17-Dec-11
The Daily Telegraph story which names last year's expelled Russian diplomat / spy as Mikhail Repin, is illustrated with this photo (see the immediately previous Spy Blog article)
with this caption
Repin, left, was a regular on the party circuit
The obvious question is who are the other 3 people in the photo ?
It is not unreasonable to suppose that anybody who recognises them, will assume that they could be Russian spies or that they are the alleged British potential recruitment targets of Mikhail Repin.
If you save a copy of the image and look at the EXIF meta data with a tool like http://ht4w.co.uk
The expelled Russian diplomat appears to be:
Mr Mikhail V. Repin m 3rd Secretary
according to the Daily / Sunday Telegraph
Mikhail Repin: the perfect party guest who was Whitehall spy for the Russians
Russian spy Mikhail Repin was expelled from Britain after he was caught attempting to recruit politicians and senior Whitehall officials as agents.
By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor
9:00PM GMT 10 Dec 2011
Young, good looking and articulate, he introduced as himself as "Michael" at events at Westminster think tanks and embassy receptions.
A slight accent betraying his foreign roots, the tall, suave, urbane young man mixed easily with politicians, businessmen and policy wonks on the Whitehall drinks party circuit.
But rather than being the fast-track civil servant, defence industry high flier or political adviser that many assumed he was, "Michael" was Mikhail Viktorovich Repin, Third Secretary in the Political Section at the Russian Embassy, and a spy.
Far removed for the caricature image of fictional Soviet agents, Repin had arrived in London in the wake of the murder of dissident former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, allegedly on the orders of the Kremlin, after several Russian diplomats had been expelled from Britain.
Within two years he himself had been kicked out of the country following "clear evidence" of spying.
[...]
Repin was part of the political directorate known as "Line PR" and answerable to the most senior spy at the embassy the "Rezident".
His job appears to have been to talent spot potential agents in the political world who were in a position to obtain useful information to give Russia a political or economic advantage.
He set about his task with enthusiasm, attempting to "cultivate" individuals who either currently or in future may be of value to the Russians and quickly came to the attention of MI5 "watchers", from the Security Service's A Branch, tasked with keep Russian diplomats under surveillance.
[...]
Repin left Britain in December 2010. A British diplomat was expelled from Moscow in the now customary tit-for-tat response.
Neither man was named. To do so would break an unspoken "gentlemen's agreement" between the intelligence services in both countries.
Repin's whereabouts are now unknown. His cover is blown and he is unlikely to be given another foreign posting.
There is a second version of the same story online which omits several details:
Russian spy targeted MPs and Whitehall officials
A Russian spy was expelled from Britain after he was caught attempting to recruit politicians and senior Whitehall officials as agents.
By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor
9:00PM GMT 10 Dec 2011
Mikhail "Michael" Repin, an officer from the Russian foreign intelligence service, the SVR, was thrown out after a surveillance operation highlighted his activities.Repin, who was officially a Third Secretary in the political section of the Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens, also approached people with links to British security and defence companies.
[...]
For two years Repin was engaged in talent-spotting British citizens who might provide the Russians with useful intelligence or were connected with someone with access to sensitive information.
[...]
A brief statement from William Hague, the foreign secretary, last December said the Russian embassy in London had been asked to "withdraw a member of their staff from the UK".
The ultimatum was issued "in response to clear evidence of activities by the Russian intelligence services against UK interests," Hague said.
See also Spy Blog - London Diplomatic List archive - Mikhail V. Repin appears on the 6th December 2010 list, but not on the 20th January 2011 one.
Michael Repin was one of the replacements for the 8 Russian diplomats / spies expelled from the Russian Embassy in London in June 2008, after the failed British attempt to extradite or even question Andrei Lugovoi in connection with the astonishing radioactive Polonium murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London.
What was the ""clear evidence of spying" ?
Was it actually anything more than the normal Diplomatic cocktail / barbecue party circuit chatter or even attendance at military / intelligence / industrial complex think tank conferences or exhibitions etc ?
Given the weakness of even the secret the "intelligence" supplied by MI5 the Security Service against Ekatarina Zatuliveter in the recent spy deportation debacle, how can can they convince the British public that they should be trusted over Mikhail Repin either ?
Did the "surveillance operation" actually catch Repin making an illicit "recruitment" approach to anyone with access to any real National Security secrets ?
Was there any actual evidence of him operating a Dead Letter Drop or other illicit communications technique ?
By not immediately publishing the names of diplomats / spies expelled from London (regardless of whether they are Russians, Israelis, Iranians, Libyans etc.), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is only trying to fool the British public, since the foreign press corps, and every other foreign Government, intelligence agency, serious organised criminal or terrorist gang already know such names.
They even try to refuse such information under Freedom of Information Act exemptions, although why these exemptions should be applied to foreigners who are not even in the European Union, is unclear.
See the Spy Blog FOIA request FCO diplomatic expulsions Polonium 210 murder affair category archive.
Has the Daily / Sunday Telegraph decided to break with the "voluntary" Defence Advisory Notice system of mainstream media self censorship ?
Will The Independent or the London Evening Standard newspapers keep silent about this story, given that their proprietor Alexander Lebedev is a former KGB diplomat / spy who was stationed at the Russian Embassy in London ?
The several parallel Metropolitan Police investigations into the News of the World "phone hacking" scandal, Operation Tuleta and Operation Weeting and Operation Elevden continue to produce no arrests and no prosecutions of corrupt Police or Mobile Phone industry insiders, with respect to the alleged abuse of Communications Data privacy, especially the abuse of Mobile Phone Location Data.
Surely it is obvious now even to the most technologically illiterate politicians and Whitehall civil servants, that there is no effective regulation of Communications Data investigation systems.
Communications Data snooping by the Police etc can be a powerful investigative technique, but only when it is clear that it is not being abused.
Public confidence in the use of these techniques has been damaged by allegations (so far without much hard proof) that disreputable tabloid newspapers have been able to gain access to this highly intrusive, private information, which can only have come via corrupt police or intelligence agency or mobile phone network staff.
BBC reports that lawyers in civil cases before Mr Justice Vos have claimed:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15794225
18 November 2011 Last updated at 16:29
NoW hacking victims claim investigator tracked phones
A private investigator was involved in illegally tracking mobile phones, hacking victims have claimed.
Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed for phone hacking for the News of the World, is linked to the so-called pinging of mobiles and computer hacking, a High Court civil case heard.
Pinging is tightly regulated and restricted to police, security services and a small selection of other bodies.
Mulcaire and News International have yet to respond to the claims in court.
[...]
The allegations were aired at a case management hearing in the civil cases for breach of privacy brought by hacking victims against News International, the owner of the now defunct NoW.
[...]
In July, the Metropolitan Police launched Operation Tuleta, alongside phone-hacking inquiry Operation Weeting, to probe allegations of computer hacking.
Operation Tuleta is examining breach of privacy claims received by police since January.
Sea also the previous Spy Blog article and comments back in July 2011:
NYT: NOTW bought mobile phone location data for $500 a time from corrupt police
N.B. under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, there are no criminal sanctions available against the Police or others who abuse Communications Data, of which Mobile Phone Location Data is a part, although there is a penalty of up to 2 years in prison for illegal Interception of the content of mobile phone voice or data communications, which is what the the News of the two News of the World employees were convicted of back in 2007.
The deliberate loopholes in this lax regime , brought in by the technologically inept yet authoritarian Labour government e.g. the totally ineffective and secretive Interception of Communications Commissioner, have not been tightened up by the dithering Conservative / Liberal Democrat Coalition government,
The proposals to slightly strengthen the roles of the Interception of Communications Commissioner and the Intelligence Services Commissioner and/ or the creation of an Intelligence Services Inspector General outlined in the recent Green Paper on Justice and Security , do not apply to "normal" Police cases.
.
The appalling "see through your children's clothes" body scanners inflicted on the innocent public at some British airports by are soon to be regulated somewhat by the European Union.
5) The Commission has requested its Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) to assess the possible effects of security scanners which use ionising radiation to human health Without prejudice to Council Directive 96/29/Euratom of 13 May 1996 laying down basic safety standards for the protection of the health of workers and the general public against the dangers arising from ionizing radiation (3) and of Directive 2006/95/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on the harmonisation of the laws of Member States relating to electrical equipment designed for use within certain voltage limits (4), at this stage, to safeguard citizens' health and safety, only security scanners which do not use ionising radiation are added to the list of allowed methods for passenger screening for aviation security purposes.
(3) OJ L 159, 29.6.1996, p. 1.
(4) OJ L 374, 27.12.2006, p. 10
ionizing / ionising
Watch out for sneaky lobbying by the Backscatter X-Ray imager manufacturers e.g. Rapiscan, to try to get their products added to the authorised list in the future.
(7) By laying down specific operational conditions on the use of security scanners and by providing passengers with the possibility to undergo alternative screening methods, this Regulation, together with the specific implementing rules adopted pursuant to Article 4(3) of Regulation (EC) No 300/2008, respects fundamental rights and observes the principles recognised in particular by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, including respect for human dignity and for private and family life, the right to the protection of personal data, the rights of the child, the right to freedom of religion and the prohibition of discrimination. This Regulation must be applied according to these rights and principles.
The appalling Manchester Airport scheme promoted by the Labour government under Gordon Brown (hatred for which does not dim with the passage of time), breaks both of these sections of the Regulation.
It uses a forbidden (for now) ionising radiation Backscatter X-Ray imager and it disobeys the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union by deliberately not permitting an alternative, e.g. pat down search, if passengers refuse to allow themselves or their children to be snooped on by these unnecessary imaging machines and then prevented from flying (regardless of how many security staff are standing around idly).
This Regulation shall enter into force on the 20th day following its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union
.
This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.Done at Brussels, 10 November 2011.
The Publication of this body scanner regulation in The Official Journal of the European Union was on the 11th November 2011 (available online from the 15th November 2011)
Therefore this EU Regulations comes into force on Thursday 1st December 2011.
Watch out for Active and Passive Millimetre Wave radar scanners instead.
Remember that Millimetre Wave and TeraHertz scanners / imagers are prone to the effects of wet clothing e.g. during rain or snow.
According to
53. Existing technical facilities allow blurring the face and/or parts of the body not needed for further analysis of the absence of prohibited articles. Equally, it is technically possible to produce instead of real images of the body only a mannequin or a stick figure, which does not reveal any real parts of the screened person's body, but only identifies the location for further search.
It seems that the EU Commission was hoping to ban the use of images entirely , but there seems to have been lobbying from manufacturers who have not yet converted their systems to use synthetic "stick figure" displays to show the approximate locations of suspicious objects,without betraying any actual "naked" human images.
In the light of the recent Data Protection scandals involving Personal Data, including Sensitive Personal Data, exposed by Members of Parliament or their staff, when handling or disposing of copies of supposedly confidential, privileged, Constituency Correspondence, we have been prompted to set out a Model Letter for Spy Blog readers and others, to use to obtain some reassurance from their own Members of Parliament at Westminster.
Even if they fail to answer all of the sections to your satisfaction, such letters might prompt Members of Parliament and other elected representatives to improve the privacy and security of our correspondence with them.
Without an adequate assurance of such privacy and confidentiality, there really is no point in contacting a Member of Parliament,. especially if the issues you are trying to discuss with them actually involve potential snoopers such as government officials or the tabloid media etc.
You can also also send such letter to your other Elected Representatives e.g. your Local Councillors, Members of the European Parliament, Members of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Irish Assembly or the London Assembly etc.
See http://www.writetothem.com/
Download:
Model_Letter_MP_Constituency_Correspondence_Data_Protection.rtf
Dear [Member of Parliament]
I am writing to you as one of your Constituents
There have been a couple of recent scandals, regarding the inept handling of Sensitive Personal Data included within supposedly privileged Constituency correspondence by two Government Ministers, Oliver Letwin (in St. James Park)
and Vince Cable (at his Constituency office):
The Ministry of Justice / Cabinet Office have produced a public consultation Green Paper on Justice and Security. which closes on 6th January 201.
Some Spy Blog observations on:
- Nobbling civil cases and inquests
- Still no proposals about Intercept As Evidence
- Intelligence and Security Committee
- Raising the public profile of a couple of the RIPA Commissioners
- Inspector General
- Spy Blog suggestions
- Respond to the Consultation
Nobbling civil cases and inquests
The first section seems to be about various proposed legalistic fiddles to the evidence procedures civil cases and Inquests.
They seem to be proposing to infect civil courts and inquests with the same wretched Special Advocate / Closed Material Procedures schemes which were introduced under Labour for the ineffective Special Immigrations Appeals Tribunal (SIAC) and the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (which rarely does anything at all).
They also appear to be trying to nobble the use of Norwich Pharmacal orders (a rarely used legal precedent which allows a third party not directly involved in a civil case, to be ordered to hand over information or evidence which is pertinent). Such orders have recently been applied to cases tainted with "national security" or "intelligence" rather than actual evidence.
If you believe the Green Paper, this is to allow better, more accurate "justice" in cases cases which involve genuine "national security" secrets, which might otherwise have to be abandoned or settled out of court by the government to preserve "the public interest" in secrecy.
The increasingly hated and incompetent previous Labour government always cloaked its repressive legislative onslaught on our civil liberties and freedoms with Orwellian newspeak and the Coalition seems to be following suit.
Whilst there is a case for keeping genuine time limited tactical intelligence, or the specific details of still viable technological intelligence gathering techniques, or the identities of Covert Human Intelligence Sources secret, there is no trustworthy mechanism for limiting such secrecy only to such examples.
Far too often, the "national security" classification of documents or witness testimony is really about preventing embarrassment to politicians, mandarins and apparatchiki in Whitehall etc.e.g. the torture claims case of Binyam Mohamed and the inquest into the "Friendly Fire" deaths of UK military personnel caused by trigger happy US Air Force ground attack aircraft pilots in Afghanistan etc.
It is all about maintaining the fiction of the appearance of "The Control Principle"
We expect our intelligence partners to protect our material when we share it with them, and we must be able to deliver the same protection of their material.
Confidence built up over many years can all too quickly be undermined. That is why, if the trust of the UK's foreign 'liaison' partners is to be maintained, there should be no disclosure of the content or fact of the intelligence exchange with them without their consent. This is known as the Control Principle.
The United States government, for example, regularly betrays this Control Principle, either through incompetence, or when it suits them politically e.g.
- Leaving Diplomatic Cables involving the United Kingdom or our allies on vulnerable computer systems accessible by millions of low level US military personnel, bureaucrats and defence contractors, to then be published "for maximum impact" by the Wikileaks.org cult.
- Several UK anti-terrorism raids involving international plots, have had to be rushed too early, before the alleged plotters have actually got their hands on any explosives or weapons or money etc.because the US government crowed about them in public, thereby perhaps tipping off some of the suspects.
Is this Control Principle going to be applied to all of the secret MI6 correspondence recently retrieved by journalists and human rights activists from abandoned government offices in Libya ?
In the Binyam Mohamed case, which is what led directly to the still not yet properly running Detainee Inquiry on UK Government complicity in torture, the "intelligence material" details in dispute had already been made public in the USA, but the UK government persisted in wasting public money on legal appeals to pretend to be upholding the "Control Principle".
Still no proposals about Intercept As Evidence
A major failing of this Green Paper is the lack of anything about the policy of No Intercept As Evidence.
This is Yet Another Broken Promise by the Coalition government - both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats claimed that they would sort this out, when making thei increasingly worthless pre-election promises. The Labour party, is as usual, failing to hold the government to account, presumably because they dare not remind people of their own repressive mendacity.
Whitehall is still dithering about this after all these years, with the "Advisory Group of PrivyCounsellors" chaired by Sir John Chilcot, not actively doing anything about it, as he is presumably busy giving the likes of Tony Blair etc. an easy time of it over at the still running Iraq Inquiry anyway. - see the previous Spy Blog article Intercept as Evidence Report - 2.5 million spent and still no workable "legal model"
Intelligence and Security Committee
The slightly more interesting section is on proposed reforms to the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 Commissioners - The Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Interception of Communications Commissioner
All of these suffer from a lack of public visibility amongst the general public and a vast amount of scepticism about their effectiveness amongst those of us who do actually bother to read their censored public reports.
Question: What changes to the ISC could best improve the effectiveness and credibility of the Committee in overseeing the Government's intelligence activities?
3.4 The Government recognises the criticisms that have been made about current oversight arrangements, particularly that they do not provide sufficient public reassurance that current scrutiny is effective.
The Government does not want the ISC to have even the weak powers of a Select Committee
3.18 A possible option would be to change the status of the ISC to that of a departmental selectcommittee. Departmental select committees have a remit 'to examine the expenditure, administration and policy' of the relevant government department and associated public bodies. A Standing Order, which would need to be renewed each Parliament, could cover appropriate handling of sensitive material, accommodation, staffing and reporting. Creating aselect committee would result in oversight being demonstrably undertaken by Parliament.
3.19 However, under such arrangements the Government would clearly have no veto on publication of sensitive material.
That is the whole point !
There would be a real risk that, with fewer safeguards in place than under the present arrangements, Agency Heads would find it hard to reconcile their statutory duty to protect information with their statutory duty to facilitate parliamentary oversight.
Contempt of Parliament and contempt for the general public.
Sharing of less sensitive information and a corresponding reduction in both the credibility and effectiveness of the oversight the committee provided could be the result.
For these reasons, the Government believes this option should not be taken forward.
How can this be less effective or less credible than the current milksop that is the Intelligence and Security Committee ?
3.23 As the ISC has developed its role it has, with the agreement of previous and current governments, taken evidence from bodies beyond the three Agencies which are a part of the wider intelligence community within government These include Defence Intelligence in the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Office for Security and Counter-Terror
Aviation security: Consultation on a statutory authority to carry scheme
- Authority to Carry consultation document (PDF file - 328kb)
- Impact assessment - Implementation of authority-to-carry scheme (PDF file - 421kb)
- Equality impact assessment - Implementation of authority-to-carry scheme (PDF file - 278kb)
Note the lack of any Privacy Impact Assessment, despite the plans for automated snooping on the travel data of millions of innocent passengers a year.
The Consultation document asks
12. The Authority to Carry Scheme takes its name from legislation. Are the meanings of the terms 'authority to carry' and 'refusal' or 'denial' of authority to carry clear? If not, are there different terms which may be clearer?
c.f. Section 124 of Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002
When we first read the words "Authority to Carry Scheme" in the context of Aviation Security, we assumed that it was something to do with the ineffective and dangerous schemes for allowing firearms on to passenger flights favoured by gun crazy Americans, involving armed Air Marshals or Airline Pilots etc. - did none of them watch the film Con Air ?
However it appears to be another plan for an extension of bureaucratic snooping on innocent people, with no reasonable chance of ever achieving its stated aims.
Like the previous incompetent yet authoritarian Labour regime, the current Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition is paying lip service to civil liberties and human rights.
Civil liberties are at the heart of the Government's approach to counter-terrorism and it will be important to ensure these proposals give consideration to people's freedoms.[...]
Measures will be put in place to minimise the potential for members of the travelling public to be mistakenly identified as an individual whom an airline should be denied authority to carry under these arrangements.
Rubbish !
Nowhere in this plan is there any mention of any system for rapid, public apology, generous financial compensation and the effective purging of the libellous toxic database entries, shared around the world, which put a black mark against the name of an innocent person wrongly identified as a terrorist.
There is no mention of the six figure legal costs to the Government and the Airline industry which will result from libel cases etc. when they falsely accuse some innocent passengers as terrorist suspects.
The Home Office civil servants and politicians still live in a fantasy world and are seeking to justify spending millions, or even billions of pounds of other people's money on a feeble Black Swan Event scenario, which even their astonishing Impact Assessment admits will have a massive rate of False Positives and which may never prevent any terrorist attack, before the policy and its underlying assumptions are changed.
No doubt some terrorist plots will be foiled by the work of the intelligence agencies, the police or the vigilance of the general public, in spite of this policy, but not because of it.
Impact Assessment page 9
Between 1999 and 2009, there were ten major terrorist plots in the UK : The shoe bomb plot (2001), Ricin bomb plot (2003), fertiliser bomb plot (Operation Crevice, 2003), London transport attacks of 7 July 2005 and 21 July 2005, transatlantic liquid bomb plot (Operation Overt, 2006), Haymarket car bombs and Glasgow airport attack (Operation Seagram,2007), Ibrahim suicide vests (Operation Vulcanise, 2008) and the Exeter bombing (2009). Of these, just one (7 July 2005) was successful; the rest were either disrupted prior to execution by the police, or failed after execution due to perpetrator error or police intervention.Using assumptions about the potential fatalities, casualties, property damage and tourism losses that each of these attacks could have caused, it was estimated that the average cost of these terrorist attacks, had they each been successfully executed, would be in the region 950m - 1.64bn. Given the current 'success rate' (1/10) and frequency of attacks (10 per decade), it is estimated that in an average decade, terrorist attacks will cost the UK economy 828m - 1.43bn .
None of these "major terrorist plots", most of which did not even involve airline flights at all, could have been prevented by the proposed "Authority to Carry Scheme" policy, but they are being used as the "benefit" calculation justification !
These cases are also being used to justify the budgets of MI5, MI6, GCHQ, the Metropolitan Police etc..
The "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" policy driver appears to be the Christmas 2009 "underpants bomber" case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - the intelligence agency communications failures in that case, which did not involve the United Kingdom at all, would not have been mitigated by this proposed Aviation Security pre-flight Passenger Name database "Authority to Carry" scheme.
Neither would the "Authority to Carry Scheme" have prevented the visits of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik to or from the UK.
Impact Assessment Page 10
- The manual system is assumed to be 99% effective, and the automated system 100% effective- The number of false positives is assumed to be equal to the number of individuals correctly identified (i.e. 2.25 individuals per annum)
We simply do not agree with these ridiculous assumptions.
Given the hundreds of millions of airline passenger flights at UK airports every year, where exactly have they come up with these figures from ?
Where are the assumed figures for the number of False Negatives ?
Where are the figures of the number of terrorist suspects travelling on fake or genuine but falsely obtained Passports etc ?
Impact Assessment Page 12
These figures are based on data about all major terrorist plots to the UK, rather than using only those plots aimed at journeys in transit to the UK.
If they did that, then there would be no basis for this policy at all !
The Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition have dithered over their pre-election promises regarding our freedoms and rights which were under such legislative assault by the previous Labour government.
Will they demonstrate that they are better than Labour and actually drop this proposed Aviation Snooping scheme on human rights grounds, rather than on "big cost / no financial benefit" grounds ?
If you care about your privacy and freedom, then put political pressure on the Coalition government to actually fulfil their pre-election promises and stop them from proposing inept, repressive, Labour style "technological magic fixes", by supporting the cross-party NO2ID Campaign
Text of the Impact Assessment:
PDF to HTML conversion based on: http://www.pdfonline.com/convert-pdf-to-html/
Title:
Implementation of Authority-to-Carry Scheme under Section 124 of Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002
Lead department or agency:
Home Office
Other departments or agencies:
Impact Assessment (IA)
IA No: OSCT
Date: 15/03/2011
Stage: Consultation
Source of intervention: Domestic
Type of measure: Secondary legislation
Contact for enquiries:
Predeparturechecks@homeoffice.x.gsi.g ov.uk
Summary: Intervention and Options
What is the problem under consideration? Why is government intervention necessary?
As one of the highest priorities for UK national security, the Government is committed to addressing the threat from terrorism and protecting the UK and its interests. In response to the attempted terrorist attack over Detroit in December 2009, work was commissioned to consider how such arrangements could be used to prevent individuals who pose a threat from travelling to the UK. Government intervention is necessary since it is the first responsibility of any administration to protect the safety and security of its citizens an
07-Oct-11
"anonymous" pre-paid mobile phone with unlocked SIM - Samsung GT-E1080i - under 10 from Tesco [ 07-Oct-11 2:21am ] [ T ] [ G ] [ N ] [ L ]if you are a potential whistleblower or an investigative journalist or political blogger or even a police or intelligence agency handler of Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS), you may well need to obtain or recommend, a hard (but not impossible) to trace, disposable "burner" pre-paid mobile phone, to arrange face to face meetings or document / data / money etc. dead drops.
If you have established initial contact with a potential confidential source or whistleblower, at least do them the basic security courtesy of not having to share a contact number with other confidential sources - an investigation into one such source, may very well draw attention to and betray the identities of other unrelated sources who have contacted the same phone number.
See our Hints & Tips for Whistleblowers etc. article: Buying a pre-paid phone card or mobile top up calling credit voucher anonymously
Tesco supermarkets are currently selling what they claim to be the "Cheapest Unlocked Mobile on the High Street" for under 10:
This is a very basic voice and SMS only phone (no camera, no removable SD memory etc.) but consequently with a long standby battery life (a claimed 560 hours i.e. over 3 weeks), so it could be used as a disposable Tracking device, if registered with a web map phone tracking service.
The choice of Free SIM cards (otherwise available for 99p each) is: Lycamobile and Lebara (often used for cheap international calls) and the main UK brand names i.e Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Virgin.
Tempting as it is to buy two or more such cheap phones (for the spare battery and power charger alone), do not do so from Tesco. They seem to have an arbitrary, unpublished or poorly advertised "rationing" policy in place, limiting the number of such "bargain" phones which an individual customer can buy at a time e.g. "one per customer in 24 hours".
You do not want the supermarket checkout operator to have to "consult" with the floor supervisor or have to argue about how many phones you are allowed to buy, not if you are trying to remain forgotten and anonymous in case of future whistleblower leak investigations.
Obviously if you are getting a trusted third party to buy the pre-paid mobile phone for you, this may be less of a risk to consider.
Why is Sir Stephen Lander (ex DG of MI5) involved in the SIAC deportation case of Katia Zatuliveter ? [ 07-Oct-11 2:21am ] [ T ] [ G ] [ N ] [ L ]The Daily Mail (on Sunday) recently reported:
By Robert Verkaik
Last updated at 1:56 AM on 25th September 2011
A former head of MI5 is at the centre of a row over his role in deciding whether a young Russian woman accused of using her job in Parliament to spy on Britain should be sent back to her home country.
Sir Stephen Lander, the former director-general of the security service, is to sit on a panel of judges who will rule on whether Katia Zatuliveter should be deported.
Miss Zatuliveter, 25, who worked for Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock, was arrested last year, reportedly on the orders of MI5.
Sir Stephen was once responsible for combating Russia's spy threat and his appointment to the special immigration panel to hear Miss Zatuliveter's case next month has prompted accusations of bias.
if a British citizen was facing a similar secret tribunal in a foreign country, one of whose members was the former head of their national counter-intelligence service, what would the British government do about it ?
Even if Sir Stephen is actually scrupulously fair in his role in this case, he can never be seen to be an unbiased official of the court.
The SIAC was set up to hear appeals from foreign nationals who the Home Secretary wishes to remove from the UK on grounds of national security. Some of the evidence in Miss Zatuliveter's case is considered so sensitive it can only be given in secret. Sir Stephen's role will be to help the two judges on the panel weigh up this secret evidence.
Miss Zatuliveter, who will not be allowed to know the secret evidence against her, was interviewed by MI5 officers four or five times last year.
Officials were said to have grilled her about her alleged connections to Russia's security service and appeared to know details of her love life, suggesting that she was under surveillance. She is said to have had a meeting at Portcullis House in Westminster with a man MI5 believed to be a Russian agent.
As Mr Hancock's parliamentary aide, Miss Zatuliveter had access to potentially sensitive information given to the Commons Defence Committee, on which the 65-year-old Portsmouth South MP serves.
Since when was the Commons Defence Committee, or any other Commons select committee, ever given access to any real secrets ?
After her arrest in December last year she was held at an immigration detention centre before being bailed. Throughout the case she has protested her innocence and now wants to clear her name by overturning the deportation order at the SIAC hearing, which begins next month.
Sir Stephen was head of MI5 from 1996 to 2002 and then chairman of the Serious Organised Crime Agency from 2006 to 2009. Although he rarely speaks about his former role, last year he warned about the threat posed by Russia's female spies. He told a BBC Radio 4 documentary that the very existence of a ring of Russian 'illegals' (spies operating without diplomatic cover) must be taken seriously.
'The fact they're nondescript or don't look serious is part of the charm of the business,' he said. 'That's why the Russians are so successful at some of this stuff. They're able to put people in those positions over time to build up their cover to be useful.'
If there is any actual hard evidence of Katia Zatuliveter engaging in espionage activities, then why was she not arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act last year ?
Home Office: "Privacy Commissioner ? We don't need no stinking Privacy Commissioner !" [ 07-Oct-11 2:21am ] [ T ] [ G ] [ N ] [ L ]
Back in March, the deliberately misleadingly entitled "Protection of Freedoms Bill" was published, the NuLubour style plan to introduce another couple of toothless "Commissioners" (for National Security Biometrics and for some, but not all, CCTV Cameras) was correctly criticised by our friends at ARCH, Privacy International , Genewatch UK and NO2ID:Briefing for UK Parliament on the 'Freedom Bill' - The Protection of Freedoms Bill Second Reading
They called for a single, powerful, well funded Privacy Commissioner, independent of Government Departments or Ministers, with legally enforceable powers of investigation backed up with criminal law sanctions, with proper in house technical expertise and investigation teams, like those which exist in Canada or Germany etc.
The House of Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs also agreed with them, when reporting on the News of the World mobile phone phone voice mailbox hacking scandal.
However, the Home Office's Byzantine "divide and rule" response, can be summed up a la Mel Brookes' Blazing Saddles as:
"Privacy Commissioner ? We don't need no stinking Privacy Commissioner!" (in a faux Mexican bandit accent)
Their official response to the Home Affairs Committee report contains this smugly complacent response:
UNAUTHORISED TAPPING INTO OR HACKING OF MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS
[...]
2.14 We are concerned about the number of Commissioners, each responsible for different aspects of privacy. We recommend that the government consider seriously appointing one overall Commissioner, with specialists leading on each separate area. (Paragraph 42)2.15 The Government believes the current spread of independent Commissioners ensures proper regulation of different aspects of privacy. The range of statutory functions carried out by each Commissioner varies significantly. It includes the provision of guidance, investigation of public complaints, serving and enforcing monetary penalty notices, making decisions over the deployment of technical devices, authorisation of some forms of surveillance and property interference, and oversight and inspection across different specialisms and under different legislation. Each Commissioner and his staff work in specialist, technical areas that require extensive knowledge of relevant legislation, equipment and procedures. Although the work they do can be related, it is also quite distinct.
2.16 The Government believes that the benefits the Committee is seeking can be delivered through existing arrangements and those proposed in the Protection of Freedoms Bill. The existing Commissioners already co-ordinate their work to ensure the right expertise is utilised in the right context and that wherever possible there is consistency between them. However, while respecting their independence, the Government will take note of the Committee's concerns in the way we develop and co-ordinate the roles and functions of the Commissioners.
There has been no Government "development" or "co-ordination" of the roles and functions of the Commissioners, except to keep them as secretive and powerless as possible.
Remember that neither the existing RIPA Commissioners (Interception of Communications, Surveillance or Intelligence Services) nor the Information Commissioner nor the two new proposed Commissioners (national security only Biometrics and some CCTV) actually have the word "Privacy" in the legislation which defines their roles and which they are narrowly constrained to follow.
The Home Office officials are deluding themselves and deceiving the public if they think that there is any evidence of "joined up" working between the existing Commissioners - they do not even meet each other face to face regularly, or at all. Apart from the Information Commissioner, they try their best not to talk to, or correspond, with members of the public. All of the Commissioners have far more legal expertise than detailed technological expertise. Only the Information Commissioner and the Chief Surveillance Commissioner bother to publish a public website and only the Information Commissioner's Office has a Twitter feed.
The Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government needs to deliver on its pre-election promises, right now, before Christmas, in regards to our freedoms and civil liberties. At the moment they are looking indistinguishable from the previous, increasingly hated, authoritarian yet incompetent, Labour government.
The Report Stage of the inadequate Protection of Freedoms Bill is set for Monday the 10th October 2011 i.e. in less than two weeks time
Please lobby your MPs e.g. via WriteToThem.com about our lost freedoms and suggest amendments to this half hearted Bill before then.
Reply from the Detainee Inquiry, regarding anonymity protection for whistleblowers, surveillance targeting against the Inquiry itself etc. [ 07-Oct-11 2:21am ] [ T ] [ G ] [ N ] [ L ]If you are a potential or actual whistleblower, working in the United Kingdom intelligence services, who had information regarding involvement in torture, which might contradict what the senior managers and officials who will be appearing before Sir Peter Gibson's Detainee Inquiry, would you be satisfied with the assurances given below ?
Would you risk your career or life, or those of your family and friends, on such such assurances ?
See our previous blog article of the 11th August 2011, before the revelations from Libya: Spy Blog letter to the Detainee Inquiry re: lack of whistleblower anonymity protection and immunity from prosecution
The Detainee Inquiry
35 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BQ
Telephone: 020 7276 5544
From the Secretary to the Inquiry13 September 2011
[name]
Spyblog
Via E-mail [email address]LACK OF ANONYMITY PROTECTION FOR POTENTIAL OR ACTUAL WHISTLEBLOWERS TO THE DETAINEE INQUIRY.
Thank you for your e-mail to Sir Peter Gibson on behalf of Spyblog and its readership, in reference to the provisions of anonymity protection for whistleblowers and a number of issues related to the Inquiry's work. I am responding on Sir Peter's behalf.
The Inquiry takes the welfare and safety of any witnesses who provide evidence to us very seriously. The Inquiry's Protocol (available on our website) makes clear that witnesses may provide evidence to the Inquiry in private if the Inquiry believes that there is a good reason for them to do so.This is designed to ensure both the welfare and safety of witnesses by the protection of their identity, and the provision of full and frank evidence to the Inquiry. Any request by a witness to appear in private will be given careful consideration by the Panel. By way of further reassurance, the only people present during private hearings will be the witness and any one person they choose to accompany them, the panel, Counsel to the Inquiry, members of the Inquiry staff and contracted stenographers with the appropriate security clearance (see paragraph 37 of the Protocol). Should we find it necessary to seek further information from a Department or Agency as a result of evidence given by a witness, we would not reveal the source of the information leading to the request. We believe that the current measures are sufficient at this stage to protect the anonymity of whistleblowers or anyone else who has good reason to give evidence in private, but we will keep this under review
As you have identified, the Prime Minister stated in his letter of the 6 July 2010 to Sir Peter Gibson that 'the Attorney General has agreed to provide an undertaking that evidence given by witnesses may not be used against them in criminal proceedings, whether their evidence is given in public, private or both (other than in proceedings where he or she is charged with giving false evidence or conspiring to do so in the course of this Inquiry)' We are currently liaising with the Attorney General's office on producing a comprehensive undertaking which we are confident will address the concerns you have around potential prosecution of whistleblowers under legislation such as the Official Secrets Act. We hope to receive a final version of the undertaking soon and will then publish it on our website as you suggest. We will then confirm with the Cabinet Secretary and the Heads of the intelligence services their analogous undertakings to staff in respect of disciplinary proceedings based on the evidence provided, this was also set out in the Prime Minister's letter.
You raise an important point about assurances from the UK Intelligence Agencies in respect of their cooperating with the Inquiry. We have been assured by the Prime Minister that we will receive full co-operation from the Government and its Security and Intelligence Agencies. The Inquiry believes that this would cover all of the activities you have mentioned, as the type of behaviour you have explained regarding the Agencies deploying surveillance techniques on the Inquiry's Staff or asking Agencies in other countries to do likewise would go against this assurance of full cooperation.
Thank you for your recommendation in reference to encryption of the website to allow for individuals to submit evidence while protecting their identity. We continue to review our website and its security and will consider the points you have raised.
Finally on the important point in reference to ensuring that redactions placed on documents cannot be removed, the Inquiry takes its obligation to redact sensitive material, including individuals' personal details where they must be kept private, very seriously and are mindful of this risk. We shall, of course, do everything we can to ensure that this situation does not arise.
Yours Sincerely,
Alun Evans
With your help and feedback (either in the comments or via encrypted email, ideally using Tor or other IP Address obfuscation techniques) we will respond to the Detainee Inquiry, to press them further about the points in our Letter which they did not properly answer.
N.B. there are only a couple of working days left before the Attorney General and the Cabinet Secretary must reply to our Freedom of Information Act Requests for the promised Undertakings:
- FOIA request to Attorney General: promised Undertaking regarding the Detainee Inquiry into allegations of complicity in torture
- FOIA request to Cabinet Secretary regarding promised Undertaking about the Detainee Inquiry into allegations of complicity in torture
Labour party tracks Ken Livingstone supporters with hidden web bugs accessible by USA tracking companies and US Government [ 07-Oct-11 2:21am ] [ T ] [ G ] [ N ] [ L ]Spy Blog readers may recall our criticism of US style political campaigning web services "as used to help President Barack Obama get elected":
How sneakily are Blue State Digital tracking NGO political campaign emails ?
Several UK NGO's looked at this technology and chose to make use of it, without using its most privacy endangering features such as the use of hidden "web bug" graphics in HTML emails.
Just in case you thought that the Labour party has somehow changed its penchant for control freakery and mass surveillance, the iPad wielding apparatchiks have now launched a campaign website for the odious Ken Livingstone in his attempt to get re-elected as Mayor of London called http://yourken.org
The social media integrated web based political campaign service which the yourken.org website is using is called NationBuilder.com based in California, USA.
Snazzy integrated political campaign tools - but no privacy
To a political campaign or other non government organisation, this commercial service offers some snazzy tools, setting volunteer activists goals to achieve in terms of organising events or spreading the campaign message. There are blog pages and Google Maps showing where registered supporters are located , with tools to graphically "turf carve your voter file" amongst different local organisers etc. There is integration with Twitter and FaceBook.
All very slick, but all very American when it comes to privacy and data protection - there is none.
NationBuilder.com clearly states in its "privacy" policy that they make routine use of web tracking technologies like "web bugs":
Clear Gifs Information: When you use the Service, we may employ clear gifs (also known as web beacons) which are used to track the online usage patterns of our users anonymously. In addition, we may also use clear gifs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened by recipients. The information is used to enable more accurate reporting, improve the effectiveness of our marketing, and make NationBuilder better for our users.
Third Party Services: 3dna uses Google Analytics to help understand use of the Service. This service collects the information sent by your browser as part of a web page request, including cookies and your IP address, and their use of it is governed by their Privacy Policy.
No SSL / TLS encryption for registration of Sensitive Personal Data , which is exported to the USA
Although the main NationBuilder.com website does have a working SSL / TLS Digital certificate, presumably so that they can process credit card or other online payments, this feature is totally lacking from the yourken.org website, which handles donations on the main kenlivingstone.com website.
Before even being able to browse the website to see what it it all about, all new visitors are already assumed to be supporters and are asked to fill in a registration form with their Personal Data i.e. home, address, phone and mobile phone, email details, Twitter and FaceBook accounts.
By implication, by virtue of registering for a Labour party political campaign, this Personal Data is being tagged with their presumed political affiliation. Legally this is Sensitive Personal Data defined under the Data Protection Act - there is no excuse for not protecting this in transit with standard SSL / TLS strong encryption.
Simply by accessing http://yourken.org, your computer's IP address and web browser details are logged by both Google Analytics and also by Quantserve, two third party commercial web tracking companies in the USA, through hidden JavaScript and sneaky 1 x 1 pixel sized transparent .gif images which are pulled from the tracking companies web servers rather than from the yourken.org website.
Email Blaster - is a tool for spam, not for responsible political campaigning
The worst aspect of the NationBuilder service is the "Email Blaster" campaign email tool. The NationBuilder website gives advice on creating a "Killer Email Blast" etc. This is email spam marketing rather than proper permission based email.
Just like the Blue State Digital tool we wrote about in 2009, the HTML emails (signed by Ken Livingstone himself, allegedly) sent out by this Email Blaster tool contain hidden "web bug" invisible 1 x 1 pixel graphics, not from Quantserve or Google Analytics, but from london@email-new.labour.org.uk, which is an alias for the NationBuilder.com system in the USA.
If, like most people, this email is read using HTML enabled email software, this "web bug" allows NationBuilder and the Labour Party to track not only whether a recipient has opened the email, but it also tracks other people to whom the "web bugged" email has been forwarded to.
Remember that all such log file tracking information is available, on demand, to US Government agencies, under their PATRIOT Act, or can be freely sold by these commercial US companies.
This is not appropriate for a list of a particular UK political campaign's supporters' home address, phone and mobile phone, email details, Twitter and FaceBook accounts details etc.
The Labour party is welcome to spy on those of its own supporters, who have actually given their prior, informed consent to do this. We suspect, however, that many ordinary Labour party members and supporters will be annoyed, or perhaps horrified, that this is being done to them without such informed prior consent.
We hope that no other UK political party will be tempted to abuse their supporters or potential supporters in this way and that they will shame the Labour party for doing so.
Will NationBuilder.com shut down yourken.org becuase of US trade embargos and sanctions against Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez ?
NationBuilder.com, based in California, may well be dealing with Labour party social media apparatchiks, but they may be unware of the toxic nature of "Red Ken"s authoritarian political policies and fantasies.
It is possible that NationBuilder.com, which is run by Democrat supporters, or their upstream US based ISPs, could shut down the yourken.org website, because of his sycophantic support for the communist dictators Fidel and Raul Castro in Cuba and the anti-American Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They could use the excuse of US trade embargo and economic sanctions laws, or they could simply take a moral stand against "Red Ken".
If the Labour party and Ken Livingstone's apparatchiks really cared about Londoners, they would not have outsourced the yourken.org website to the USA and would have employed a local London based company to provide exactly the same sort of social media integrated web campaigning tools, without the odious "web bug" tracking of people without their prior informed consent.No more "One Nation Under CCTV" art mural by Banksy, just even more CCTV snooping [ 07-Oct-11 2:21am ] [ T ] [ G ] [ N ] [ L ]Some Spy Blog readers will remember this iconic image which summed up the creepy yet incompetent NuLabour police / surveillance / snooper / database state:
See our Spy Blog article from April 2008:
Banksy "One Nation Under CCTV" - tourists and beggars
So is everything now rosy under the Conservative / Liberal Democrat Coalition ?
Hardly - the valuable Banksy street stencilled wall mural, which was a tourist attraction in itself, has been censored, presumably on the orders of some apparatchik at the Post Office, in spite of the fact that such Banksy stencil wall murals are worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The original CCTV camera / pigeon perch which was part of the mural is still there.
Incredibly, Westminster Council have installed a WiFi connected CCTV camera (silhouetted against the sky, to the left of the BT Tower) in this ostensible Crime Hotspot (not). Surely the Post Office is capable of paying for any extra security they deem necessary, so why did Westminster Council waste public money on this ?
This seems to be a clear example of using CCTV surveillance against legitimate political and artistic protest, rather than against real crime.
Does anybody know the names of the bureaucrats who ordered
- The destruction of the Banksy "One Nation Under CCTV" mural
- The Installation of the Westminster WiFi CCTV camera at just this location (isolated from the rest of the surveillance network)
20-Aug-11
The BBC Radio 4 documentary series Secret Britain should be of interest to Spy Blog readers.
The first programme in the series was broadcast last Tuesday 16th August 2011, but it still available (for now) online via the BBC iPlayer
Presented by veteran investigative journalist Peter Hennessey, with sound bites from
retired heads of intelligence agencies, Whitehall mandarins, politicians and the occasional whistleblower.The programme "celebrates" the 100th anniversary of the notorious Official Secrets Act 1911, which , amidst mainstream media inspired hysteria and collective Must Be Seen To Be Doing Something panic amongst the politicians, after a foreign security crisis.
The influence of this overbroad "catch all" Act and the way in which it was sneaked through Parliament in a rush, without proper debate or scrutiny set the tone for almost all subsequent "security" legislation to date.
The supposedly more narrowly targeted Official Secrets Act 1989 also commands little public confidence,has led to some dubious prosecutions yet it has not prevented "leaks" from the Whitehall and national security / counter-terrorism bureaucracy. It therefore needs urgent reform
The most interesting quotation in the broadcast was from Sir Stephen Lander, the retired Director General of MI5 the Security Service (who was also later in charge of the Serious Organised Crime Agency).
His comment on the Security Service Act 1989,
SSL: "I think, fundamentally, it was a wonderful thing to have done for the Service. It was the most important thing that happened in my time. MI5 getting legislation for the Service.
Apart from anything else, it made us so much more operationally aggressive, and more confident.
PH: Because you had "cover" ?
SSl: Yep, We were "proper".
And it was a beautiful piece of draughting, at something, you know, "there shall continue to be a Security Service" without having previously acknowledged that it had previously existed in law - hah hah - a beautiful piece of draughting.
Sir John Scarlett, the former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6 was also complimentary about the Intelligence Services Act 1994, which put MI6 and GCHQ on a statutory legal footing.
However he is utterly wrong to claim that
The 1994 Act, allowed, a very large amount of information, to be made available for public discussion and in the public domain, about, the work, of the Service, the role it plays in Government, the way it's structured, quite a bit, in effect, about its resources, about it's preoccupations, its targets, and that process of releasing information into the public domain, began in 1994.
And now there is a vast amount of information available through, Parliamentary reports, Commission reports, and now, in recent years, through the websites,o the Services, and so on.
[...]
For all the ups and downs over the years, it's worked as least as well as we could have expected, and I would say, broadly better.
Regular Spy Blog readers will have noticed just how uninformative and secretive the censored Intelligence and Security Committee and various Commissioners' Reports have been over the years. The websites of the intelligence services are not very informative either - probably the best is that of MI5
Obviously tactical, operational security details of particular ongoing operations and investigations should remain secret. This radio programme illustrates with a couple of examples, the corrosive effect of self authorised "national security" secrecy, with criminal penalties with which to threaten whistleblowers, but without any counterbalancing criminal penalties for use against officials and politicians who abuse the privilege of such secrecy, simply to hide or cover up their political embarrassment or their managerial or technological incompetence or the whiff of corruption or treason,
The next programme in the series is:
D for Discretion: Can the Modern Media Keep a Secret?
This forthcoming programme looks as if it will talk about the increasingly irrelevant DA-Notice System of voluntary self censorship by the mainstream media.
The "Defence Advisory Notice System" - as it is now called - is supposed to be entirely voluntary. In reality, though, it's very rare for any of the mainstream media organisations to ignore the committee's requests. But how does this work in the age of Wikileaks and citizen journalism? This programme looks at the challenges to the system posed by social media websites. What happens if members of the public try to reveal government secrets on Twitter - in a similar way to this year's row about super-injunctions? And how do newspapers like The Guardian square their Wikileaks collaborations with their own editorial guidelines on national security issues?
Broadcast times:
Tue 23 Aug 2011 09:00 BBC Radio 4
Tue 23 Aug 2011 21:30 BBC Radio 4
and then online via iPlayer for a while.
Spy Blog letter to the Detainee Inquiry re: lack of whistleblower anonymity protection and immunity from prosecution [ 20-Aug-11 10:50am ] [ T ] [ G ] [ N ] [ L ]The Rt. Hon. Sir Peter Gibson
c/o Secretariat
The Detainee Inquiry
35 Great Smith Street
London
SW1A 3BQDear Sir Peter,
Please accept my apologies for this rather long email, but the issues it raises are of critical importance to the Detainee Inquiry.
I am writing to you on behalf of Spy Blog and its readership, which includes many people within the privacy and human rights audience and also people within the UK Government and Intelligence Agencies, as well as Foreign Governments and their Intelligence Agencies.
Spy Blog has been very critical of your (and your predecessors') Annual Reports as the appointed Intelligence Services Commissioners under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
However, unlike some trained lawyers, human rights activists and even former British Ambassadors, we do *completely understand the constraints placed upon you by the relevant sections of the Act* and cannot believe that you are likely to have come across anything directly relevant to your current chairmanship of the Detainee Inquiry, which would question your independence and honesty.
Unfortunately, the Detainee Inquiry Protocol, which you have agreed with senior Government Civil Servants, is all very well for protecting senior managers and officials of the UK Intelligence Agencies from embarrassment or the threats of prosecution.
However, it is is totally inadequate, if you put yourself in the shoes of a potential whistleblower e.g a junior official or sub-contractor to the Intelligence Agencies, whose testimony might contradict the official corporate line, which the senior managers and officials of those Intelligence Agencies have been briefed with.
Currently, there is basically no Whistleblower Anonymity Protection offered by your Detainee Inquiry at all.
Therefore, no matter what evidence or testimony you hear in public or private and no matter what your public report actually says, the Detainee Inquiry will inevitably be portrayed as a coverup and whitewash - trust us on this - we have a lot of experience in dealing with conspiracy theorists.
Perhaps there are no real whistleblowers, with "smoking gun" evidence which would have a major effect on your Inquiry, but you cannot be sure that story you are hearing from the senior officials and managers of the intelligence agencies is actually completely true - they may themselves have been deceived by their subordinates.
However, if, as you claim, your Detainee Inquiry is really independent of Government, you must be seen to make every effort to encourage and protect even a single potential whistleblower.
Spy Blog would like to see you publish, on your public website, your requests / demands to those people mentioned in the Prime Minister David Cameron's letter of over a year ago, setting out the Terms of reference for your Detainee Inquiry i.e. the detailed Undertakings by the Cabinet Office and the Intelligence Agency chiefs and the Attorney General.
We also expect that the Advocate General for Scotland, the Rt. Hon. the Lord Wallace of Tankerness QC, should also re-iterate the promises of immunity from prosecution which the Attorney General for England and Wales and the Advocate General for Northern Ireland, the Rt. Hon. Dominic Grieve QC MP, should by now have made, bearing in mind the slight differences in the relevant Scottish legislation.
Potential Whistleblowers
Spy Blog can "neither confirm nor deny" that we are in contact with potential whistleblowers within the Intelligence Agencies, who may or may not, be considering contacting the Detainee Inquiry.
Such whistleblowers may very well suggest lines of inquiry, or name specific documents or witnesses, which the Detainee Inquiry would be unprofessional not to pursue.
However, your published Protocol for the Detainee Inquiry is very obviously flawed, if you put yourself in the position of a potential whistleblower
There is one oblique reference to potential whistleblowers:.
Paragraph 34
"c) would giving evidence in private ensure the witness's welfare, security or freedom to speak frankly, for example in the case of junior staff who may wish to give evidence that runs counter to that of others?"The Protocol does *not* provide any practical promises of whistleblower immunity from prosecution.
Just as important is the concept of "giving evidence in private". The Protocol may well suffice for hiding their testimony from the public and the mainstream media, but it does nothing to protect whistleblower or just potential whistleblowers, from identification and persecution by their colleagues and senior managers, cloaked under the veil of "national security" secrecy.
You need to give an explicit, absolute guarantee to potential whistleblowers, that you will *never* consult with members of the intelligence agencies about their potential or actual testimony or documentary evidence.
Publish all of the detailed Undertakings regarding criminal prosecution or internal discipline
The Detainee Inquiry should publish detailed copies of the "undertakings" promised in the Prime Minister David Cameron's letter of 6th July 2010 setting out the terms of reference for the Inquiry, especially:
"The Cabinet Secretary and the heads of the intelligence services will require staff in their departments and agencies to cooperate fully with the inquiry and expect them to cooperate with the Inquiry's requests for oral evidence. The Attorney General has agreed to provide an undertaking that evidence given by witnesses may not be used against them in criminal proceedings, whether their evidence is given in public, private or both (other than in proceedings where he or she is charged with giving false evidence or conspiring to do so in the course of this Inquiry). The Cabinet Secretary and heads of the intelligence services will set out analogous undertakings to staff in respect of disciplinary proceedings based on their evidence, whether public or private. "
i.e. at least 8 written undertakings need to be published from:
1) Attorney General for England and Wales and the Advocate General for Northern Ireland: the Rt. Hon. Dominic Grieve QC MP
a) The Attorney General needs to clearly state that the Prime Minister's Letter of 6th July 2010 and the promised undertakings made by
"The Cabinet Secretary and the heads of the intelligence services"constitute "official authorisation" and "lawful authority" under the
Official Secrets Act 1989 section 7 Authorised disclosures.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/6/section/7for the disclosure of any Official Secrets or Information via Questions, Statements, Evidence or Oral Testimony etc. offered to the Detainee Inquiry.
Such leaked documents or other tipoffs from insiders, may help to guide the Detainee Inquiry to demand documents or computer files or human witnesses etc., which even some of the senior management of the intelligence agencies may have been deliberately kept unaware of.
This legal immunity should be regardless of whether Detainee Inquiry evidence is published in public or kept private and must apply to any current or former member of the intelligence agencies, any other current or former Crown servant, or any other current or former Notified Government Contractor etc.
b) Since the Detainee Inquiry is not a court of law or a tribunal or an inquiry set up under the Inquiries Act 2005 and therefore has no criminal sanctions or immunity from prosecution, the Attorney General also needs to give a public undertaking, exempting the Detainee Inquiry members, staff , sub-contractors, witnesses and whistleblowers etc. from prosecution under the controversial
Terrorism Act 2000 section 58A.Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58Awhich requires his consent for prosecutions.
This specifically covers "attempting to elicit" information about current or former members of the armed forces, the intelligence service or police constables.
This even applies to those who have been criminally convicted, fired in disgrace or forced to retire, for breaches of security or corruption etc.
This obviously could apply to the Detainee Inquiry, as you will inevitably be "attempting to elicit" information about the identities of current or former Intelligence Agency staff, regardless of whether or not you actually publish any such information.
There is a statutory defence of having a "reasonable excuse", but that can only come into play after the modern day executive punishment ordeal of Arrest, Fingerprinting, DNA sampling, charging, Bail / Remand and a court appearance. Any arrest under Terrorism legislation, does permanent damage to one's reputation, regardless of whether there is ever an actual charge, let alone a conviction, because of the immediate knock on effect this as you are automatically and permanently put onto international travel and financial watchlists and databases and you remain the collective online memory of internet search engines, around the world.
The threat posed by this legislation could easily be used to harass and obstruct members of the Detainee Inquiry or their staff etc, given that they are certain to be asking about current or former members of the intelligence agencies and / or the armed forces and that whistleblower evidence or tes
