Thursday, June 09, 2016 

Mark Allen and Jack Straw: guilty as hell.

In another of those wonderful moments of serendipity we get every so often, today has seen both the publication of the Loughinsland inquiry and the CPS decision on whether to bring charges against the former MI6 head of counter-terrorism.  For years various officials and politicians in Northern Ireland and the rUK have attacked the idea there had been collusion between the RUC and loyalist paramilitaries, despite previous inquiries finding precisely that, such as the de Silva report into the murder of Pat Finucane.  Far too much emphasis was placed on regrettable incidents like Bloody Sunday, and not enough on the outrages committed by the Republican terrorist organisations, helmed by figures now at the very top of the devolved government.   Where was the over-arching inquiry into their crimes, aided they often allege by the Irish government and the Garda?

That the IRA was riddled with informers and MI5 agents, some of whom commissioned attacks in order not to blow their cover is not as often brought up.  Now we know thanks to the Maguire report of further such examples involving loyalist groups, only with the RUC rather than the intelligence agencies covering their tracks or turning a blind eye.  Up to 70 murders and attempted murders were carried out with weapons smuggled in under the noses of the police, with the owner of the farm where the weapons were being hidden tipped off two hours before the RUC came looking.  While other officers were trying their hardest to track down those responsible for the Loughinisland massacre, someone informed members of the gang they were about to be arrested.  One of the suspects was in any case an informer, who carried on being so for a number of years after.

At least the motives in Northern Ireland were good ones though, right?  The object was to save lives; who's to say those agents and informers didn't ensure more people weren't killed than would have been otherwise?

The same cannot be said of our dealings with Colonel Gaddafi in the aftermath of his giving up his WMDs, a decision that hasn't exactly stood the test of time for either side, Gaddafi having ended up being sodomised with a knife and all.  Delivering over a couple of Islamist opposition figures to his jailers was the least we could do, wrote Mark Allen to the Libyan head of intelligence, Moussa Koussa.

A hint of the likely outcome to the police inquiry into the MI6 aided rendition of Abdul Hakim Belhadj and Sami al-Saadi was provided by the flying visit of said Moussa Koussa to the UK prior to the fall of Gaddafi.  After a quick chat with the rozzers about Lockerbie, Koussa was allowed to piddle off to Qatar.  You might have expected the intelligence chief of a dictatorship with an appalling human rights record would have been of especial interest, not least because of Yvonne Fletcher and the supplying of the IRA with large amounts of Semtex, but strangely not.

Likewise, Sir Mark Allen is not so much as named by CPS, instead referred to anonymously as the "suspect", despite how the entire rest of the media is naming him.  To be fair to the CPS, their full statement in fact gives them great credit.  While it starts off with Sue Hemming saying there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, it goes on to almost deliberately contradict itself.  While the actual rendition was not carried out by MI6, instead our mates in the CIA doing the kidnapping and strapping down of Belhadj's wife, there was contact between them and the suspect, as there also was with the Libyans.  While there also wasn't complete written authorisation by a minister, there was some discussion.  In other words, Allen and Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, are guilty as hell.  Only the law as it stands falls short of being able to guarantee a conviction.

Not that the explanatory part of the statement will make a scrap of difference.  Insufficient evidence is the part that will be repeated over and over.  Nothing to see here.  That the Gibson inquiry was in effect scrapped so the police could investigate the allegations against Straw and Allen was something of a happy coincidence for the coalition government, soon having got cold feet, despite originally promising a full independent inquiry into alleged collusion in torture and rendition.  Instead the Intelligence and Security Committee is once again left to try and get the truth out of MI6, which even with its new powers and the capable and trustworthy Dominic Grieve as chairman can hardly be depended on.

Still, this is without doubt the very closest we have yet come to any sort of government body admitting the intelligence services in the aftermath of 9/11 were perfectly happy to collude in torture.  It didn't matter that neither Belhadj or al-Saadi were of the slightest threat to the West, members of a group with links to al-Qaida or not; the lure of getting access for British companies to Libya's oil was enough of a justification.  Allen of course went on to become a special adviser to BP, even if the subsequent deal with Libya was rather soured by the uprising against Gaddafi, at which point we once again switched sides.

We're funny like that.  One minute we're handing over people to be tortured, the next we're deciding the responsibility to protect the ordinary citizens of Libya had to be invoked.  It's almost as though we make it up as we go along, with no moral code whatsoever, even while those with overall responsibility for such acts demand further such interventions.  Ah well.

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6/09/2016 08:33:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, June 15, 2015 

Magna Carta and all that.

I'd like to think we can all agree it takes a special kind of cretin to use the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the document that established all are equal under the law, to argue in fact only they can "restore the reputation of human rights".  Considering the chief argument being made for a British Bill of Rights is it would prevent criminals, terrorists and other unworthy sorts from invoking Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, that of the right to a private and family life in order to avoid deportation, although how this would be accomplished without also leaving said convention at the same time as ripping up the Human Rights Act has never been answered, it does put in a whole new perspective David Cameron's decision to say it was "ironic" that "the good name of human rights has sometimes become distorted and devalued".  Call me a stuffy pedant, but I'd say it was beyond ironic, in fact an example of a politician without the slightest sense of shame to use Magna Carta as a backdrop to say some will be more equal than others under the law if and when he gets his way.

Then again, Magna Carta has always been a symbol rather than anything real in any case.  Everything you think you know about it is almost certainly wrong, and as Jack of Kent so admirably argues, there is no contradiction in politicians and other worthies celebrating a document that cannot be relied on in court while wanting to repeal one on which you can.  Rights in the view of so many are things you can expect to be given to you as hard and fast as you can take them, and if you can't, well hard cheese.  It's also noticeable historians chuckle and roll their eyes at all this nonsense, knowing full well that Magna Carta sure didn't stop King after King from doing whatever the hell they liked, while politicians, often in the main law or PPE graduates, go into raptures over it.  Not all of them, obviously, but a fair number.

Cameron's dedication to destroying an act that does work, frankly all too well for the government and establishment's liking, is of a piece with the fondness of the spooks for the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.  Described by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation last week as "undemocratic" and "intolerable", with the situation in which we are currently in deemed "unnecessary", I wondered if the intelligence agencies wouldn't finally see sense and embrace David Anderson's recommendations, couched as they were in language and arguments that mollified libertarians like me while still providing the agencies with the powers they say they need.

Yesterday's front page piece in the Sunday Times rather answered such thinking.  According to a number of anonymous sources, the cache of files taken by Edward Snowden has been successfully cracked by both the Chinese and Russians, leading to MI6 needing to extract a number of agents for fear they could have been killed as a result.  The entire report, without needing to read the responses from those in the know, such as Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher and the Graun, is bollocks of the hairiest, most obvious kind.  Snowden apparently has blood on his hands, and yet there is no evidence of anyone being harmed.  Que?

You don't have to question how the Russians and Chinese could have gained access to the files when the only people in possession of them are journalists, Snowden himself having destroyed his copies after he handed them over, something not previously questioned by anyone.  Nor does another howler, like the precise figure of 1.7m documents accessed by our enemies when the NSA previously admitted it simply didn't and couldn't know how many files Snowden had taken give the game away.  It's how crude and transparent the sourcing is: when Seymour Hersh questions the official version of events in the killing of bin Laden, his reliance on unnamed intelligence sources is ridiculed.  Hersh's recent exposes may be nonsense, but they are no less believable than a supposed newspaper of record (stop sniggering) noting down everything briefed to it by a government and then reprinting it verbatim.

The "exclusive" given to the Sunday Times is revenge, plain and simple.  David Anderson confirmed in his report that without Snowden, absolutely nothing would have changed.  The Intelligence and Security Committee had never asked precisely how GCHQ monitored the internet, so it hadn't thought it necessary to keep them up to date with things like Tempora or their relationship with the NSA.  Anderson's recommendation that judges review and authorise warrants rather than politicians raises the possibility they might be slightly more critical in their appraisal than ministers have previously, and that would never do.

There's also the simple spite factor, that and letting everyone know how they might react in the future.  The smashing up of the Guardian's copy in this country of the Snowden files was utterly pointless when it came to "ending the debate", but it carried with it the message of acting because they could.  Smearing Snowden further and claiming those dastardly Rushkies and Chinese have got their hands on the locations of our brave spies is meant to reinforce how so much as talking about things we're not supposed to know is to damage our security.  You might think you've won this round, it says, with the Anderson report, but just you wait.  When all else fails, appeal to the court of public opinion, with its memories of Bletchley Park and hagiographies of Alan Turing.

It's utterly pitiful behaviour, and yet it shows how worried the government and the securocrats are.  They've done everything they can to deny there is any need for a debate or to worry about what those in the shadows are up to, when even the American authorities have in the main accepted the powers they had went too far in some areas.  Instead of going down the same path, the Anderson report having given them the chance to back down without losing much in the way of face, the age old tactic of anonymous briefing to a trusted hack and newspaper is the response.  When you can't make the perfectly reasonable argument that we can't foresee the future, can't know what the next threat might be, and so have to be ready for every eventuality without resorting to outright lies, there is clearly a problem with accountability.  They saw back in 1215 that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  800 years on some still need to learn that lesson.

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6/15/2015 08:50:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, June 11, 2015 

When maintaining the status quo feels like something to celebrate.

David Anderson QC's review of the various laws authorising and regulating the interception of data by the state is as good as we possibly could have hoped for.  Compared to the work of parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, well, there's no comparison.  Not a single redaction for a start, very little in the way of obfuscation or outright distraction, regardless of how transparent those attempts to muddy the debate have been, and outright recognition that if it had not been for the whistleblowing of Edward Snowden, we would still know almost nothing about the way GCHQ hoovers up our data with the very minimum of oversight.  Anderson still, contradictorily, criticises Snowden, but that is to be expected.  The independent reviewer of terrorism clearly does not swallow the bluster from the security services that major damage has been done to them, despite accepting "national security" has been affected.  When national security is defined so widely, and presumably in this instance includes damage to the reputation of said security services, it could hardly be otherwise.

He does nonetheless accept the pleas of GCHQ for the bulk interception of data to be allowed to continue.  He did at least manage to persuade the powers that be to disclose the general outline of the examples previously provided to the ISC for why bulk interception, which if nothing else gives us something of an idea as to what we're giving up in terms of privacy in order to prevent.

This is not to say the examples given are beyond question (they're contained in Annex 9 of the report): most eye-catching is the claim that without bulk data, an airline worker with links to al-Qaida would not have been convicted.  As Joshua Rozenberg writes, this almost certainly refers to the case of Rajib Karim, who was in email contact with the then leader of al-Qaida in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, since killed in a US drone strike.  You would of course expect someone like al-Awlaki to be under surveillance, although how precisely GCHQ identified Karim we can't know.  Nor can we know how exactly "bulk data" is being defined in this instance: yes, Karim might not have been identified if al-Awlaki also hadn't been targeted, presumably under the rules governing bulk interception rather than as a specific target, but that's rather different to how our "external communications", i.e. the use of any website not hosted in the UK are considered by the intelligence agencies to fall under bulk interception as a whole.  Two of the case studies provided do not so much as relate to subsequent law enforcement action in this country at all.  While this is evidence of the efficacy of bulk interception in cases where intelligence or what we would normally consider to be standard surveillance techniques have started off the investigation, it hardly convinces that the ordinary sifting through of the vast amounts of data being collected will ever on its own save lives, or outweigh the potential abuse of such access to personal data.

That aside, the report on the whole is so well argued that if the intelligence agencies had any sense, they would take a good hard look at Anderson's recommendations and five principles, of minimising no-go areas, limited powers, rights compliance, clarity and transparency and a unified approach and adopt them as their own.  Anderson writes of just how co-operative everyone was with him, as you would expect, and yet these are the same agencies that once free of the presence of those reviewing them go back to demanding redactions in reports, that over-the-top levels of secrecy be maintained and the delivering of self-defeating lectures that we're all so familiar with.  There is in essence absolutely nothing in the report they should disagree with, at least if they realise things can no longer go on as they were, but whether organisations which by their very nature have to be paranoid and constantly on the lookout for new ways to break things can handle such concepts remains unclear.

The problem you suspect will in fact be more with the politicians than the agencies themselves.  Ministers will be loth to give away to judges the authorising of interception warrants, not least because it's another power they'll lose.  So too will it affect their direct line into the agencies, and considering the past at times fractious relationship between the spies and politicians, that's not something necessarily to be welcomed.  Anderson also reiterates the past criticisms of the proposed Data Communications Bill, aka the snoopers' charter, essentially saying the case for it has still to be made, despite "compulsory retention of records of user interaction with the internet" being "useful", as he terms it.  Well yes, useful it would certainly be; as for being justifiable, in the same way as bulk interception is justifiable, not without safeguards far beyond what has been outlined so far.  

All things considered though, especially when we think of how with a Tory majority, a Labour party that looks certain to head back to the right and when the only party remotely interested in civil liberties as a whole has been reduced to a rump, this report in different hands could have been the sum of all fears.  Instead it looks set to merely maintain the status quo.  These days, that feels like a victory.

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6/11/2015 11:46:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 12, 2015 

The securocrats win. They always win.

Hazel Blears is, like David Blunkett, another of those New Labour figures to be sadly leaving parliament in May.  Happily for her, all the unpleasantness involving "Rockets" Rifkind meant she was the obvious choice to chair this morning's Intelligence and Security Committee press conference, announcing their extended findings into whether or not GCHQ have the biggest revenge porn collection in the world.  Rest assured, they don't.  They merely have the capability if they so wish to put together the biggest revenge porn collection in the world, and they really honestly don't, they just want to filter all those mirror shots of cocks and arseholes and underage girls duckfacing down to the point where it's just the finest, classiest self-shot images they collect and then use to keep us safe from the fifth columnists in our midst.

Excuse my ahem, rather colourful corruption of what it is GCHQ do, but reading such an obfuscatory report as the one produced by Blears and pals will do that to you.  Just like their last major release, where they detailed precisely how the security services failed to keep the killers of Lee Rigby under further surveillance (which probably wouldn't have saved Rigby's, or another soldier's life regardless) and then put all the blame on Facebook, so too here they use a similar approach.  Essentially, absolutely everything the security services do involving monitoring the internet is above board, completely kosher, totally necessary to keep us safe.  The fact that we knew precisely nothing of this prior to the Edward Snowden leaks, and the ISC itself didn't think to ask is neither here nor there.  At the same time, despite everything being a-OK as far as not breaking the law as it is stands, said laws need to be torn up and began again from scratch.

Confused?  You shouldn't be.  Basically the laws are a complete mess, and always have been rather than just rendered obsolete by technological change.  As we already knew, GCHQ's bulk interception capability, known as Tempora, is legal by virtue of the foreign secretary signing a public immunity certificate every six months.  However, the RIPA act of 2000 requires that for a specific UK based target to be monitored, as opposed to anyone up to and including every damn person on the internet, a warrant naming that person is required.  Except, due to the vast majority of the services we use being hosted overseas, the agencies distinguish between "internal" and "external" communications.  Posting on Facebook or Twitter is then an external communication, even if you're just retweeting the joke the person on the desk opposite you put up.  This means that while the agencies can't search for your name without getting a warrant, they can suck up all the information they want about you if you happen to be followed by or friends with someone living outside the UK by carrying out the surveillance on them instead.  In any case, as James Ball points out, this doesn't preclude their uncovering metadata on you, just the content.

And oh boy, essentially metadata is whatever the intelligence agencies want it to be, metadata not being defined in RIPA anyway.  The ISC outlines that only the full url of a website (page 52 of the report) is considered to be content, so while they're not allowed to know precisely which video it was you looked at on YouPorn without a warrant, they are allowed to know you went to the site.  It also means they can hoover up the location data stored by your smartphone, as that's not considered to be content either.  This is one of the few areas where the ISC isn't convinced by the insistence of the agencies that such information is unintrusive, and so suggest it be regarded as "communications data plus", with added protections under any new bill.

The one new thing the ISC did find out is the agencies have for some time now been purchasing or obtaining "bulk personal datasets" (page 55 onwards), only any further information on just what these datasets are is in the usual style of ISC reports redacted.  The assumption is they're databases put together by private companies, social networking firms, all the usual suspects, and most probably contain fairly mundane information that could be sourced through perfectly legitimate means.  The ISC notes however the agencies obtain these both through "overt and covert channels", so in other words don't believe that ticking the box saying don't share my information with third parties is going to prevent our friends in Cheltenham from getting their hands on them via unscrupulous methods.  They also set out the controls on the use of the datasets, which even by the standards seen above are flimsy, don't apply to the likes of the NSA, so if they're willing they can do the dirty work for GCHQ.

Where the report truly fails, and this again has always been typical of the ISC, is the evidence that supposedly proves bulk interception works can't possibly be shared with us plebs less it tips off our enemies (page 32).  Any further details on Tempora and just how much of the internet it has mastered are similarly redacted, again without a convincing reason as to how knowing this might help anyone wishing us harm.  It doesn't however stop the committee from ridiculing the likes of Liberty et al from rejecting bulk interception in principle (page 35 onwards), when they and we are not being provided with even the slightest evidence as to whether it works in the way the GCHQ insists to make a judgement on.  That they of course frame this by saying privacy organisations would rather there be successful attacks than a slight infringement of civil liberties only underlines the basic hostility the ISC has so often displayed towards critics, both of themselves and the agencies.  Just how useless the ISC can be at times is further shown by this non-response to allegations in the media concerning the Belhadj rendition case:



I don't know about you, but that *** has certainly reassured me.

The report in its entirety is wonderful for what it makes clear and yet cannot admit.  For all the sound and fury directed at Edward Snowden and the Guardian, all the claims of endangering the public, the soundbites from the heads of MI5 and MI6 of al-Qaida rubbing their hands in glee, the ISC all but admits the leak was accurate, and the current safeguards built into the legislation are not fit for purpose.  The ISC knows full well however that any replacement legislation will not simply bring the regulations up to date, but also enshrine in law Tempora and the further powers of surveillance the agencies have long demanded.  This will happen without the slightest evidence being presented as to the efficacy of GCHQ's attempt to master the internet, nor anything more than internal oversight to ensure individuals within the agencies are not doing precisely what I describe in the first paragraph and far, far worse.  The securocrats win.  They always win.

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3/12/2015 11:27:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 26, 2014 

Project Mayhem urges you to stay safe.

Blame it on the ultimately superficial, shallow and obvious nature of my mind, but my first thought after seeing ACPO's "STAY SAFE" leaflets was blimey, have we really now reached the point where the police are taking pointers from Project Mayhem, aka Tyler Durden's psy-ops campaign in Fight Club?  Is the next step billboards telling everyone the best way of warding off a terrorist attack is dousing yourself in oil?

Yep, counter-terrorism awareness week is clearly in full effect.  Chiefly this seems to consist of urging Londoners to be suspicious of absolutely everyone and everything at all times, which, let's be honest, isn't exactly the most alien concept to most.  See a dog hanging around Euston without its owner?  Best report it, could be a bomb dog.  Spy a bearded gentleman with a rucksack fiddling around with its contents?  First check he isn't a hipster by looking to see if he has the obligatory tattoos peaking out from under his sleeves, and if he doesn't, kick the ever living shit out of him.  Or alternatively, duck and cover.  Err, run, hide and tell?

Quite what the point of such leaflets is always escapes me.  How else are most going to react should they be caught up in a Mumbai-style attack?  They're not going to be like me and walk towards the AK-47 wielding fanatic, thankful at last for a stroke of luck, they're going to be, err, running, hiding and phoning up our friends in CO19, who hopefully won't shoot the first Brazilian they come across.  Nor has there been the slightest indication a Mumbai in this country is a real possibility, despite Theresa May saying one had been disrupted without, naturally, giving further details.  The most recent intelligence, again, if we're to believe it, was the police themselves were the most likely target.  You don't have to be a natural cynic to wonder if the point in fact isn't to scare people, coming the same week as the rest of the hype over the jihadi threat.

It'd be easier to take also if there wasn't the all too familiar sight of otherwise intelligent people acting like dunderheads.  Malcolm Rifkind was beyond certain last night that Facebook could report every single instance of wannabe terrorists colluding if they wanted to, as they do it when it comes to child abuse.  Except of course they don't, and even if it was possible to review every single instance of an account being flagged when eleventy billion status updates are posted every day, there's no guarantee whatsoever the police or the intelligence agencies would then act upon it, as Rifkind's own report made clear.  Blaming the social networks is though a surefire win, as demonstrated by this morning's front pages, especially when so many don't realise how the systems they have in place work and when it's always easier to point the finger at the service provider rather than the individual, as we've seen in similar instances.

As for how it distracts from the other problems with the government's proposed legislation, that's a bonus.  The example today of the brothers convicted of attending a training camp in Syria indicates just how often the system of "managed return" is likely to be used in practice, unless we see a policy change from the police.

By any measure, the Nawaz brothers would have been perfect candidates for such a scheme: they joined not Islamic State but Junud al-Sham, a group which according to Shiraz Maher has since allied with Ahrar al-Sham, part of the Islamic Front, a jihadist but until recently supported by Saudi Arabia section of the rebels.  When you add how they travelled back in August of last year, when both government and media agreed how wonderful such allies of the Free Syrian Army were, it strikes as more than a trifle rich they're now starting prison terms of 4 and a half years and 3 years respectively.  The judge accepted there was no evidence they intended to do anything in this country, and the fact they returned after a month of training without fighting, albeit with trophies, also suggests they weren't cut out for the war.  If others like them are to be prosecuted, then "managed return" with its agreeing to be interviewed by the police, and possible compulsory attendance of deradicalisation programmes seems like a gesture rather than anything practical.

Instead the emphasis seems to be on confiscating passports, without it being clear whether those denied the chance to fight in Syria or Iraq will then be properly monitored.  It leaves those who do support Islamic State, such as Siddhartha Dhar, arrested with Anjem Choudary's mob of blowhards, easily able to skip bail and laugh at the intelligence agencies from afar.   As previously argued, the best policy could be to let those who want to go to do so, and then deal with them if and when they seek to return, otherwise we risk increasing the chance those desperate to be martyrs will resort to launching their own plans here.

At the moment the coalition seems to want the worst of all worlds.  Whether it be in restricting free speech on campus, promoting the frankly hopeless Prevent scheme which targets completely the wrong people, closing down the last avenue through which families might try to save their kidnapped loved ones, blaming internet companies as part of a vendetta or allowing the police to run a frankly ridiculous "awareness" week, the plans seem designed to embitter, alienate and scare without doing anything that actually might help prevent radicalisation in the first place.  Is it worth mentioning at this point how until very recently successive governments claimed our presence in Afghanistan was about stopping terrorist attacks on British streets?  Can anyone remind me how that's working out?  Or indeed whether the insane contortions of our Syria policy which saw us first lionise the Syrian opposition only to then all but side with Assad to battle Islamic State might have contributed to the current mess?  No, probably not.

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11/26/2014 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 25, 2014 

The real face of 21st century insecurity.

(This is almost 2,000 words.)

To believe in most conspiracy theories, you need also to believe in the concept of all powerful government.  9/11 couldn't possibly have been the work of 19 men armed only with boxcutters and rudimentary knowledge of flying planes, that's far too implausible.  Instead, it was an inside job, possibly involving explosives that were planted in the twin towers when they were built, possibly involving holograms that looked like planes, all in the aid of justifying war and/or wars designed to take control of more Middle Eastern oil.  Or maybe the owner of the WTC wanted the insurance money, and was so motivated by greed he felt no compunction about the lives of the people in the buildings he was going to first have planes flew into, and then demolished remotely.

Except, as anyone who pays the slightest attention will quickly realise, government is not all powerful.  The intelligence agencies, despite having incredible powers of surveillance are not all knowing, let alone an panopticon.  In fact, for the most part they're just as stupid as you or I.  They rely chiefly for many of their outlandish claims on how the vast majority of the public don't remember the last time they were told about just how massive the threat level is, not to mention how the media for the most part repeats those same claims without hesitation.  More to the point, why shouldn't they when those wishing us harm say that's precisely what they intend just before they kill their latest victims?

We are then facing perhaps the most severe level of threat ever, says Theresa May.  Since 7/7 40 major plots have been disrupted, including ones we know about, such as the liquid bombs one, as well others we might not, like a Mumbai-style massacre, which could be a reference to the on-going Erol Incedal semi-secret trial.  This is the most severe level of threat since the last most severe level of threat.  For I recall former Met commissioners telling us how the "sky was dark", such was the scale of plotting going on, former MI5 heads warning of 30 on-going plots, of 2,000 individuals associated with extremism.  To be taken in by this nonsense you need to completely forget about the IRA, and more or less, every single past agitator either inside or outside the country.  In reality, the only thing that distinguished Islamist extremists from other terrorists was they didn't issue warnings, and were prepared to kill indiscriminately.

Now even that claim doesn't properly stand up.  As the Intelligence and Security Committee's report into what did or didn't go wrong with the security services' dealings with the two men convicted of killing Lee Rigby makes clear (PDF), the most pernicious threat right now is not so much from "lone wolves", those who have no contact whatsoever with other extremists, but "self-starters" (page 80, para 232).  Self-starters are those without major links to an al-Qaida franchise or Islamic State, but who are inspired by their example and decide to do something, anything.  They will be known to other extremists, probably having appeared on the periphery of investigations carried out by the police or MI5/GCHQ, just not considered an imminent threat.  Without the support and resources available to those with direct links to an AQ franchise, they're likely to think smaller and go for something achievable rather than spectacular.  Such as killing a soldier, or perhaps beheading the first person they don't like the look of.

This raises the question of just what is and isn't terrorism.  Within hours of Lee Rigby's murder his death was being defined as a terrorist act, rather than a homicide egregiously justified by his killers as revenge for British foreign policy.  The implication seems to be all someone needs to do is shout "Allah akbar" or the equivalent for their violence to be deemed terrorist inspired.  Any other factors can then be disregarded, and lessons must be learned from the failure to prevent the attack in the first place.

In the absence of there being anything or anyone to blame, or the refusal to apportion blame where it would most obviously lie based on the evidence, something else can always be found.  When it's done in such a transparent, utterly flagrant way as it has by the ISC and the government though, it just insults everyone's intelligence.  The first part of this week has been designated as a time to highlight "the threat" and demonstrate why yet more new powers are necessary, with the ISC report at the core, despite it having been ready for publication for weeks if not months.  It's a brilliant report, in that in the style of the very best it provides documentary evidence of how incompetent MI5 and MI6 can be, taking months to process intelligence and follow it up, leaving crucial details out of reports provided to the police, removing Michael Adebolajo from his status as a subject of interest, despite his links to 5 other major investigations and so on, and then reserves its real ire for Facebook for not passing on what it considers the one key piece of intelligence the security services believe could have prevented the attack.

It does this despite openly contradicting itself.  The key intelligence not passed on by Facebook was a conversation between Michael Adebowale and an extremist with links to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, where the former spoke of wanting to kill a soldier and received advice on how to go about doing so (page 127, para 378).  It seems fairly damning, until you consider how a similar piece of intelligence on Adebowale was used, or rather not used.  Back in 2012 GCHQ reported an unknown individual, not at that time identified as Adebowale, had been espousing "views includ[ing] references to operating as a lone wolf (or lone actor), and other general extremist remarks" (page 77, para 221).  The ISC notes at first sight this seems "striking", only for the committee to be reassured by the director general of MI5 that "those sorts of things said, and worse, on these sorts of [sites] are very common" and "[T]he vast majority of it, *** translates into no action at all". 

You can of course argue that going into the specifics of an attack is very different to vaguely talking of wanting to be a lone wolf, as does the contact with someone with links to AQAP, although at the time the intelligence agencies didn't know that was the case.  The same argument as made by Andrew Parker could though surely be applied to the exchange on Facebook; the vast majority of such talk would similarly translate into no action at all.  The real difference seems to be GCHQ obtained the first conversation, while Facebook didn't until after the murder discover the interaction between Adebowale and "Foxtrot", despite a number of Adebowale's accounts being automatically closed due to links to terrorism.  Adebowale closed the account used to contact "Foxtrot" himself.

Just then as Robert Hannigan, the new head of GCHQ used his first day in the job to describe social media companies and other tech giants as "facilitators of crime and terrorism" so today David Cameron was denouncing the likes of Facebook for providing a "safe haven" for terrorists, intentionally or not.  All this cant seems purely down to how accessing the personal data, meta or otherwise of everyone has been made harder by the shift towards greater encryption by the data companies.  Despite the efforts of GCHQ to master the internet, the ISC report claims in what seems to be the first official confirmation of the existence of Tempora, without naming it as such, in theory, "GCHQ can access around ***% of global internet traffic and approximately ***% of internet traffic entering or leaving the UK" (para 410, page 135).  James Ball suggests Edward Snowden believed GCHQ could access 20% of UK internet traffic, although as neither Adebowale or "Foxtrot" were under investigation at the time they wouldn't have known what to look for anyway.

Quite what the real aim is remains far more opaque.  As Alan Travis and others point out, what GCHQ and the government seem to be demanding is either that social media companies do their job for them, which is an impossibility; or, far more dangerously, that they let governments and their intelligence agencies do whatever they like with the data passing through the servers.  Even if we accept they have the very best of intentions, why should a US company hand over information without objection to a UK government agency and not say do the same for the Russians or Chinese when their requests would no doubt be made on the very same terms?  The argument they already do so when it comes to child exploitation is bogus, and more to the point, as we saw with the raids on Tor, disrupting paedophile networks still appears to come second to the war on drugs.

The report also downplays or accepts "national security" excuses for why MI5's attempts to recruit Adebolajo can neither be confirmed or denied (page 44, para 117).  Despite this, the ISC "investigated all aspects of MI5’s actions thoroughly, and [has] not seen any evidence of wrongdoing by MI5", so clearly any suggestion the "harassment" of Adebolajo may have contributed to his actions must similarly be dismissed.  MI6 was also wholly uninterested in Adebolajo's claims he was mistreated when arrested in Kenya (page 153, para 461), presumed to be intending to join up with al-Shabaab with Somalia, with the ISC concluding "we would have expected that all allegations of mistreatment would now be treated with the seriousness they merit" and that "whatever we now know about him as an individual does not detract from the fact that his allegations were not dealt with appropriately".  Again, any impact the alleged mistreatment could have ultimately had on Adebolajo's actions, considering the links between the UK and the anti-terrorism unit in Kenya codenamed ARCTIC, must obviously be disregarded.

As the Graun puts it, the "bleak truth is that it's possible nothing would have saved Lee Rigby from his awful fate".  Despite the government or the agencies themselves occasionally repeating the old adage that whereas they have to be lucky every time, the terrorists only have to be lucky once, protecting the public in the face of such odds remains one of the few things they continue to boast about.  It doesn't matter that governments wilfully redefine terrorism to be almost anything, raising the stakes even further, to the point where schools are deemed not to be doing enough to tackle extremism if sixth form societies have Facebook pages with links to radical preachers, still everything must be seen to be done, even if it turns out to be counter-productive or worse.  Continuously ramping up the perceived threat helps no one, and yet successive governments have done it.  When the intelligence agencies then fail, as they will, the blame has to be diverted.  If that in turn further helps the securocrats who are never satisfied with the material they have access to, so much the better, again in spite of how Tempora is useless against one determined person armed with a sharp knife.  All the technology, all our powers of surveillance, all our intelligence, brought low by men armed with a car, an unloaded gun and a few blades.  There is the true insecurity of the 21st century, and it's not the stuff conspiracy theories are made of.

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11/25/2014 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, July 10, 2014 

Every modern scourge tamed, but only if we pass this emergency legislation.

When all sides of the House agree on a measure, you know there's something else going on behind the scenes.  This is an emergency.  Lives are at risk.  Our prime minister doesn't want to be the one to stand up after an attack and admit more could have been done.  This is not about introducing new powers, it's to ensure the authorities can carry on as before.

It's utter crap, but every single time it works. The government clearly hoped it would have another justification to fall back on, as the Graun reported last week. The Intelligence and Security Committee is due imminently to release their report into what involvement the security services had with the killers of Lee Rigby, expected to predictably say they could have done more if they had the precogs seen in Minority Report. Only the ISC report for whatever reason hasn't materialised, meaning the government had to act today regardless to be able to force it through before parliament goes into its summer recess next week.

The excuse is a ruling back in April by the Court of Justice of the European Union struck down the data sharing agreement between governments and providers which allowed metadata to be kept for up to 12 months.  There needed to be far more privacy safeguards in place, said the CJEU.  The wiseacres among you will note April was three months ago; if this was truly urgent, the legislation would have emerged long before now.  Indeed, when Iain Duncan Smith needed to swiftly get an act on statute to deny those on benefits compensation for not being given the information they needed to make an informed choice about the workfare scheme they were sent on, the bill was before parliament in just over a month (and that act, incidentally, has also fell foul of the beak).  The idea the same wouldn't have been the case if this was truly as serious as claimed is ludicrous.

Instead they've waited for the most opportune time to ram through a bill that barely makes any concessions to the ECJ ruling.  Sure, as part of the apparent deal between the Tories and the Lib Dems/Labour we're now due to get a privacy and civil liberties board as an apparent replacement for the current lone reviewer of terrorism legislation, as well as a review of the RIPA legislation that allows for the very existence of Tempora, but these carry as many potential downsides as they do benefits.  David Anderson has been a vast improvement over Lord Carlile, and frankly I'd rather have one decent reviewer than a board of Carliles.  Much the same goes for the review of RIPA: are we really supposed to expect the same politicians who have insisted time and time again that rather than putting in more safeguards we in fact need even wider surveillance to accept any report calling for the former?  Pull the other one.  The sunset clause will therefore provide just the opening the securocrats have been looking for.

Nor will the legislation just reinstate the existing agreement as the government and opposition are insisting.  As Jack of Kent and others have pointed out, it goes beyond what RIPA currently allows.  It will require overseas companies to comply with warrants, where previously the law was hazy on whether it applied to them, while also redefining exactly what "telecommunications services" are far more widely, again removing any room for doubt.  Rather than risk having these changes scrutinised by committee, the government and opposition have connived in the idea of there being a phony emergency, a move most likely needless in any case considering how the majority of the press and the public accept each new dilution of privacy and civil liberties as needed to save us from paedogeddon/bearded fanatics/any thug with a gun/transforming teddy bears.

See, this is why the idea there was an establishment cover up over child abuse at Elm Guest House or wherever else is so difficult to believe.  The odd person with suitably powerful connections can, on occasion, get away with such things.  Cyril Smith wasn't just the subject of rumours for instance as we've seen; there were specific allegations published about him that simply weren't followed up or were squashed with help.  When we're talking about 20 or so high profile figures, as some are claiming, that's a hell of a lot of back covering, involving hundreds of people or more, none of whom were challenged by their conscience into backing up Geoffrey Dickens or taking their concerns to the press or anyone else.  

Moreover, government is terrible at keeping secrets or pulling a fast one: it couldn't do it on this, it couldn't do it on rendition, where the papers that might have confirmed more flights did land at Diego Garcia were destroyed by "flood", and News International couldn't do it to take a corporate example over phone hacking.  This isn't to say there aren't conspiracies to be uncovered, it's we always ought to wield Occam's razor first.  Or just a razor in general when it comes to the aforementioned legislation.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2014 

The conspiracy theories return.

Only on Monday were we mentioning in passing Sir Peter Gibson's truncated inquiry into alleged complicity in extraordinary rendition by our glorious security services and government. His final report sat waiting to be published for almost 18 months as arguments over which secret documents could and couldn't be included in full raged, regardless of how meek and mild Gibson's actual conclusions were. One of the key claims from all involved was this time the security services had cooperated fully, making the "vast majority" of requested documents available, except for those that couldn't be released without US permission.

Strange then that as Craig Murray posted on Monday, a source in the Foreign Office had told him our own government was lobbying the Americans over the similarly delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report into the rendition and wider torture programme operated by the CIA. Their worry was, even redacted, the release of the report's executive summary could damage the case currently being put before the courts blocking the attempt by Abdul Hakim Belhaj to seek compensation over his rendition. Despite the judge accepting the evidence for Belhaj's rendition via Hong Kong was all but established, to go any further would risk damage to the "national interest", i.e., the UK's relationship with the US.

Now via al-Jazeera America (and Yorkshire Ranter) comes another reason why both this government and the one previous would like the report's summary to remain sitting on President Obama's desk for a while yet. According to two US officials who have had access to parts of the 6,000 page report, it confirms for the first time that despite repeated denials from ministers back then and the Gibson inquiry not receiving any documents (PDF) that said otherwise, Diego Garcia was indeed used not only as a stopover point for rendition flights as was admitted in 2008, but also as a "black site".  This was with the full permission of the government, despite the likes of Jack Straw and David Miliband time after time telling parliament the exact opposite was the case.

If confirmed, it not only means ministers lied to both houses of parliament to protect the United States and its torture programme, it's also the first time the mistreatment of detainees has been found to have occurred on UK territory.  As all the reports up till now have also cleared the government of complicity in actual extraordinary rendition, having not considered the cases of Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi while downgrading the transfers of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna to Guantanamo as "renditions to detention", it would also for the first time leave the government with no wiggle room on that charge, potentially opening the way for more compensation claims, or even prosecution for those who gave the Americans permission to use their base on Diego Garcia as they saw fit.

Once again then we can be glad the eventual follow-up to the Gibson inquiry has been handed to the fearlessly independent Intelligence and Security Committee, the same one which let the intelligence chiefs know the questions they were going to be asked beforehand (although, it must be noted, they probably would have known anyway such are GCHQ's abilities).  It must also be a relief to Baroness Amos and David Miliband that they have since moved on from the Lords and the Commons respectively, as both insisted the government knew nothing about the use of Diego Garcia to host detainees, although there's a certain irony in how both are now involved in humanitarian work, Amoss at the UN and Miliband at International Rescue.  As for Jack Straw, he's set to leave parliament at the next election, probably before any subsequent inquiry reaches its conclusion.  While the chances of Inspector Knacker coming to call are unlikely, to judge by their past involvement in similar cases, it hopefully won't come too late to further tarnish what deserves to be regarded as one of the most ignominious political careers of recent times.  It might not be the equivalent of having your penis slashed with a scalpel, being deprived of sleep for over 11 days, forced into a pet carrier for two weeks or shackled to the ceiling of a cell by your wrists, but it's something.

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Thursday, December 19, 2013 

Rendition: one step closer to, something.

A day after saying I was right I can swiftly redress the balance by making clear I was also wrong.  There is actually very little in the Report of the Detainee Inquiry aka the Gibson report (PDF) that's been redacted.  Indeed, only one brief section of the report has been, although the main redaction consists of an entire paragraph (page 48 onwards, 5.23) which reading between the lines was an account of what MI5 and SIS officers saw on being allowed to interview detainees at Bagram airbase on the 9th of January 2002.  In what seems to be the first instance of an officer reporting back first hand the potential mistreatment of detainees, SIS Head Office responded by telegram on the 11th of January with advice that while it was "important that you do not engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment", "the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this".  In fact, international law explicitly states the opposite.  Another entire paragraph is then redacted, and this time it's impossible to know what the closed report said.

The main reason why more hasn't been redacted is immediately apparent on reading the rest of what is by inquiry standards, even one which was cancelled early, a fairly short document.  For anyone who presumed the report would deal in detail with individual cases of alleged complicity in rendition, they're likely be left extremely underwhelmed.  What the report amounts to is little more than a reprise of the narrative which those who've followed the rendition scandal from the outset will already be familiar with. This is hardly surprising when it draws heavily on the two previous reports by the Intelligence and Security Committee, 2005's detainee report and 2007's one on rendition. Both were wholly inadequate, thanks to how the ISC didn't then have the power to demand documents from the agencies, and the usual failure of the spooks to tell the truth. Gibson even fully accepts the ISC's defintion of what is and isn't an extraordinary rendition, so once again the agencies are cleared of personal involvement in rendition, despite the massive role played by MI5 in the transfer to Guantanamo of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna.

Despite also having almost full access to the documents requested from MI5 and SIS (the "vast majority" were released, although some, especially those requiring American consent have not been, which is interesting to note considering the NSA's horrendous failure to keep GCHQ documentation safe), new revelations are extremely few and far between. We already knew for instance that while expressing concern about conditions at Guantanamo in public when it opened, Jack Straw was agreeing the transfer of British citizens to the detention camp behind closed doors.  One new detail is that Straw, apparently looking for an alternative, suggested to David Blunkett the then being drafted Extradition Bill could try and restrict the precedent set by R vs Mullen, where the unlawful return of Nicholas Mullen from Zimbabwe had resulted in his conviction of conspiracy to cause explosions being quashed (page 35).  Blunkett reported back 5 months later saying "the obstacles to this suggestion are simply too formidable".

The key issue that remains is the one considered in chapter 6 of the report (page 73 onwards).  Despite what the then heads of MI5 and SIS said to the ISC previously, it's apparent there was more than enough evidence collected by the agencies themselves, not least from the reports of officers back to their heads, to suggest mistreatment was fairly widespread at Bagram and elsewhere.  Gibson says these "reports ... were of variable quality and viability", but when we now know that after the very first visit by British officers to Bagram they were reporting back their concerns only to be told they didn't have to worry their little heads about things like the Geneva convention, it's difficult not to conclude that some within the services knew full well what was happening.  Indeed, it seems as though as early as 2002 MI5 was conducting internal reviews in an attempt to collate the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Guantanamo.  Despite this, the report reveals, no centralised record was subsequently kept of either allegations of mistreatment or first hand accounts from officers themselves.

As to whether ministers were informed of these concerns, something that has previously been unclear, the report does little to clear things up.  Tony Blair annotated a briefing note on Guantanamo saying although he had been sceptical about claims of torture, it had to be "quickly establish[ed] that it isn't happening".  Jack Straw was also made aware of the report from Bagram, and like Blair, annotated it; he also went on to intervene in both 2003 and 2004 with the Americans with concerns on the treatment and conditions British citizens were subject to.  It wasn't until after the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light however that Straw specifically asked SIS to provide him with information on their experiences in interviewing those held in Afghanistan.  As much as it seems the security services didn't go out of their way to keep ministers informed, the ministers themselves hardly seemed to have been too bothered either.

Which, again, isn't wholly surprising when we know Straw was involved at around the same time in the transfer of Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi back to Libya.  Straw for his part responded in the Commons, once again denying that he was in "any way complicit in the unlawful rendition or detention of individuals by the United States or any other state".  The problem for Straw is that MI6 says they only acted in accordance with ministerial authority, meaning one of the two has to be wrong.

Aren't you glad then it'll be the ISC investigating once again, rather than a fusty old judge with a legion of lawyers getting fat off the taxpayer doing the interrogating?  Straw certainly must be, as no doubt are the intelligence services themselves.  Ken Clarke, who must have pulled the short straw and so gave today's Commons statement despite no longer being the justice minister, certainly didn't give anything approaching an adequate explanation as to why a judge-led inquiry can't take place now, with consideration of the alleged Libyan renditions delayed until the the court case and police investigation have concluded, whereas it seems the ISC can do both at the same time.  If nothing else, today's report makes clear that questions from parliamentarians, especially those who have previously held the same positions as those accused, are simply not going to be of the same standard as from those appointed to helm an independent inquiry, not least when the ISC is already conducting at least two other substantial investigations at the same time.

Then there's the very issue we started with.  This report has been with the prime minister for 18 months.  We can't know the battles that went on between Gibson and the Cabinet Office over the redactions, only in the end they've turned out to be relatively minor.  That it's taken such an incredible amount of time to be published does though suggest any report eventually issued by the ISC is even more likely to be affected.  I cannot possibly see how redacting that first paragraph dealing with events more than 10 years ago could affect national security now, and yet in the end Gibson gave in and allowed it to be removed.  When you also consider they've chosen to publish it on what has turned out to be a busy news day at the time of year when few are much interested in parliament, the potential for the hiding of embarrassment, let alone potentially criminal acts, remains immense.  It has at long last been stated fairly uneqovically, if carefully, that we chose to involve ourselves in rendition and the mistreatment of detainees during the initial period of the "war on terror".  It's how those involved are now held to account that matters, and the signs are that just as the CIA was allowed to get away with far worse, our own politicians and spies will be able to plead unique circumstances and get away with only stains on their character.  Those who were tortured will merely have to bear the very real scars for the rest of their lives.

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12/19/2013 11:54:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 18, 2013 

The futility of being right.

There are times when despite every fibre of your being telling you it makes you look an arse, you really just want to say I told you so/I was right/you people are damn fools.  In fact, it doesn't just make you look an arse, it means you almost certainly are an arse.  We hear complaints all that time that no one managed to predict the recession or the Arab spring, except of course for the tiny number some have deemed to be our latter day equivalent of Cassandras.  It doesn't matter it's more than likely those same people completely lucked out and prior to getting something right had been wrong, wrong, and thrice wrong, we tend to downplay such things in our search for those who seem to know something the rest of us dunderheads don't.

To labour the point even further, it's incredibly easy to pose a political soothsayer, not least when by far the best policy is to expect the worst and go from there.  Don't predict riots though, as even if you turn out to be right, you really do look a tool.  Chances are your hit rate if you're careful will be quite high, although considering others despite these rules have failed miserably, such as the sadly departed Mystic Mogg, or Mark "Osama bin Laden is dead" Steyn, perhaps there's more to it than there really seems.

Right, have I delayed the inevitable quite enough?  Those with longer memories will recall that back in the mists of time an inquiry into our "alleged" collusion in extraordinary rendition, helmed by a certain Sir Peter Gibson, was cancelled after further "allegations" against MI6 and Jack Straw came to light.  These "allegations" were such that almost exactly a year ago Sami al-Saadi received a £2m settlement without the government admitting any liability.  In other words, yes, we were perfectly happy to send those associated with an Islamic group opposed to Gaddafi (but which also had links to al-Qaida) back to the colonel's torture chambers, so long as it meant a few of our finest FTSE 100 companies got access to the country's copious natural resources.  A few years later, and a different government decided we would join forces with these terrorists to get rid of the man we felt we could do business with (although, if we're to believe David Shayler, we had already paid the LIFG to make an attempt on Gaddafi a few years previous to that).  Changing geopolitics, eh?

12 months on, and finally we've learned there is indeed to be a follow-on inquiry.  Only, as was predictable, rather than the judge-led independent inquiry hoped for by human rights groups and those others compensated by the governments it is instead to be carried out by, err, the Intelligence and Security Committee.  Yep, in what seems to be a deliberate joke on those of us who have been mocking the ISC for years now, the same committee that produced the ridiculous whitewash on rendition in the first place is to have a second try.  I'd like to say this boggles the mind, except as the general response to the Snowden revelations has made clear, we've come a long way from the days when the coalition was making a lot of noise about "freedom" bills and not introducing ID cards.

It does though raise the question of how such a committee can possibly even begin to hold either ministers or the security services to account.  The government seems to be asking Malcolm Rifkind, former foreign secretary, to sit in judgement of Jack Straw, former foreign secretary.  Also alongside Rifkind will be Hazel Blears, a minister at the same time as Straw was failing to stop the Iraq war and signing memorandums authorising renditions.  Will she be recusing herself?  One suspects not.  It also won't be able to get straight on with the work as the government continues to try to get Abdel Hakim Belhaj's case thrown out, meaning it's possible the inquiry won't have started until after the next election. Apparently enough then the government isn't even pretending to be interested in keeping its word any longer, and those hopes the likes of Liberty had for something better to turn up have very much not come to pass.  As even a goon like me thought was the most likely result.

We will however be getting Gibson's interim report, which will be somewhat limited as the inquiry never heard any evidence.  Seeing as it's also sat around for the best part of 18 months, it's bound to be redacted to the verge of complete pointlessness, and in the best Whitehall tradition, to blame precisely no one and also reach err, no conclusions whatsoever.  Fantastic.  It's also being published on the last parliamentary day before Christmas, no doubt alongside dozens of other unpleasant documents and statistics the government doesn't want anyone to know about.  Isn't it great being right?

No.

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12/18/2013 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, December 16, 2013 

We don't need no damn facts here boy.

Facts are great.  You can prove anything with facts.  But you know what's better?  Debates based around complete and total ignorance.  Yeah!  You know the ones, the kind we have when the great British public think 15% of 15-year-old girls get pregnant every year, or that 31% of the population are immigrants.  These debates are the best for the obvious reason that you can say absolutely anything, and because we simply don't have even the slightest inkling of what the reality is, everyone wins.  Did you know that 90% of 18-24 year-olds now have tattoos?  Actually, that's bullshit, the figure is closer to 25%. I don't think that's right.  Yeah, well, you're the one who's wrong, idiot.  What did you call me?*

And so on.  Much of politics does of course revolve around ignorance, whether it be from the politicians themselves, such as over internet safety/pornography, or indeed dealing with the fallout from the public's own perception of the nation, itself fuelled by the nation's finest newspapers and broadcasters.  It's surely come to something though when we have politicians at an evidence committee agreeing that we don't need any damn facts in order to have a debate.  Both Ian Austin, clearly one of Labour's finest, and Theresa May concurred that we could have just as good an in-depth and informed discussion on GCHQ and state surveillance without the Guardian having published so much as a single document from Edward Snowden.

To be fair, this is at least an improvement on the government's previous position.  First they told the Guardian that they'd had their debate and it was time to hand over all the documents; now we can have a debate for as long as we like, it's just they'd really rather like it if we didn't know GCHQ was busy mastering the internet, or failing to crack Tor, or being funded by the NSA, or has the capabilities they were demanding in the data communications bill and so we instead mainly talked of how wonderful the security services are at keeping us safe.

Theresa May is certain then that terrorists have been helped thanks to Snowden and the Graun.  She doesn't have evidence that they have, as she repeatedly failed to say whether MI5 had let her in on how the various al-Qaida nasties have been rubbing their heads with glee as revelation has followed revelation.  Merely, she was convinced by what she had "seen and heard" that national security had been damaged.  In other words, as with others who have gone before her, May seems to be suggesting that anything with the potential to help terrorists, regardless of how slight or how ridiculous it is for say the location of Faslane to remain secret should remain that way just in case someone with a beard and a backpack should turn up in the vicinity.  Thankfully, other officials with slightly more sense than our politicians decreed a few years back that not identifying army bases on maps was really fantastically stupid, and the same principle applies here.  Anyone planning on launching an attack would have to be really quite daft not to think the potential was there for either the police or MI5 to be listening in.

The predictable nonsense out of the way, the rest of the session was a bit more illuminating, and an improvement on the appearance of the chief spooks themselves.  Without saying so, May more or less made clear that only the ISC will be allowed to question our friends in the intelligence agencies, despite Parker having seemingly agreed to appear before Keith Vaz and friends.  She also doesn't think that members of the ISC should be elected, rather than chosen by the prime minister, hence why such first rate minds as Hazel Blears are on the committee rather than say anyone with a healthy scepticism of the executive.  Nor do we know if the spooks have been so much as consulted over how it was Snowden managed to get hold of hundreds of thousands of documents, or whether the access regime has been changed, as May only said she was sure they would have been consulted.  Considering the NSA still hasn't managed to work out exactly what Snowden took, you have to doubt quite how seriously they will have taken our concerns.  

May also said that 9 of the 10 people currently on TPIMs are British, whereas all of those who had been under control orders were foreign nationals.  In other words, and as Phil pointed out in the comments last month, we now have a system only slightly removed from control orders that mainly targets British citizens rather than those who couldn't be deported, and yet no one seems to be asking why it is these people can't be prosecuted as opposed to partially deprived of their liberty on the basis of secret evidence.

See, dangerous things those facts.  They cause problems, and start campaigns.  Far better that we have a monopoly on them, or better yet, dispense with them altogether.  Something they're already doing at Michael Gove's free schools.  Bad-ba-dum tsk.

*I have no clue what the real percentage is, and I also don't care.

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12/16/2013 09:52:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 11, 2013 

Parker saved from having to stick his nose in.

Andrew "nosy" Parker, the head of MI5, will not then be giving evidence to the Home Affairs committee after all.  In what must rank as the most analogous instance of a grown man being got out of a potentially sticky situation by the equivalent of a note from his mum, Theresa May has decreed that for the chief spook to appear before another committee, albeit a select committee rather than a statutory one, would be to duplicate the ISC's work.  This is an interesting new innovation on the part of the coalition: apparently you can't have two inquiries into the same thing going on at the same time, unless of course the object of the inquiries is to try and get one over on the Labour party, in which case you can have innumerable different investigations into the Co-op Bank and Paul Flowers.  To be fair, it reminds just as much as Labour's position on a further inquiry into the Iraq war while troops were still in the country.  Once they were back home, then we could have the Chilcot inquiry.  Until then, and regardless of how in the past we'd managed to have inquiries into debacles in both WW1 and WW2 without damaging the mission, we couldn't possibly hold one.

You can at least see why Theresa May has "declined" the committee's request to call Parker.  What's the point of the ISC if the heads of the intelligence agencies can also be called to account by other, normal, parliamentary committees?  If the Home Affairs committee had been allowed to question Parker without first informing him of what they intended to ask, as the ISC did in its carefully stage managed session, then it would rather undermine the whole haven't we changed into tremendously open and answerable organisations narrative.  This doesn't explain however why security service heads have previously given evidence to the home affairs committee in private session without any such difficulties; what would be so different in doing so in public post the first ISC appearance?

Except, as was clear after Alan Rusbridger's appearance, the most pertinent question to ask of Parker is the one he doesn't have an answer to.  Both he and the government know full well there has been no real damage caused by the Edward Snowden revelations, except that is to their reputations and the "oversight" regime.  While there was no guarantee Parker would have expanded on his and his fellow spooks' answer to the ISC that they could only go into specifics in closed session, it would have been embarrassing to say the least to have to repeat his response without doing so.  The committee could also have asked some of the questions the ISC didn't, and Parker would additionally have had to confront the increasing number of those demanding reforms to the current legislation that regulates surveillance.  There was also the possibility the trial of the two men accused of killing Lee Rigby might have concluded by the time of the session, with the potential for embarrassing revelations still to emerge which Parker could have been put on the spot over.

Much the same thinking seems to have been behind David Cameron's refusal to allow Kim Darroch, the national security adviser to give evidence, after Chris Huhne revealed that the national security committee had not been informed of the existence of Tempora.  Apparently this would have set a "difficult precedent", or rather, would have been acutely embarrassing and revealing about the levels of secrecy even at the very heart of government.  As Keith Vaz said, regardless of who they are, witnesses should not be afraid of questions from MPs, nor should the prime minister or home secretary be dictating over the heads of committees who can and cannot give evidence.  The government and security service have got into this mess through their own ridiculously overblown reaction to Snowden's whistleblowing; they should not be allowed to get out of by shifting the goalposts.  That can be left to the badgers.

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12/11/2013 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 04, 2013 

I love a free country.

In the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, Edmund's plan to get out of going over the top by pretending to be mad having come to nothing, General Melchett inspects the troops one last time.  Turning to Baldrick, he asks if he loves his country.  Certainly do sir, he responds.  And do you love your King? Certainly don't sir.  Bristling, literally, Melchett asks why not.  My mother told me never to trust men with beards, sir, comes the answer. Melchett laughs, exclaims on the excellence of native cockney wit, and punches Baldrick in the face.

I relate this only due to Keith Vaz yesterday deciding to ask the same question of Alan Rusbridger during his appearance in front of the Home Affairs committee, although without also enquiring of his loyalty to the Queen, motherhood, apple pie and all that.  Vaz's interjection clearly wasn't meant seriously, as much being a swipe against those who have accused the Guardian of treachery over the publication of the Snowden files as it was anything else, but it summed up the shallowness of the session while at the same time highlighting the undercurrent of threat manifest in the statements of the Conservative front bench.  You can have a debate on the security services and how they've mastered the internet, it's just we'll be the ones to decide when that debate ends and when it's time for the stolen files to be turned over.

Having completely failed to provide any evidence of harm caused by the Guardian's articles, as almost everyone other than the securocrats has said they can't see how national security has been damaged (including the DA-Notice committee), those calling for a prosecution have had to change tack.  In a brilliant example of not being able to see the wood for the trees, four members of the committee (Three Tory, one Labour) focused instead on how the Snowden files had been transferred to the New York Times and elsewhere, supposedly putting at risk the agents named in the documents.  As section 58a of the Terrorism Act 2000 makes it an offence to publish or communicate any such information that might be useful to terrorists, Mark Reckless especially thought he had caught Rusbridger out.  Quite apart from how, as Rusbridger tried to explain to him and the others, there haven't been any names released nor will there be so there isn't a breach of the law, the act provides a "reasonable excuse" defence.  If the security services and the government want to make a case in court that the paper has not acted in the wider public interest, then they should bring it on.

It is after all just ever so slightly perverse to worry more about the Graun transferring heavily encrypted files either by FedEx, David Miranda (the password he had on a piece of paper was not to the files themselves, Rusbridger said, but to an index to the files, the encryption on which GCHQ has not been able to break) or to the New York Times than it is to be concerned at how 850,000 individuals in the United States had, or possibly still have access to the same material as Edward Snowden.  Snowden wasn't even directly employed by the National Security Agency, rather by a contractor, and yet the same MPs grievously concerned that the Graun might have revealed the identities of GCHQ employees didn't seem to think this was worth worrying about.  Is every single one of those people reliable, or is it possible there's others with allegiances far more inimical to the West's values than that of a former Ron Paul supporter?  For all we know the files may have long been in the hands of the Chinese or Russians precisely because of the wide open access GCHQ was apparently happy with.

Michael Ellis for one was certain of the Graun's treachery.  Not only had the paper revealed there was a LGBT group at GCHQ (as was openly stated on err, Stonewall's website), he also came right out and asked if Rusbridger would have revealed the existence of Enigma.  Leaving aside the obvious existence of censorship during WW2 and the complete absence of any threat even slightly comparable to that of Nazi Germany today, it highlighted the inability to listen of some of those on the committee.  Despite the protestations afterwards, the paper has communicated with both the US and UK governments as well as the security services and the DA-Notice committee before publishing each report, only not doing so before it splashed on the original GCHQ spying on the G20 story.  If there had been any material about to be revealed which they believed could truly do damage on the scale of say, the existence of Enigma being revealed to the Germans, they would have said so.  They have not.

Just as with the appearance of the spy chiefs before the ISC, having already been told precisely what they were going to be asked, much of the rhetoric is just to keep up appearances, and that probably goes for the Graun as well.  It will however be interesting to see whether Andrew Parker does agree to give evidence in public before the committee, having been asked by Keith Vaz, and whether he will set out exactly how the Snowden revelations have affected the work of his agency.  Some members of the committee might even enquire just how far the discussions have gone between GCHQ and the NSA over the massive sharing of their documents, and whether the fact the NSA has funded GCHQ to the tune of £100m over the past three years has anything to do with it.  Or we might just get the equivalent of a punch to the face again.

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12/04/2013 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

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