet to be even charged with any crime in Sweden - there is a strong risk that the Swedes will just shove him straight on the next plane to the US under the legal terms of a "temporary surrender".  And, to bastardise the above quote, who now really trusts the American justice system?

A secret Grand Jury has been convened in Virginia to find a law - any law - with which to prosecute Assange.  Hell, if the Yanks can't find an existing law, they will probably write a new one just for him.

Forget about the fact that Wikileaks is a ground-breaking new form of high-tech journalism that has exposed corrupt practices across the world over the years.  The US just wants to make an example of Assange in retaliation for the embarrassment he has caused by exposing US double dealing and war crimes over the last decade, and no doubt as a dreadful example to deter others.  

The alleged Wikileaks source, US soldier Private Bradley Manning, has been kept in inhumane and degrading conditions for well over a year and will now be court-martialed.  The general assumption is that this process was designed to break him, so that he would implicate Assange and possibly other Wikileaks associates.  

In my view, that means that any US trial of Assange could essentially be relying on evidence obtained under torture.  And if Assange is extradited and and judicially rendered to the US, he too will face torturous conditions.

So, to summarise, on the one hand we have a man who is wanted in eight countries for terrorist offences, has already been convicted twice in his home country, but who cannot be extradited.

And on the other hand we have a man who has not been charged, tried or convicted of anything, but is merely wanted for questioning on minor and apparently trumped up charges in another country, yet who has also been imprisoned in solitary confinement and held under house arrest.  And it looks like the British authorities are happy to collude in his extradition.

Both these men potentially face a mistrial and both may potentially experience what is now euphemistically known as "degrading and inhumane treatment".

But because one faces being sent back to his home country - now seen for the purposes of his case as a banana republic with a corrupt judicial system that relies on evidence extracted under torture - he shall probably not be extradited.  However, the other faces being sent to an alien country well known as a beacon of civil rights and fair judicial system oops, sorry, as a banana republic with a corrupt judicial system that relies on evidence extracted under torture.

The UK has become a legal laughing stock around the world and our judicial framework has been bent completely out of shape by the requirements of the "war on terror" and the rapidly developing corporate fascism of our government.  

The UK is currently celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens.  Perhaps the time has come to pause and think about some of the issues he discussed in one of his best-known novels, "A Tale of Two Cities".  Do we want our country to slide further down the path of state terrorism - a phrase adopted from the original Grande Terreur of the French Revolution? 

We need to seize back our basic rights, the due process of law, and justice.

One man's terrorist is another man's activist

Here we go again.  In this heartwarming article in today's Guardian newspaper, British MPs on the Home Affairs Committee have decided that the internet is the most significant factor in the radicalisation of violent extremists and conclude that Something Must Be Done.

One paragraph leapt out at me:

"The Commons home affairs committee says internet service providers need to be as effective at removing material that promotes violent extremism as they are in removing content that is sexual or breaches copyright." (My emphasis.)

Most of us are aware of the recent dogfight in the US about the proposed SOPA and PIPA laws to crack down on copyright infringement and, as a result, there is a somewhat belated but steadily increasing outcry in Europe about the imminent imposition of ACTA across the continent.  

I have written before about how such laws provide the military-intelligence complex with the perfect stalking horse for a panoptic surveillance state, and the campaigning writer, Cory Doctorow, summed it up beautifully when he wrote that "you can't make a system that prevents spying by secret police and allows spying by media giants".

And, lo, it is now apparently coming to pass.  The Parliamentary half-wits are now proposing to use commercial legislation such as the utterly undemocratic ACTA as a benchmark for countering potential terrorists and extremists.  Might they have failed to notice the plethora of existing counter-terrorism and eavesdropping legislation, put in place for this very purpose and already much used and abused by a wide range of public bodies in the UK?

This yet again highlights the mission-creepy Big Brother corporatist group-think.  Rather than having to spell it out in boring old linear text, here is some useful linkage - what I like to think of as 3-D writing: 

Protester = activist = domestic extremist = violent extremist = terrorist  

I'm sure you can see where I am heading.  To name but a few notorious abuses, we already live in a world where western governments and spy agencies collude in the kidnapping, torture and assassination of alleged terrorist suspects; the NDAA now endorses these practices within the US; British police spy on innocent protest groups for years; legitimate protesters can be "kettled", beaten up and maced; activists can be pre-emptively arrested as easily in the UK as in Syria; and where American politicians want to designate the high-tech publishing organisation Wikileaks as a terrorist group.

There is an old aphorism that one man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter.  I think the time has come for an update:

One man's terrorist is another man's activist.  

And we are all increasingly at risk. 

Judicial rendition - the UK-US extradition treaty is a farce

Sometimes I sit here reading the news -  on subjects in which I take a deep interest such as the recent police investigation into UK spy complicity in torture, where the police decided not to prosecute - and feel that I should comment.  But really, what would be the point?  Of course the police would not find enough concrete evidence, of course no individual spies would be held to account, despite the fact that the British government has already paid massive settlements to the victims.

Now there are reports that the police will be investigating MI6 involvement in the extraordinary rendition and torture of two Libyans.  The case appears bang to rights, with documentary evidence that high-ranking MI6 officers and government ministers were involved in and approved the operation.  Yet I'm willing to bet that the plods at Scotland Yard will still not be able to find the requisite evidence to prosecute anybody. 

The inevitable (and probably wished-for outcome on the part of the authorities) is that people become so weary and cynical about the lack of justice that they stop fighting for it.  And they can temporarily succeed, when we succumb to cynical burnout.

But the case reported in today's Daily Mail, that of a young British student facing extradition to the US despite having broken no laws in the UK, succeeded in rousing my wrath. 

The hapless 23-year old Richard O'Dwyer faces 10 years in a maximum security American prison.  His crime, according to the US, is that he set up a UK-based website that provided links to other international websites that allegedly hosted copyright material.

This case is so troubling on so many levels it is difficult to know where to begin.  There are issues around the crackdown of US corporate copyright law, issues around the inequality of the unilateral Extradition Act 2003, and historic questions of US hypocrisy about extradition.

So let's start with the unsupported allegations against poor Richard O'Dwyer.  He is a student who built a website that collated a list of sites in other countries that host films, books and music for free download.  O'Dwyer did not himself download any copyrighted material, and the websites he linked to were apparently within jurisdictions where such downloads are not illegal.  Providing a signpost to other legal international sites is manifestly not a crime in the UK and he has never been charged.

However, over the last couple of decades the US entertainment lobby has been fighting a vicious rearguard action against copyright infringement, starting with the music, then the film, and now the publishing industry.  The lobbyists have proved victorious and the invidious SOPA and PIPA laws are soon to be passed by the US Congress.  All well and good you might think - it's one of those mad US issues.  But oh no, these laws have global reach.  What might be legal within the UK might still mean that you fall foul of US legislation.

Which is where the Extradition Act 2003 becomes particularly threatening.  This law means that any UK citizen can be demanded by and handed over to the US with no prima facie evidence.  As we have seen in the appalling case of alleged hacker Gary McKinnon, it matters not if the "crime" were committed on UK soil (as you can see here, McKinnon's case was not prosecuted by the UK authorities in 2002.  If it had been, he would have received a maximum sentence of 6 months' community service: if extradited he is facing up to 70 years in a US maximum security prison).

The UK government has tried to spin the egregious Libyan cases as "judicial rendition" rather than "extraordinary kidnapping" or whatever it's supposed to be.  So I think it would be accurate to call Gary McKinnon's case "judicial rendition" too, rather than boring old extradition.

Richard O'Dwyer apparently didn't commit anything that could be deemed to be a crime in the UK, and yet he is still facing extradition to the US and a 10 year stretch.  The new US laws like SOPA threaten all of us, and not just with judicial rendition. 

As I have mentioned before, digital rights activist Cory Doctorow summed it up best: "you can't make a system that prevents spying by secret police and allows spying by media giants".  These corporate internet laws are a Trojan horse that will threaten our basic civil liberties across the board.

So now to my third point.  The hypocrisy around the American stance on extradition with the UK is breathtaking.   The UK has been dispatching its own citizens off at an alarming rate to the "tender" mercies of the US judicial system since 2004, with no prima facie evidence required.  In fact, the legal proof required to get a UK citizen extradited to the US is less than that required for someone to be extradited from one US state to another. 

The US, on the other hand, delayed ratifying the law until 2006, and the burden of proof required to extradite someone to the UK remains high, so it is unbalanced not only in concept but also in practice.  And this despite the fact that the law was seen as crucial to facilitate the transfer of highly dangerous terrorist suspects in the endless "war on terror".

Why has this happened?  One can but speculate about the power of the Irish lobby in the US government, as Sir Menzies Campbell did during a parliamentary debate about the Act in 2006.   However, it is well known that the US was remarkably coy about extraditing IRA suspects back to the UK to stand trial during the 30-year "Troubles" in Northern Ireland.  We even have well-known apologists such as Congressman Peter King, the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee attempting to demonise organisations like Wikileaks as terrorist organisations, while at the same being a life-long supporter of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA.

The double standards are breath-taking.  The US dictates an extradition treaty with the UK to stop terrorism, but then uses this law to target those who might potentially, tangentially, minutely threaten the profits of the US entertainment mega-corps; and then it delays ratifying and implementing its own law for potentially dubious political reasons.

And the UK government yet again rolls over and takes it, while innocent students such as Richard O'Dwyer must pay the price.  As his mother is quoted as saying: "if they can come for Richard, they can come for anyone".

Mediafabric conference in Prague

Last October I had the pleasure of speaking at the excellent Mediafabric conference in Prague.  The focus of my talk was the future of intelligence, whistleblowing and journalism.

The event was organised by Sourcefabric, an international organisation that provides open source tools and solutions for journalists, so it was an eclectic and stimulating crowd of journalists, geeks, hacktavists and designers.   So well done and thank you to the organisers.

Here's the video:

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

The Big Dig Journalism Conference, Copenhagen

I recently did the opening keynote at the Big Dig investigative journalism conference in Copenhagen.  Thanks to the organisers for a wonderful weekend!

 

Speaking at Mediafabric Conference, Prague, 21 October

Off tomorrow to speak at the Mediafabric conference in Prague. 

Should be a good one - all about the media, journalists, technologists, designers, hackers,  and all points in between!

The conference has been organised by Sourcefabric, and there will be live streaming here.

Journalists need to wise up to secrecy laws

I had a fantastic time at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Kiev last weekend.  A huge  well done to the organisers for a great four days, and I loved having the chance to meet so many interesting and interested people from across the world!

I was invited to give the opening keynote speech (video to follow), where I discussed some of my experiences from the MI5 whistleblowing years, but then went on to apply the harsh lessons learned to the current situation vis a vis the issue of spy influence on the media today and the thorny issue of whistleblowing and the protection of sources.

Part of my talk focused on the control of the media by the spies in Britain.  As I have written before, this is very much a "carrot and stick" scenario: the soft aspect, of course, being cosy chats with selected journalists, well-timed career-enhancing scoops, as well as an increasingly unhealthy journalistic dependence on briefings coming out of the intelligence world and government.

The stick aspect includes the battery of harsh laws that can be called upon to suppress free reporting in the UK, which sometimes leads to self-censorship by the media.  These laws include:

• libel laws (Britain is notorious as the libel capital of the world);
• Terrorism Act 2000;
• injunctions;
• super-injunctions;
• Public Interest Immunity certificates (PIIs) or "gagging orders" issued by ministers;
• production orders;
• contempt of court proceedings;
• the media self-censorship of the Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee  (the infamous old "D" Notice system);
• and of course the abusive use of the Official Secrets Act 1989 

How do I know all this?  Well, as you can see from many of the links in the above list, I've lived through much of this and have followed with great interest similar and related cases over the years.  More information about these issues can be found in this excellent report produced by Article 19 and Liberty over a decade ago.  The situation has not improved.

While in Kiev I attended an excellent session where two Russian journalists discussed the ramifications of reporting on the modern incarnation of the Russian intelligence agency, the FSB.

I was somewhat startled to hear that even in Russia journalists have more legal protection than those in the UK - ie they face no criminal legal sanction if they report whistleblower material from the Russian spy agencies.  In the UK journalists potentially face 2 years in prison for doing so, under the invidious Section 5 of the 1989 OSA.

Way to go, British democracy.

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

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

 

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

Keynote at Centre for Investigative Journalism Summer School, 16 July 2011

My next talk in the UK will be a keynote at the renowned CIJ summer school on 16th July. One of the major themes this year is whistleblowing, for obvious Wikileaks-related reasons, and it appears I shall be in good company.

My talk is at 2pm on the Saturday.  I understand the keynotes are open to the public, not just summer school attendees, so come along if you can and please spread the word!

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.

 

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.

Guantanamo Files: was Bin Hamlili really an MI6 source?

My recent article in The Guardian newspaper about the strange, sad case of yet another Guantanamo victim. 

Frontline Club/New Statesman (FCNS) whistleblower debate with Julian Assange

"This house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place."

I was honoured to be asked to say a few words at the recent debate about the value of whistleblowers in London on 9th April 2011.

The Frontline Club and the left-wing New Statesman magazine jointly hosted the event, which starred Julian Assange, editor in chief of Wikileaks.  Here is the debate in full:

   

Needless to say, the opposition had an uphill battle arguing not only against logic, the fair application of law, and the meaning of a vibrant and informed democracy, but also against the new realities in the worlds of journalism and technology. 

The first more diplomatically-minded oppositionist adopted a policy of appeasement towards the audience, but the last two had to fall back on the stale and puerile tactics of name-calling and ad hominem attacks.  So good to see that expensive educations are never a waste....

The proposition was supported enthusiatically by the sell-out crowd, a resounding vote of confidence in the democratic notions of accountability and transparency.

Here's a snippet of my (brief) contribution to a fantastic afternoon:

 

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.....

UK spies continue to lie about torture

What a difference a year makes in the mayfly minds of the old media. 

In February 2010 The Guardian's resident spook watcher, Richard Norton-Taylor, reported that the serving head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, had been forced in 2008 to confess to the credulous and compliant Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament that the spies had lied, yet again, about their complicity in torture.

This confession came shortly after the ISC had released its "authoritative" report about rendition and torture, asserting that there had been no such complicity.  How did the ISC get this so utterly wrong?

It turns out that in 2006 Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, Evans's predecessor in the MI5 hot-seat, had misled the ISC about MI5's awareness of the use of torture against terrorist suspects, particularly the hapless Binyam Mohamed, whose case was wending its way through the British courts.  Bullying-Manner (as she is known in the corridors of power) appears to have been covering up for her predecessor, Sir Stephen Lander, who was quoted in The Telegraph in March 2001 as saying "I blanche at some of the things I declined to tell the committee [ISC] early on".....

But Evans had to come clean to the ISC because of the Mohamed court case, and Norton-Taylor wrote, by the Grauny's standards, his fairly hard-hitting article last year. 

Yesterday, however, he seems to be back-tracking frantically.  Following an interview by the BBC with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appearing to confirm that MI5 did indeed turn a blind eye to the use of torture, Richard Norton-Taylor and other members of our esteemed Fourth Estate are once again quoting Baroness Manningham-Buller's dicredited li(n)es to the ISC as gospel truth, and forgeting both the serving head of MI5's unavoidable confession and the evidence from the Mohamed court case itself.

The ISC was put in place following the 1994 Intelligence Services Act as a democratic fig-leaf: it is not a fully-functioning, independent oversight committee, as it is only able to report on matters of spy policy, finance and administration.  It has no powers to investigate properly allegations of crime, torture or operational incompetence, is unable to demand documents or interview witnesses under oath, and is appointed by and answerable only to the Prime Minister.  It has been lied to by the spies and senior police time and time again - the very people it notionally oversees.  As I have written before, the ISC has since its inception failed to address many key intelligence matters of the day, instead spending its time nitpicking over details.

In the face of this utter lack of intelligence accountability and transparency, is it any wonder that sites like Wikileaks have caught the public's imagination?  Wikileaks is an obvious and necessary reaction to the endemic secrecy, governmental back-scratching and cover-ups that are not only wrong in principle in a notional democracy, but have also resulted directly in illegal wars, torture and the erosion of our traditional freedoms.

Tony Soprano meets Joe McCarthy

Now I'm not a huge follower of US political theatrics.  Give it a few years and the US of A will probably exit from the world stage pursued by a bear (or panda).  So why waste your time on a dying beast?  All you can do is try to avoid the death throes as best you can. 

But this did pique my interest, purely from the Hollywood-blockbuster schlock value.  The new Chair of the US Homeland Security Committee, Republican Congressman for New York Peter King, has opened a hearing called  “The Extent of Radicalization (with a "z") in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response.” 

Here is the  Download Full_text and here's the video of King's opening statement:

 

Now isn't it wonderful that esteemed politician Peter King has woken up to the dangers of "the enemy within" - or not?  Over the last last few months he has flagrantly displayed his profound ignorance vis a vis the concept of terrorism.  Last December he called for the designation of Wikileaks, the high-tech conduit extraordinaire for public-spirited whistleblowers around the world, as a "terrorist organistion".  

And this from a politician who is reported to be a life-long supporter of the political wing of the Provisional IRA - another religious minority group that fought for its self-proclaimed ideals - and was for decades the "enemy within" the UK. 

In fact, until 9/11 the US Irish community was by far the biggest funder of PIRA terrorism for decades - so don't believe everything that is written about Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. 

I suppose it still holds true that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and Rep Peter King is clearly adhering to that point of view.....

Looking at the above video, I can't get out of my head that it's a bit like putting the fictional organised crime boss, Tony Soprano, in charge of a government committee investigating organised crime.

But it gets worse.  King even mentions the dread phrase "despite what passes for conventional wisdom in certain circles, there is nothing radical or un-American in holding these hearings".  Wasn't that also what a certain Senator Joe McCarthy said in the 1950s about the Communist witchhunts?

Such moronic statements would potentially be amusing - if it were not for the fact that Peter Chair is the King of the Homeland Security Committee of the world's dying and desperate super-power, the USA. 

Oops, silly me, I muddled the words.....

But sadly he is, and no doubt the whole world will feel the repercussions of this.  The morphing of the fictional Tony Soprano and paranoid Joe Kennedy has spawned a hellish brat - let's call him Emmanuel Goldstein, for ease of reference.

 

Alleged Wikileaks source, Bradley Manning, faces the death penalty

Alleged Wikileaks source US Private Bradley Manning is now charged with "aiding the enemy", amongst a bewildering array of 22 new charges.  This is apparently a capital offence, although the US military has cosily said that they wouldn't push for this barbaric sentence. 

So just life without the hope of parole then.....

Putting aide the minor question of whether the USA should even be entitled to call itself a modern democracy when it still has the death penalty on its books, let's just remind ourselves of what Manning is alleged to have revealed: the "Collateral Murder" military shoot-up, where innocent children, civilians and journalists were gunned down by US forces in a particularly nasty snuff video game that was then deliberately covered up by the Pentagon for years; many other heinous war crimes and records of daily brutality in Afghanistan and Iraq; and an "embarrass de richesses" of diplomatic cables. 

I think "embarrass" is the key word here, on so many levels, and goes a long way to explaining the USA's desperation to destroy Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, by any means necessary.

But the phrase from the list of charges against the hapless Manning that leaps out at me is "aiding the enemy".  If - and it's still a big legal if - Manning was indeed the source of all this crucial information, whom was he actually aiding?

Information that has appeared on Wikileaks over the last few years has been eclectic, international and very much in the public interest.  It's covered such nasties as Trafigura, the BNP, Scientology, Climategate, Guantanamo, the Australian internet blacklist, Sarah Palin, and much more.

It's certainly not just restricted to the information that hit the headlines last year about the US hegemony.  However, there is no doubt that it was the release of the Afghan, Iraq and diplomatic files that stirred up this particularly unpleasant hornets' nest.

As global citizens I would suggest that we have every right to know what is done in our name. But, having said that, according to these new charges against poor Bradley Manning, the beneficiaries of Wikileaks - ie all of us -  have now become the enemy.

When did we, the people, the global citizenry, become the enemy?  It seems that our esteemed rulers are at last showing their true colours....

On that note, do have a look at this video of former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove, speaking recently at the Cambridge Union Society.  An interesting perspective on the British Establishment's line on Wikileaks and Julian Assange:

 

Coda: As you can see from the above, copyright laws were used to spare Dearlove's blushes once this video was publicised. He was also, at the time, the Chairman of the governing committee of the Cambridge Union. However, the film was mirrored:

 

Bleat: the assassination of dissidents

OK, so I'm not sure if my concept of Bleats (half blog, half tweet) is being grasped wholeheartedly.  But so what - it makes me laugh and the Black Sheep shall perservere with a short blog post.....

So I'm a bit puzzled here.  UK Prime Minister Dave Cameron is quoted in today's Daily Telegraph as saying that:

"It is not acceptable to have a situation where Colonel Gaddafi can be murdering his own people using aeroplanes and helicopter gunships and the like and we have to plan now to make sure if that happens we can do something to stop it."

But do his American best buddies share that, umm, humane view?  First of all they have the CIA assassination list which includes the names of US citizens (ie its own people); then those same "best buddies" may well resort to assassinating Wikileaks's Julian Assange, probably the most high profile dissident in international and diplomatic circles at the moment; plus they are already waging remote drone warfare on many hapless Middle Eastern countries - Yeman, Afghanistan, Pakistan.....

Oh, and now the UK government seems poised to launch covert spy drones into the skies of Britain.  Even the UK's most right-wing mainstream newspapers, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, expressed concern about this today.  Apparently these drones have yet to be weaponised.....

It's a slippery slope down to an Orwellian nightmare.