Going to Berlin at long last, we thought we’d make the best of it and set up some more talks. All about Undercover Research Group project, and the work before that. Here they are.

Saturday, 26 September 2015, 14.00 Uhr.
KonzernProtest

Honoured to be invited to the KonzernProtest conference, which focusses on issues discussed in my first book (co-authored/edited) Battling Big Business, published in 2002 but still very timely:

Battling Big Business

Countering greenwash, front groups and other forms of corporate deception

Sunday, 27 September 2015, 19.30 Uhr
CILIP/Bürgerrechte & Polizei

Galerie Zeitzone, Waldemarstraße/ Ecke Adalbertstraße, Berlin-Kreuzberg

Monday, 28 September 2015, 20.00 Uhr
CCC C-base.org

From Secret Manoeuvres to Undercover Research

Eveline Lubbers the author of Battling Big Business and Secret Manoeuvres in the dark, on corporate and police spying on activists, talks about the importance of research in exposing political policing and the underminding of dissent.

Since Secret Manoeuvres with its detailed case studies of corporate spying and networks with of former police, Eveline has set up the Undercover Research Group. A project of people who were instrumental in exposing Mark Kennedy and other undercover officers, the group publishes profiles of officers and units involved and the networks of careers
since.
How does this support the activist groups?
And how can you help the Undercover Research group?

C-base, Rungestrasse 20, 10179 Berlin

Dazu auf Deutch. 2010 enttarnten britische Aktivist_innen einen verdeckten Ermittler, der als Aktivist seit sieben Jahren unter ihnen lebte. Die Enttarnung von Mark Kennedy war der Anfang, danach gab es eine ganze Reihe weiterer Fälle. Wir wissen, dass geheime Polizei-Einheiten seit mehr als 40 Jahren politische Gruppen und soziale Bewegungen infiltrieren – seit den Demonstrationen in den 60ern gegen den Vietnamkrieg der USA.
Wie arbeiten die verdeckten Ermittler_innen und was sind die Auswirkungen?

Auch in Deutschland wurden in den letzten Jahren Spitzel enttarnt, in Hamburg und in Heidelberg. Im Vergleich zu Großbritannien sind es wenige Fälle. Muss das Thema stärker erforscht werden? Wie findet man sie und wo fängt man an?

Eveline Lubbers berichtet, wie sie anfing, sich mit dem Thema zu beschäftigen; erst in den Niederlanden und jetzt in Großbritannien. Wie sie festgestellt hat, dass nicht nur Polizei und Geheimdienste Aktivist_innen ausspionieren, sondern auch Unternehmen. Einige ehemalige Polizeibeamt_innen haben Beraterfirmen gegründet, oder arbeiten in den Sicherheitsabteilungen großer Unternehmen, etwa für Stromkonzerne oder Flughäfen. Als Ziele von Klimaschutz-Kampagnen arbeiten solche Unternehmen eng mit der Polizei zusammen, um auf mögliche Kampagnen vorbereitet zu sein.

Es wird auch darum gehen, wie Aktivist_innen mit Verdächtigungen umgehen und wie Eveline sie dabei in der Vergangenheit unterstützt hat. Was können Hacker tun? Und was hat Online-Überwachung mit Infiltration und Spitzelei zu tun?

More in English. Eveline Lubbers will talk about what is now the undercover police scandal in the UK, wondering how the situation is in Germany, whether this does happen at the same scale here.

In 2010 activists exposed an undercover officer who had lived amongst them as an activist for seven years. The exposure of Mark Kennedy was the start of many more stories coming out. As we know now, secret police units infiltrated political and activist groups for more than 40 years, since 1968 demonstrations against the American war in Vietnam? What does the spying involve, what is the impact?
In Germany over the past year, several spies have been exposed as well, in Hamburg and Heidelberg. Only a few stories compared to the UK. Is more research needed? How to find out, and where to start?

Eveline will explain how she got into exposing spies, first in the Netherlands, and now in the UK. How she found out it’s not just police and intelligence services spying on activist, but also corporate spies. Former police officers move on to start their own consultancy, or to work at the security department of large corporations, such as energy companies or airports. Being at the receiving end of climate campaigns, such companies work closely with the police to be prepared to what is coming.

Detailing her work supporting activists in dealing with suspicions, we can discuss how hackers could be of help. Which leads to the question of how online surveillance relates to infiltration and spying…

• Jack Winder - Ecomonic League, recruted Kerr, moved on 
  to found Caprim Ltd, testified @ Scottish Committee

• Micheal Noar former EL boss: 'of course we helped 
  Special Branch' (source Hollingsworth)

• Ken Day (p.247) 1969 – 1998 Met Special Branch spent time 
  cultivating top union sources source (True Spies)

Instead of writing a review, I find myself jotting down notes, names of Special Branch officers that the authors of the Blacklisted have quoted, sources that I have yet to scrutinise in much more detail myself. The reports of the Blacklisting in Employment Inquiry by the Scottish Affairs Committee, for instance, have been sitting on my desk for almost two years, and I now regret not have made time for it before. Although it is good to have some kind of division of labour and I gladly leave the topic of blacklisting in the hands of these two, the rigorous job they did brought up quite a few precious nuggets that just beg for further research.

Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain have done an incredible job, their combined expertise leading to an excellent book. Continue reading →

Repost from the new project I’m involved in: UndercoverResearch.net

The book Blacklisted, the secret war between big business and union activists finally hit the shelves this week. Authored by Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain, Blacklisted tells the controversial story of the illegal strategies that transnational construction companies used to keep union activists away from work. We have the honour to publish an extract, and we selected something from chapter 9, Under constant watch. Dealing with spying on activists it ties in with the work of the Undercover Research Group.

This particular piece shows how the authors found out that information gathered by undercover officers ended up in the files of the Consultancy Association, the secret blacklisting service set up by the large building companies. It was a matter of meticulously going through files, after campaigning to get access to the material seized by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), who in turn had acted upon an article in the Guardian written by Phil Chamberlain. Interviews with those blacklisted, with whistle blowers and people professionally involved in blacklisting added a further layer of understanding.

The story published here adds some interesting detail to our profile of Mark Jenner spying on the Colin Roach Centre in Stoke Newington, London, in the mid 1990s, the same time as his former colleague and now whistleblower Peter Francis was also infiltrating left wing and anti-racism groups in London.

Continue reading →

Some thoughts I wrote last year, after the hearing in Parliament on the undercover officers who had longterm relationships with women as part of operations to undermine activist groups.

Does it make things worse, a weird question that comes to mind, that sex was involved? The only sensible thing to say about this, is that the aspect of intimate involvement provides an opportunity – or at least makes it less difficult – to take legal steps at all. It remains next to impossible to estimate the damage, should it become clear which rules have been violated.

The betrayal is not just on the personal level, although it is the intimate and sexual part that seems to be the most shocking to satisfy the sensation-sensitive parts of the public. The double-life let by some of the police men involved, married with children while having moved in with their activist partners as well.

For the women here, or for most of them, I would think from my own experience, it’s not just about the sexual involvement. Devoting your life to protest, the relationship with a fellow activist fits the larger context of being part of a movement, wherein overall, there is less of a boundary between the working and the private life. Being part of a movement means the sharing of ideas, ideals, the risks of activism, the scary things at night, the confrontations with the authorities, the arrests maybe, the interrogations, prison for some, the pub afterwards, the long nights. Emily Apple wrote about this impressively beautiful.

The sharing of all this, means people are sharing their entire life, working hard to make this world a better place – to use a common phrase. Hence, the betrayal is not just in the relationship, not just in the private – as if that would not be enough – it’s also in the political, in the beliefs, and the practical every-day life.

With the betrayal on so many levels, one can only begin to understand the trauma caused. Trauma not restricted to those who have had the intimate relationships. Their cases, in a way, represent the damage done to a larger part of the movements involved, all those people who thought they had friends and mates – only to find out they were betrayed by the state.

Still that’s not all, though this is where it links to the need for further research.

From the chronology of the stories that have come out to date and the police men involved, we know that it continued for years – several decades in fact. We know of undercover officers that moved on to become supervisors of a next generation that did exactly the same. It makes you wonder whether the intimate relationships and sexual involvement was not just accepted practice, but in fact part of the strategy to get ‘deeply penetrated’ (No pun intended, Gary T. Marx pointed at the loaded language surrounding infiltration, as I discussed here).

The research needs to get beyond the rules or the lack thereof. We are only beginning to understand how big this is, and what was behind it. Continue reading →