Thursday, March 10, 2016 

The only legislation worse than the Psychoactive Substances Bill is the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Great as it is to see this most unholy of governments defeated on anything, it does rather sum up the priorities of the few rebellious Tories that they chose to do so on the liberalising of Sunday trading laws.  I happen to be one of those stick in the muds whom think six hours opening for big stores on a Sunday is plenty long enough, if only down to how it's a good thing that one day a week is slightly different to all the rest.  That said, considering most stores would have only opened for another couple of hours anyway, the idea it was going to be make any humongous difference, creating squillions of jobs or kept Sundays "special" is utterly specious.  Much like the SNP reasoning for opposing it, in fact.

It's not as though there's been a lack of execrable legislation to oppose of late.  The £30 cut to the Work Related Activity Group of Employment and Support Allowance was voted through just this week.  Way out on in a field all of its own is still, without a shadow of a doubt, the Psychoactive Substances Act, passed in late January.  This is quite possibly the worst single piece of law making in a generation.  Think the Dangerous Dogs Act, the "repetitive beats" part of the Criminal Justice Act of 94, the indeterminate sentences part of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the indefinite detention without charge for foreign nationals section of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 are bad?  None have anything on an act quite as scientifically illiterate and downright as idiotic as the PSA is.

The PSA is meant to deal with the problems posed by "legal highs".  Rather than criminalise each new chemical as it hits the market, the bill outlaws any substance that has a "psychoactive effect", except for all the drugs the bill later declares are exempt, i.e. caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, etc.  It does in a way make a certain amount of sense: no one can know the potential risks to health posed by these new, often slightly altered compounds of the drugs we all know and love, as they certainly aren't being subjected to double blind trials and peer review.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that Spice/Black Mamba and all the other assorted variants are more harmful with wildly worse side effects than vanilla cannabis, for instance.  Which again makes sense: if you're creating a new drug purely for "recreational" use, rather than as MDMA/LSD and other drugs were discovered in the course of research for new medicines, why wouldn't you try your darnedest to make it both more powerful and more addictive than what's already available?

Except, if the ultimate goal is to reduce harm and safeguard the public, the obvious follow on is to accept people are always going to want to enjoy themselves, a certain percentage are always going to want to get high, and almost everyone is going to experiment at some point.  Apart from the relatively few heads from places like Erowid who want to sample every new chemical that emerges, the vast majority are going to be perfectly happy with passing round a spliff of a weekend or taking MDMA when going out clubbing.  We know because of how long those drugs have been around, because of the studies that have been done on casual and long-term users, and also to an extent through common sense that while there is no such thing as a safe drug, the harms and risks associated with a whole host of currently controlled substances are no greater and often far fewer than those posed by either alcohol or tobacco.

The only reason legal highs have become so popular is because the alternatives are illegal.  Rather than look at this development, recognise that however good our intentions, prohibition has not worked, cannot work and has in fact been counter-productive, the government and politicians almost as a whole have chosen to double down.  Instead of accepting this point has been reached because the policy is a bad one, the decision has been made to make things even worse.  The only result, as witnessed in Ireland, is that the head shops that have sprang up to sell these highs will close and the trade will switch to an even greater extent to the internet and the black market.  It will not disappear.  Sure, some have pointed towards how the PSA does not criminalise personal use, which is a very slight positive, but that only underlines how wrong headed the continued criminalisation of possession for personal use of cannabis, MDMA, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms and khat is.  As was about the only widely reported take from the passage of the bill through parliament, it even bans poppers or amyl nitrate, a substance so benign and so fleeting in effect some would get more of a high off a can of Monster or a high street latte (and would no doubt enjoy it more too).

When a political party does then take the time and effort to plan out what decriminalising and establishing a controlled market for cannabis would look like, it's rather dispiriting to see what little response there was attacking the messengers.  Yes, the Liberal Democrats are a bunch of traitors Abi Wilkinson, perhaps even akin to a leery divorced dad that tries to bed one of your older schoolmates after everyone's become a little worse for wear at a party round at his place, but how about considering the content just this once, eh?  It's by no means perfect, it seems naive to say the least to expect that home growing wouldn't expand even further, and some will immediately blanch at how patrician, state-controlled and highly regulated the enterprise would be, with only three relatively low strengths available, and yet it provides an outline that can be adapted and worked on.  The whole framework is evidence based, worked on by recognised experts, and they're making themselves available to any political party, not just the Lib Dems.  If Labour had any sense it would steal the policy and the panel for itself.

Only they won't, as we're no nearer reaching the point where evidence trumps ignorance, prejudice, hypocrisy and claims to be protecting the public while doing the exact opposite.  The PSA and its procession through parliament with no real problems, despite the effect it will have on currently legitimate businesses demonstrates that.  Failing to extend Sunday trading won't create jobs or boost the economy, but what about those likely to be made unemployed thanks to the utter stupidity of the PSA?  How many more jobs could be created, how much could the economy gain, and how much tax could be brought in just by legalising and regulating cannabis?  In the end you suspect that will be what it comes down to, not the waste of time and money, not to forget life of prosecuting and jailing users and those who deal only in cannabis.  Rather it will be the amount the exchequer loses by refusing to make policy in the most sensible, decent and least harmful way.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

3/10/2016 07:35:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 01, 2016 

Envy, America and civil liberties.

They do things differently in America.  There, various gullible fools and paid shills (surely highly principled and privacy conscious individuals? Ed.) have been protesting outside the FBI building against the demand that Apple break the encryption on the recovered iPhone of one of the San Bernardinho attackers.  Both sides, it's fair to say, are chancing their arm: the FBI hasn't provided the slightest of evidence that Syed Rizwan Farook's phone contains anything they won't have already accessed or found from all the other material they've seized, much less a link to possibly imagined accomplices. Their real aim seems to be to strike a blow against the movement towards encryption post-Snowden, and they've done so by biding their time, waiting for a highly unrepresentative hard case where they've figured the public will (mostly) be on their side.

Apple for their part, far from making a principled stand, have decided this is yet another issue on which they can draw a line between themselves and the "opposition", despite sharing all the rest of their values. Masters of marketing as they are, continuing to succeed in presenting their products as highly aspirational and exclusive despite every other person having one, this time they figure they can occupy the moral high ground and further ingratiate themselves with the tech-obsessive, civil libertarian crowd. They're doing this through an astroturf campaign that presents a tax avoiding, cheap Chinese labour using corporation as far superior to a government, but still, right?

Had say the FBI been more set on keeping tabs on actual extremists than entrapping innocents, they might have had more chance of preventing San Bernardinho.  Likewise, it seems a bit rich of Apple to pretend to care about privacy and the implications of the FBI's order considering just how easy they made it to "hack" into iClouds, even if Apple is nowhere near hypocritical on such matters as Facebook and Google are, making their money almost solely through the monetisation of the data we share with them.

This said, the FBI vs Apple battle has a glamour and definable quality to it that the opponents of the Investigatory Powers Bill would kill for.  In a fight where the opposition is arguing about something intangible, and when a majority of the British public have long been prepared to give up a little privacy/liberty in return for the promise of more security, the Home Office knows the odds are stacked in its favour.  That confidence can be seen in the changes made to the now published bill since the draft was made available in November: advised by an unusually assertive Intelligence and Security Committee to make more clear the privacy protections, the Home Office has done so by inserting "privacy" into a single heading.  The actual wording underneath is identical.

The news release sent out last night was clear about how seriously the various reviews by the ISC, David Anderson and the bill's own joint committee had been taken, as well as all the other submissions from interested parties, and how changes had been made accordingly.  Strangely then, the bill seems barely distinguishable from the draft version.  What is new is that since November the police seem to have realised they weren't being allowed to join the data intercepting party, and so now they too will be allowed to hack in certain circumstances, as well as access internet connection records (ICRs) across the board, rather than just those relating to "illegal websites" and communication services.

According to the Home Office, that this power wasn't included in the draft was merely an oversight, as the police are already getting their hack on.  Regardless, it helps with the example of how retained ICRs could be used, like in the case of "Amy" detailed in the operational case (PDF).  Amy is 15, and impressionable.  One morning she disappears: her parents ring her mobile but it is switched off.  Luckily, the police via an ICR request discover the use of a particular messaging app, along with social media.  They contact those providers, and discover she contacted a particular individual, who less fortunately was using a false name.  But wait!  He did register an account with a genuine mobile phone number, which the police make communications data requests for, and discover he had contacted a hotel chain on.  A live booking is found, the police descend, and Amy is saved from a slavering 40-year-old with previous child exploitation convictions!

If this seems more than a little fatuous, then it and the other examples of how the new powers could be used similarly don't explain why ICRs need to be retained for 12 months, as all relate to immediate, live investigations.  The majority of the examples cited involve child sexual exploitation, or how more suspected paedophiles could be identified if only ICRs with their additional detail were retained.  It's fine to argue this would be the case, but it simply doesn't follow that prosecutions would be the result: that would require further police resources, which are not being provided, and also that additional evidence would be discovered as a result, as an IP address accessing a website at a particular time isn't enough on its own.

Where the government has deigned to provide more substantial evidence to back its arguments is on bulk interception (PDF), which is odd as it isn't quite as controversial as the retention of ICRs.  This raises just as many questions as it answers, however: bulk interception we're informed has "played a significant part in every major counter terrorism investigation of the last decade, including in each of the seven terrorist attack plots disrupted since November 2014".  Indeed, the case studies provided claim that bulk interception found the liquid bomb plotters; the 2007 beheading plot group; and played a key role in the disruption of the plot to attack the London Stock Exchange among other targets in 2010.  These are fairly remarkable admissions, if that is they're accurate.  One wonders if there aren't some police officers or informers who'd be more than a little miffed if they were aware of just how much emphasis is being put on bulk interception when previously no such claims have been made.  Is this a sudden burst of openness, an attempt to at least try to meet the requests of the reviewers or something more sinister?

While some of the privacy protections have then been ever so slightly tightened, and the government has also published the codes of practice, the fundamentally objectionable intention of retaining data on every single one of us, accessible without a warrant to the police and other state bodies excluding local authorities remains.  These are powers not deemed necessary anywhere else in the world, with little in the way of safeguards to ensure they are not abused, or indeed any true reassurance that the bulk interception powers obtained and operated without debate until the Snowden revelations have not been misused.  Having rushed through the draft process, with the reviewing bodies working overtime to get their recommendations heard, the government now wants to rush through the parliamentary stage in similar fashion.  They are doing so against the drumbeat of the EU referendum, knowing little other than the Budget is going to garner attention between now and June the 23rd.  They at the same time smartly made clear today that freedom of information will not be getting restricted, delighting journalists, while also claiming to have strengthened hacks' protections from cops snooping on their sources.  Wish that both sides could lose as I do in America, you can't been help envy how at the very least the casual loss of privacy and rise of surveillance prompts debate and protest.  Here?  Nothing except whimpers from the usual suspects.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

3/01/2016 11:03:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, February 09, 2016 

Even after acquittal, even after release, national security trumps all.

The continuing official secrecy surrounding the trial of Erol Incedal, as reaffirmed today by the Court of Appeal, truly boggles the mind.  Incedal, lest anyone has forgot, was charged with possessing a manual on bomb-making and planning to commit a terrorist act, only for some of the evidence to be judged by the intelligence agencies as so potentially damaging to national security that around 90% of the trial(s) had to be held in secret, or in camera.

Indeed, initially the government not only argued for the trial to be held entirely behind closed doors, it also wanted Incedal and his co-defendant Mounir Rarmoul-Bouhadjar to not so much as be identified, instead known only by initials.  This only failed after a challenge from the media, who in the same ruling were also granted access to most of the closed sessions, with "accredited journalists" invited to observe proceedings.  They are not allowed however to disclose what they heard in those sessions on pain of contempt of court, while their notebooks, taken at the end of each session, are apparently being kept at MI5's headquarters, Thames House, lest anyone less respectful of national security decides they should be placed into the public domain.

The utter absurdity of the situation is best expressed by how the Guardian reports that Incedal has since been released from prison, presumably under licence, from his 42 month sentence for possessing the 5 page manual on explosives.  Whether Incedal is under the same restrictions as both the journalists and members of the jury is not clear, or whether they might only apply until his sentence has been served in full we don't know.  Either way, the man himself is now free.  If he so wishes, he can tell anyone he feels like exactly how and why he was found not guilty of planning a terrorist attack despite the apparently incriminating evidence against him, while the journalists who sat there in the expectation of at some point being able to explain to the public why still cannot.

Almost everything about the case reeks.  The argument for why it had to be heard in secret, at least initially, was that otherwise justice would not have been able to be done.  This would at the very least imply that the case against the accused was fairly airtight, and that having to abandon it would have damaged the public interest more than denying the principles of open justice in this one instance.  Instead, as it turned out, one jury couldn't decide on the planning an attack charge while at the retrial the jury acquitted the accused.  It has not been explained whether a bug was placed in Incedal's car after he was pulled over and arrested for speeding, Incedal having made "demands" the police couldn't accommodate, as well as producing a statement they needed time to "digest", or whether he was already someone of interest to the security services.  We are none the wiser over whether Tony Blair really was a target, as an address to his home in London was found hidden in a glasses case, or if that was something else explained to the apparent satisfaction of the second jury.  The accredited journalists themselves feel used and tainted by the experience, almost to the point of being complicit in the secrecy demanded, unable to speak of anything they heard unless they fancy a spell behind bars themselves.

What is the possible danger in knowing why someone accused of terrorism was found not guilty when that person is no longer so much as in jail?  We aren't allowed to know, so we can't know.  All we are allowed to know is that the Lord Chief Justice remains "quite satisfied ... for reasons which we can only provide in a closed annex to this judgment that a departure from the principles of open justice was strictly necessary if justice was to be done".  Albeit, in this instance, justice meant the accused being acquitted.

Not that the ruling is overly deferential to the executive and others who demanded the secrecy in the first place.  It would seem the security services were not pleased with even the merest glimpses of daylight the Court of Appeal allowed to seep in, as "in the light of some of the material provided to the court" the justices feel the need to make clear that "no part of the Executive can refuse to provide the evidence required by the DPP on the basis that it perceives that it is not in the interests of national security to provide it". "Thus," they continue, "when the decision is made by the court, subject to any appeal, they must abide by that decision even if they disagree with it. If a decision is made by the prosecutor to proceed, then the Security Services and the police must provide to the prosecutor all the assistance the prosecutor requires."  You might have thought that the security services, especially ones that the court says in its experience "are conspicuous in their adherence to this principle and these duties" wouldn't need to be reminded of things like the rule of law, but so it would seem.

The court also makes clear that while public accountability cannot currently be provided by the media, it is open to the Intelligence and Security Committee to consider "any issues it considers need to be examined and for any public accountability to be achieved in that way". While this would previously have not had the government or the securocrats shaking in their shoes, the highly critical report into the draft Investigatory Powers act by the ISC under its new chairman Dominic Grieve would suggest it might finally turn into more of a watchdog than a lapdog.  Likewise, that as a coda the justices observe that previous closed judgments were apparently not available to them as reference and "this is not satisfactory", not least as "it must always be a possibility, that at a future date, disclosure will be sought at a time when it is said that there could no longer be any reason to keep the information from the public", it's as crystal as it could be that while the courts are currently persuaded by cries of "national security", they might not always be.

When there is so little to go on it's almost pointless to speculate on precisely how national security could be damaged by the public knowing why Incedal was not in this instance guilty.  You do have to suspect though that the contact Incedal had with a British man called Ahmed, apparently based in Syria, is key, not least because MI5 and MI6 rather than just one or the other were involved in the push for secrets to remain secret.  Just as it was only remembered days before Moazzam Begg was due to go on trial for terrorism charges linked to Syria that MI5 had apparently OKed his journey, so too you have to wonder if Incedal himself had links to the intelligence agencies that are not being disclosed and which he used as his justification for not being guilty.  Then again, in a case this absurd, where the rule of law has always been a secondary thought, and where only politicians, judges and spooks can be trusted with the reality, who's to say it's not something correspondingly bizarre?

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

2/09/2016 08:09:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, January 07, 2016 

A grossly offensive pastor and a menacing, huggable convert.

It feels appropriate on the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack to consider the state of free speech in the UK.  Not, obviously, the state of free speech on university campuses, where the inestimable Flying Rodent makes a suggestion as to how those so outraged by "prissy students" and their trigger warnings can make clear their angst, but instead elsewhere.

We'll start with the case of Pastor James McConnell, cleared this week of "causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network".  The born again evangelical, in a sermon heard by 2,000 people in his "Tabernacle" in Belfast and by 700 others online, variously declared that "Today we see powerful evidence that more and more Muslims are putting the Koran's hatred of Christians and Jews alike into practice"; that "people say there are good Muslims in Britain. That may be so, but I don't trust them"; called Enoch Powell a "prophet" and proclaimed him to be "right"; and in a final flourish said "Today a new evil has arisen. There are cells of Muslims right throughout Britain ... Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell."

Not for a moment was Pastor McConnell suggesting Muslims themselves were heathens or worse, oh heavens no.  On the contrary, he loves every hair on their little heads.  He might not so much as trust a "good" Muslim, but it's their religion he detests, not them personally.  You might imagine that just as Pastor McConnell's identity as an individual is presumably all but inseparable from his faith, he would understand that many Muslims feel the same way.  You might think he'd see the irony of describing a belief system that shares a fair amount with his own as "satanic" and "spawned in hell", not least when he's the one accusing them of hatred.  Then again, the evangelical brand of Protestantism in Northern Ireland has not generally been noted for its nuance or for taking much notice of that old verse about motes and beams.

The McConnell case is also notable for how it dragged in then first minister Peter Robinson, who ended up apologising outside Belfast's Islamic Centre for defending a little too profusely a preacher whose congregation he occasionally attended.  Various other figures from the DUP, as well as the even more conservative Traditional Ulster Voice also spoke up for McConnell, and have been critical of the director of public prosecutions for bringing the case.

Certainly, it's difficult to see how the PPS came to the conclusion there was a realistic chance of conviction, in spite of McConnell declining to accept an "informed warning" instead.  Not only was there political backing at the highest level for McConnell, a judge or jury are always liable to err on the side of caution and give the benefit of the doubt to an established preacher, in contrast say to a ranter sermonising from a street corner.  When you then further consider the history of Northern Ireland, where Dr No himself eventually rose to be first minister, expecting a relatively mild by those standards denunciation of Islam to be declared "grossly offensive", as necessary under the Communications Act, was at best wishful thinking.

Moreover, McConnell's acquittal was the right decision.  His rhetoric would be offensive to many Muslims, but it was not the sort of speech that should ever be proscribed, falling well short of inciting hatred, if still wholly intolerant, ignorant and hypocritical.  Far more interesting were the judge's remarks on clearing McConnell, especially in the context of other cases brought under the Communications Act.  "I find myself in agreement with Lord Justice Laws in the “Chambers” case when he said that the courts need to be very careful not to criminalise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive. It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances," Judge McNally found.  Also worth relating is McNally's pointed concluding paragraph from his ruling:


Finally, having heard a great deal about Pastor McConnell’s beliefs over the course of this trial I think it appropriate to leave the last word with the Islamic scholar and poet Rumi who said: 

 “Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”

Which brings us to the case of Muhammad Mujahid Islam, or as he's otherwise known, Craig Wallace.  For reasons which don't seem to have been expanded on, he took an especial disliking to Conservative MP Charlotte Leslie, taking to err, the UK Truth Movement's Facebook page in the aftermath of the Syria vote to make his feelings known.  Choice selections from his postings are, all sic, "im going to smash her windows then drop a bomb on her hoyse ... YOU DIRTY FUCKING PIG SHAGGING SLUT by the way love your also fucking hideous", and "im going to find her and show herwat it is like to murder innocents dirty fucking pidg shagging whore".

Quite what Leslie did or didn't do to upset him isn't clear, not least as far from being his MP, Leslie's constituency is Bristol North West, while Wallace lives in err, Willesden.  Wallace it appears is a whole mess of contradictions: apart from taking on the most literal of alter egos a Muslim convert possibly could, when not directing abuse at an MP on the profile page of a group of conspiracy theorists, he was "protesting" outside Willesden Green tube station with a placard that read "I am Muslim ... I am labelled a terrorist ... Do you trust me enough for a hug?"

Oddly, unlike McConnell, Wallace didn't find any friends in high places to speak up for him, and was sentenced to eight weeks in prison after pleading guilty to sending a malicious communication.  While it's unarguable that Wallace's posts were clearly offensive, there are two points that can be made.  First, were they were grossly offensive, or were they menacing, as the Communications Act also proscribes?  Unlike say, in the Chambers case, where it was apparent that his tweet was meant sarcastically, Wallace's posts are not.  At the same time, would anyone feel genuinely threatened by them?  I'll admit to being rather blasé about what people say online due to the sites I frequented back in the day, but wouldn't most dismiss such talk as the kind of "online tough guy" routine often ridiculed?  That he didn't direct the comments at Leslie through her online profiles, writing them elsewhere, ought to have been taken into account.  Additionally, one person's definition of grossly offensive is always going to be different to another's, to the point where it almost seems to have left deliberately nebulous in the legislation.  Wallace's comments were so over-the-top they veer into "chinny reckon" territory, more absurd and self-defeating than offensive or menacing.

The law in this instance doesn't consider such nuances, and it probably wouldn't have been worth Wallace's legal representatives trying to argue that essentially the law is an ass, as Chambers did, while also making mitigating arguments.  One ought to have been that parliamentary votes on going to war are always going to stir passions, and not everyone is going to put their point across as an MP would in the chamber.  At a hearing prior to sentencing the judge said "What’s absolutely clear is that your language and expressions about this MP ... went beyond any sort of legitimate comment or protest on an extremely serious issue", and yet, while it's rather fell out of fashion now, swear blogging did most certainly used to be a thing.  Is there no place whatsoever for over-the-top diatribes, when while the point itself might be sincere, no harm whatsoever is truly meant to the target?  Are we not judging the online world, and individuals such as Wallace differently to the way we do certain comedians, or say pastors?

Then there's the sentence itself.  What does a further 8 weeks in prison for Wallace, who had only been released a couple of months earlier from a five-year stretch for attempted robbery, during which he converted, possibly serve him, wider society or the taxpayer?  One might have thought prison would be the worst possible place for him.  Would not instances like this where the "trolling" is not concerted and the target themselves not personally aware be better dealt with by a caution or alternatively a visit by the police, making clear they're aware and that any further abuse will result in prosecution?

Admittedly, all these are judgements made knowing that Wallace didn't have any real intention of carrying out what were still threats, however unlikely.  Others have made similarly dubious warnings, and then gone on to act them out.  If legislation such as the Communications Act is to remain statute though, and if anything might be added to considering the on-going outcry over trolling, should there not be guidance for judges making clear their room for discretion, and for taking into consideration the specifics of such cases?  While it would be lovely to assume they do already, cases like those such as Wallace's, previous ones and likely others not reported nationally more than suggest the free speech ramifications of section 127 of the communications act should be considered again.  Not everyone can rely on celebrities or politicians to defend their stupidity.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

1/07/2016 09:45:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 04, 2015 

The securocrats win again! The securocrats win again!

Last week, you won't have missed the release of the latest James Bond film, Spectre.  By most accounts it's quite good, although there's always the lingering suspicion that as Bond is pretty much the only distinctly British franchise still going that pulls in any money, the critics tend to go rather soft on it.

Last week, as you might have missed and in what was either an example of serendipity, good fortune, or grotesque cynicism, also saw the intelligence agencies come out from the shadows as never before.  The Times was given unprecedented access to GCHQ's "doughnut" home in Cheltenham, hacks apparently free to poke around, ask questions and see how there's absolutely nothing to be suspicious about when it comes to our friends intercepting and sifting through bulk data.  Not quite as unprecedented but still relatively novel was a further speech by head of MI5 Andrew Parker, again making clear just how we have nothing to fear from his organisation's request for the laws governing his operation to be updated, sentiments reminiscent of his live interview on the Today programme a month previous.  This charm offensive, very different to the previous attempt at one which rather fell at the first hurdle when the new head of GCHQ essentially said that the major internet firms were just as bad as the terrorists, has continued up to and including today.  Despite GCHQ coming round and smashing up the Guardian's hard drive with the Snowden files on it, the paper has found space for a senior GCHQ officer called "Peter" to correct some unfortunate "myths" that have arisen.  He concludes, obligatorily, with a reference to Bletchley Park.

The publication today of the draft Investigatory Powers Bill would never had occurred had it not been for Snowden's revelations, something that Theresa May and the government would rather chew glass than recognise.  Then again, it's almost as if Snowden didn't happen anyway.  Despite today's bill outlining precisely what GCHQ especially and the security services as a whole were getting up to, as it had to thanks to the government recognising that RIPA was no longer fit for purpose, the change is now everything will be totally above board rather than hidden behind layers of secrecy and obfuscation.  The bulk interception via Tempora, the hacking and breaking into of servers and the computers of targets, the gathering, both overt and covert of "bulk personal datasets", it all remains, despite any cautious remarks made by David Anderson in his report.  The other innovations are those to oversight, with the creation of a single commissioner to act as reviewer of terrorism legislation and effective spook watchdog, and the "double lock", whereby ministers will need to also have the OK of a "judicial commissioner" to authorise an interception warrant.

Considering the major spin operation that went before the publication of this bill, with myriad leaks and hacks invited in for high-level briefings, just how quickly the new "double lock" has unravelled is something to behold.  David Davis and others have realised that rather than it being a case of the "judicial commissioners" reviewing the evidence, as the minister will have before granting permission, all they'll essentially be doing is examining whether the correct protocol has been followed.  Barring an alteration, they will be little more than a rubber stamp.  This is in line with the Intelligence and Security Committee report and sort of follows the compromise outlined in the RUSI report, but is in contradiction of Anderson who advised full judicial oversight.  Now that the bill has finally been published, beyond outlining his role Anderson seems to be taking a step back, leaving parliament to make its decision.

Whether that's entirely wise when Andy Burnham before even seeing the full bill declared that it wasn't a return of the snoopers' charter, wasn't an act authorising mass surveillance is very much open to question.  Nick Clegg, who blocked the attempt back in 2012 to ram through this bill's predecessor was also apparently mollified.  And indeed, it would be churlish to deny that the government hasn't been forced by the work of Anderson and others to justify exactly what powers it wants and set out its case: the documents published alongside the bill are voluminous, to the point where anyone trying to make sense of them has been all but crushed under the digital weight of all the PDFs.

Key to the most controversial new measure, the requirement for ISPs to retain 12 months worth of data on which sites and services every one of us use, accessible without a warrant to the police, security services and everyone except your local councillor Tom Cobley, is the operational case (PDF).  Provided within are examples of just what the authorities are currently unable to do due to their current powers; there is not a single case study provided relating to terrorism.  Instead it focuses on the other standard justification, preventing or investigating child sexual exploitation, with a couple of other examples concerning organised crime and fraud tacked on at the end.  As the police cannot simply ask Facebook, Google or Twitter on the off chance if the person they are investigating on the basis of the communications data they have obtained under the current laws also used their services, as this would not be "proportional" or meet the current necessity tests, the only alternative seemingly is to get ISPs to retain the IP addresses visited instead.

If it doesn't immediately follow how if the former is not proportional wholesale retention is, the answer fairly obviously is that going through the same hoops is rather tiresome for the police and others.  That, and since the Snowden revelations cooperation with overseas based service operators have been grudging at best, it's the obvious recourse: go after the organ grinders, not the monkeys.  If it still doesn't make sense that this data will be available to the police without a warrant given the potential for abuse, nor that a whole year's worth of data will be expected to be retained, data that ISPs currently do not retain, then sadly the answer seems to be the point is this is all about the potential for fishing expeditions.  Related in the operational case is that of 6025 referrals to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, 14% or 862 could have been taken forward if ICR data had been retained.  More pertinent however is that 3470 referrals contained both fixed and dynamic IP data.  As it is not clear whether these referrals would also contain the specific time one of these IPs accessed the indecent images in the referral, the government appears to be proposing the police have the capability to go through the whole log for that IP.  The potential is there for the police not just to act on that specific referral, but also on any other "illegal" or questionable websites that have been visited.  There are plenty of examples of individuals being arrested for one offence, only for that to be dropped and then charges to be brought over "extreme pornography" following searches of seized devices, including in cases where the evidence has been highly questionable or where they were extenuating circumstances.

And then, of course, there's the potential for this cache of data to be misused, abused or hacked.  Despite Theresa May claiming the police would not be able to make a request to find out if someone visited a specific website, Adam Banks points out the bill and fact sheets suggest the powers are far broader than that.  The analogy made to an itemised phone bill is a nonsense: phone numbers are just that, numbers.  We share things with our ISPs that we would have never have done previously with our mere phone provider: the URLs up to the first slash we visit might not reveal entirely our darkest secrets, desires, fears, but they most certainly give more than an inkling.  This is the data that the government thinks should be made accessible to state bodies, excluding local authorities, without a warrant.  If this isn't a mass surveillance programme, then what on earth would amount to one?

Except, typically, today's new power won't affect the terrorists and the more teched up crims.  They'll already be using Tor or other darknets, sat behind proxies or VPNs.  That the operational case doesn't mention terrorism is the giveaway: those who really do have something to hide know that the authorities are out to get them and act accordingly.  Those caught up will be the curious, the idiots, those who previously would have been detected anyway, if slightly further down the line.  Anyone who wasn't aware of what's on the cards now will be, further reducing the efficacy of the new law.

Ministers seem to be relying on how as a nation we have always been far less concerned about privacy and the actions of our intelligence agencies than either the Americans, aware of the scandals involving the FBI and CIA, or the Germans, living with the legacy of the Nazis and then the Stasi.  It is Bletchley Park, Alan Turing, Enigma, Bond, rather than Peter Wright, the infiltration of groups on the left, the remaining questions over collusion in Northern Ireland, the refusal until very recently to operate in so much as half light, let alone be as open as the security services can be.  As David Allan Green has identified, the strategy has been to try and buy off those most likely to make a fuss.  The Wilson doctrine might have been declared illegal, but a judge and the prime minister will have to sign off before any MP can have their communications intercepted.  The media meanwhile can be reassured that their sources have been given more protection than has been the case, not that the press other than the usual coalition of Guardian, Independent and FT was likely to say anything in opposition anyway.  When it comes to ordinary folk, those with the most to lose from these plans, only the traditional voices, those derided and ignored before, are speaking up.  Judicial oversight of warrants might yet be tightened, but the securocrats have played a blinder on everything else.  Once again, they've won. 

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

11/04/2015 11:59:00 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.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

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.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

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

Wednesday, April 01, 2015 

An "unprecedented intervention", and the Incedal denouement.

There are some things we are destined never to understand.  Caitlin Moran's popularity.  How Grant Shapps' resemblance to Edd the Duck isn't remarked upon more often.  Why it is so many people can dish it out but not take it when they eventually face a backlash.  And, integral to this post, that ever present election campaign set piece, the letter from business leaders to a newspaper.

When said letter happens to appear on April the 1st, you also can't help but wonder if the joke isn't on all of us.  Quite what effect an endorsement from a bunch of people the vast majority will have never heard of and never will again is supposed to have is a mystery all of its own.  Presumably the aim, at least this time, is to underline further just how wonderful the coalition's long-term plan has been and will remain, and if you don't believe us then that bloke off that TV programme says so, as does that woman off that other TV programme who is, err, also a Tory peer.

This seems to rather overlook how most people are cynical sods, who will note all 103 wealth creating heroes are not doing a lot more than agreeing they would like to pay less tax and draw their own conclusions.  As it's corporation tax they want to pay less of, the tax plenty of companies try their best not to anyway and which in turn means the shortfall has to be made up elsewhere, mainly through more people going into the higher rate income tax band, it doesn't instantly follow they'll conclude Labour are lunatics for saying they'll put it up a whole penny to support smaller businesses.

Nor has it ever been clear what the businesses themselves get out of their CEOs making such endorsements.  The letter is after all effectively a list of companies those so inclined can from now on avoid if they so wish, which is why most likely why they're attempting to have their cake and eat it, signing the letter in a personal capacity.  Thankfully the Graun has stepped in with some further details on said bosses, and so we learn alongside the Tory donors and usual suspects is one Mark Esiri, good pal of the Camerons and the person who helped coordinate the sale of Smythson, netting Glam Sam Cam a cool £430,000.  Also on the list are such non-fat cats as head of Prudential Tidjane Thiam, who earned a mere £11.4m last year, up from £5.3m in 2010, so clearly another victim of the cost of living crisis.

George Osborne is then surely right to declare the letter an "unprecedented" intervention.  Still, it's odd as Nils Pratley notes that previous Tory letter signers are notable by their absence, including such an obvious name as Lord Wolfson, a Tory peer no less.  Also curious, beyond the stupidity of releasing the letter to the Torygraph on April Fools' Day, is why they've done it this early in the campaign at all: surely it would have served the party better nearer polling day itself, as let's face it, the majority are still barely paying attention even as the nerds among us are fed up to the back teeth of the same old soundbites.  It couldn't be that failure to achieve "crossover", the point at which the Conservative lead consolidates and which Lynton Crosby said would have arrived by now, combined with a solid start by Labour on the campaign front has spooked them, could it?

Something that should spook us all is the denouement to the Erol Incedal trial.  Mr Justice Nicol has ruled the public cannot be allowed to know why it was the jury decided Incedal, despite the apparently highly incriminating evidence against him, was not in fact plotting a terrorist attack.  His defence, that he had a "reasonable excuse" as to why both he and his co-defendant had a manual containing instructions on how to make "viable" explosive device cannot be reported, and yet it was this defence that put enough doubt in the mind of two successive juries, resulting first in a retrial and then in acquittal.  For possession of the manual Incedal was sentenced to 42 months in prison, a term that seems far beyond that ordinarily passed for possession of similar documents, again without any wider explanation.

The whole situation frankly defies description.  You want to call it Kafkaesque, except the point of The Trial is K never knows what he's been arrested and charged with, whereas with Incedal we aren't allowed to know what his defence was.  Moreover, the state attempted to have the entire trial held in secret, which not even the bureaucracies of Kafka's nightmares did.  Then there's the paradoxes at work, whereby the CPS continues to claim the trial could not have been brought if more details were made public, and yet as Incedal has now been cleared the opinion of the jury was the case had never been strong enough anyway.

Mr Justice Nicol's reasoning for why the in camera sessions attended by the accredited journalists must remain secret are also, naturally, far too sensitive to be made public.  His ruling additionally makes said hacks effectively complicit in secret justice, or rather injustice, raising the question of whether if a situation like this occurs again they would go along with it a second time.  Why on earth would anyone?  Their notebooks locked away, crosswords also confiscated lest they be an attempt to smuggle out a record of what was heard, they've just wasted weeks of their time.  Indeed, it makes you wonder if that was the point, until you remember that cock up is nearly always a better explanation than conspiracy.

Precisely how national security could possibly be so drastically affected by the public knowing Incedal's defence you can't even begin to surmise.  It seems of a piece with the literal sledgehammer response to the Guardian's reporting of the Edward Snowden leaks, when the most ridiculous excuses were come up with as to why the copies of the files in London had to be destroyed.  It was utterly pointless in the sense of preventing the reporting from continuing, but it was very much pointed in the message it was sending.  Anything that might prove embarrassing to the intelligence agencies has to stepped upon, and if that means denying an innocent man the right to truly clear his name, as Incedal most certainly has been, the ends justify the means.  That the state on this occasion has so involved the fourth estate in its machinations could yet prove its downfall.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

4/01/2015 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 26, 2015 

Just who are the domestic extremists?

Back in the 70s, Ted Heath was not exactly complimentary about MI5's way of working. "They talked the most ridiculous nonsense, and their whole philosophy was ridiculous nonsense.  If some of them were on the tube and saw someone reading the Daily Mirror they would say - 'Get after him, that man is dangerous, we must find out where he bought it.'"  Predictably, Christopher Andrew in his official history of MI5 claimed the reality was often the government itself asking MI5 to keep tabs on MPs they had suspicions about, rather than MI5 becoming convinced various left-wingers were serving Soviet and not British interests.

By the 1990s the bad old days of MI5 and Special Branch keeping tabs on any vaguely left-wing group were meant to have passed.  When it's subsequently revealed Special Branch apparently left their files open on such notorious subversives as Harriet Harman, Jack Straw and Peter Hain, by this point all ministers in the Labour government, it does make you wonder just who they deemed to not be worthy of monitoring.  Frank Field, maybe? Gerald Kaufman?  Or were they too secretly meeting behind closed doors to plot and sing the Internationale?  Considering that Jenny Jones, the Green member of the London assembly recently discovered she was on the Met's current database of "domestic extremists" perhaps we shouldn't be that surprised.

It also brings into sharper focus the Erol Incedal debacle, the first trial to be heard in such a high degree of secrecy since the war.  Despite being found guilty of possession of a document on bomb-making, the jury at Incedal's retrial (the jury at the original trial failed to reach a verdict) was apparently convinced by his explanation as to why emails the prosecution claimed to refer to the Mumbai attacks and AK-47s were nothing of the kind and so cleared him of plotting some sort of attack.  I say apparently as this was part of the trial held in complete secret, with not even the posse of accredited hacks allowed into some of the behind closed doors sessions ordered out.  Further on the surface incriminating details have emerged as a result of the judge's summing up in the second trial - Incedal apparently met with a British jihadist known only as Ahmed on the Syrian border, who allegedly suggested carrying out an attack.  The bug planted in Incedal's car additionally picked him up praising Islamic State commanders.

Just as intriguing is how Incedal came to the attention of the police in the first place.  Arrested for speeding, the BBC reports he "made demands" the police couldn't accommodate, and they also stopped an interview so they could "digest" a written statement.  Whether it was this which prompted the police to make a thorough search of his car, finding the home address of Tony Blair on a piece of paper hidden in a glasses case we don't know, but it seems to have disquieted them enough to plant the bug in his car.  Incedal maintained at both trials he had a "reasonable excuse" for having the explosives manual, an excuse which caused the jury enough reasonable doubt for them to decide to acquit on the more serious charge.  We can't however know what the excuse was, such is the apparent impact it could have on national security.

Or at least we won't unless the judge decides tomorrow that the reporting restrictions on the sessions when the accredited hacks were allowed in but the public wasn't can now be made public.  Both the Graun and the BBC quote Sean O'Neill, the Times's crime and security editor, known to be the kind of journalist memorably described by EP Thompson as "a kind of official urinal in which ministers and intelligence and defence chiefs could stand patiently leaking", as saying there was a lot heard that should not have been secret.  Surely then we can expect the judge to throw some light on the subject?

Except the fact the security services, ministers, the CPS and the judge himself all initially felt the trial should be held entirely in secret, with Incedal and his co-defendant identified by initials, something only prevented by the media challenging Mr Justice Nicol's ruling at the Court of Appeal, more than suggests that avoiding further embarrassment is likely to be order of the day.  The QC for the media at the Court of Appeal hearing argued that "the orders made involve such a significant departure from the principle of open justice that they are inconsistent with the rule of law and democratic accountability".  As Theresa May reaffirmed on Tuesday, the rule of law is one of those British values that is non-negotiable, and to reject it is one of the definitions of extremism.  The law is though there to be changed, especially if meddling judges decide that letters from a prince preparing to be king to ministers must be revealed, as David Cameron has said.  And when the security services and police are so often a law unto themselves, the rule of law is very much what the government of the day decrees it to be.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

3/26/2015 11:02:00 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.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

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

Tuesday, March 10, 2015 

The ladies dost protest too much.

Let's be honest.  Good as most of us are at dishing out criticism, few of us take it quite as kindly.  At least if your self-hatred is off the charts one of the, perhaps the only benefit is there's very little going to be thrown your way you haven't already thought yourself, accurate or not.

If there's one quality I can't then abide, it's how those who should know better try and make the most out of something vaguely insulting when they're not averse to the odd bit of directing their own mob.  Witness the very much non-shrinking violets around the fringes of the Scottish independence campaign pretend to be offended by yesterday's Steve Bell cartoon in the Graun, the very same people whom just 2 weeks ago were not, emphasis not trying to get a nurse sacked for appearing on Labour's campaign material.  Indeed, if she did ended up getting sacked it would be the fault of Labour's hatred of the SNP and not those complaining about an NHS worker breaching some unlikely to be well known rules on such activities.

The way politicians and their hangers-on react to criticism can at times be even more enlightening.  You might have thought a government confident in the security services would for instance have just ignored the mostly absurd rhetoric from the charity Cage about our good friend Mohammed Emwazi, which only garnered such coverage in the first place as the media was desperate to immediately know all they could about him.  When someone describes a serial murderer as a "beautiful man", apparently a shy and retiring type until he was made into a fanatical killer by the merest of interactions with MI5, it's the kind of silliness that doesn't really merit a response.

Except of course we have both a media and political establishment that can't just stand by as slander is spoken of those brave guys and gals at Thames House.  The Mail on the Saturday after Emwazi's unveiling had as many pieces on the apologists from Cage as it did alongside the obligatory profiles of the man himself.  Asim Qureshi, Cage's director, has since been given a ritual dunking by among others, Andrew Neil and Andrew Gilligan, as though anyone hadn't been tipped off by Cage's website about their combining of genuine examples of state overreach, such as the continuing imprisonment of Shaker Aamer at Guantanamo, with their general insistence that many other convicted Islamists are in fact gentle sorts.

Cage had been approached by the Washington Post during their investigation into Emwazi, hence why they were able within a matter of hours after his naming to hold a press conference attended by the salivating media.  That Qureshi and Cerie Bullivant didn't expressly condemn the man who had previously complained to them about being harassed, something that would normally be taken as read when it comes to someone filmed beheading aid workers was enough to set in motion what has occurred since.  Cage's bank accounts had previously been closed with the arrest and charging of Moazzam Begg, since released after MI5 "remembered" they hadn't raised any objection to his travelling to Syria.  The charity's other main backers, the Roddick Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust have since put an end to their funding.

Whether they should have supported the group in the first place is a question worth asking.  It does however seem odd at this remove for the defence secretary Philip Hammond to make such a bizarre assertion as a "huge burden of responsibility also lies with those who act as apologists for them [Islamic State et al]", as he did in his speech to RUSI today.  Does it really?  You can hold Cage accountable for not being fussy over those they choose to back, but to say they have a burden of responsibility themselves is a nonsense.  Even if you take the Gilligan line that Cage have significant traction with those who forever see themselves as victims, looking either to conspiracy theories or putting the blame on a persecuting, oppressive state which operates a foreign policy that is itself a radicalising force, then it still doesn't confer responsibility on them.  They might be irresponsible yes, but that isn't the same thing by any stretch.

It's difficult not to wonder if this shooting of the messenger isn't meant precisely as distraction.  Absurd as Cage's claims are that Emwazi's interactions with MI5 turned him into the person in IS's propaganda, there are questions to be asked of the intelligence agencies, not least made clear by Hammond elsewhere in his speech.  As he put it "Not all those countries with whom we might like to share information in the interests of our national security adhere to the same high standards".  Well quite, and we never had any definitive answers over how Michael Adebolajo, one of the two men convicted of the murder of Lee Rigby, was treated while in Kenya by an anti-terrorist squad in part funded by the UK government.  We haven't been given anything close to a defence of the seeming chief tactic of MI5 when it comes to interviewing those suspected of involvement on the fringes of involvement in terrorism of trying to recruit them, nor have they offered an answer as to why it is those in the circle around Emwazi all went abroad to various places without being stopped.

Hammond's speech was all the more remarkable for just how matter of fact it was.  He mentions just what promises the coalition did keep about reform of the intelligence agencies, but for some reason forgot about the inquiry into alleged complicity in torture, cancelled in the face of new allegations concerning Libya.  Apparently intelligence has played a key role in "providing the information to check ISIL’s murderous advance", a statement so patently absurd you wonder how Hammond delivered it with a straight face.  We did everything we could to draw Russia into the rules-based international system, you know, the one where you don't invade sovereign nations on the basis of, err, faulty intelligence, or invoke the "responsibility to protect" then use it to enforce regime change.  This was in a spirit of openness, generosity and partnership, all for our good intentions to be rebuffed.  The Paris attacks are evidence of the dangers of lone wolves, despite the links the killers had to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic State.  GCHQ must be allowed to intercept bulk communications data, which they have been and still are.  The debate over such things cannot be allowed to continue forever, although seeing as the Cabinet Secretary told the Guardian the debate was over nearly two years ago now, Hammond seems late to the party.

MI5 is one of those organisations that can't win.  Its major successes only emerge years or decades later if at all, while the failures are immediately glaring.  Such a reality though comes with the territory.  Just as it should be taken as apparent that you aren't supportive of pin ups of the caliphate, so it should be obvious to be critical of the intelligence agencies is not to be against them completely.  One correspondingly obvious conclusion to be reached over how the angle grinder of government and media has been taken to Cage is a whole lot of people are protesting way too much.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

3/10/2015 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates