15-Aug-10
The Mail on Sunday has a peculiar article about Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, which seems to contradict itself, even as published.
Why should we believe a story based on quotes from an anonymous "senior security source" ?
MI5 'vetoed Security Minister over links to Ukrainian oligarchs'
By Christopher Leake and Mark Hollingsworth
Last updated at 1:48 AM on 15th August 2010Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones - the Shadow Security Minister when the Tories were in Opposition - was widely expected to take over the newly created role of National Security Adviser to David Cameron with overall responsibility for British intelligence policy at home and abroad.
Widely expected by whom, exactly ? Not by us.
But the pivotal security post was awarded instead to Whitehall mandarin Sir Peter Ricketts.
The Baroness, 70, was appointed Minister of State at the Home Office in charge of security and counter-terrorism - a more junior position, which restricts her responsibilities to domestic intelligence issues.
As Minister of State at the Home Office in charge of security and counter-terrorism, she has the power to sign or reject warrants by MI5 the Security Service, if the Secretary of State is unavailable. She also sits as a permanent member of the new National Security Council , with access to the same top level intelligence summaries and reports as the Prime Minister and Sir Peter Ricketts etc.
In what way are "domestic intelligence issues" less important than foreign ones ?
Here are some quotes (not whistleblower documentary evidence of any sort) from an anonymous" security source":
A senior security source revealed that the Baroness's appointment was blocked after MI5 produced a report about her links to two controversial Russian oligarchs.
Is this the same source as in the next few paragraphs, or a different one ?
According to a source, MI5 sent the Prime Minister's aides a confidential briefing about her connections to two billionaires with alleged links to organised crime and a Russian mafia leader.
The source said: 'The job of National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister needed a high-security vetting clearance because it involved knowing and handling sensitive state secrets.
The role of Minister of State at the Home Office in charge of security and counter-terrorism also involves "knowing and handling sensitive state secrets." . Unlike the National Security Adviser role, the holder of this Ministerial position also has executive power and can sign Orders for new or amended secondary legislation and can approve or reject warrants and certificates and notices etc. under intelligence, terrorism, serious crime and immigration laws, in lieu of the Secretary of State the Home Secretary.
'As a result, Cameron's private office at No 10 asked MI5 for any relevant information that was needed for the PM to make this appointment.
'MI5 sent a summary of the intelligence on Neville-Jones's financial associations with the two oligarchs. Based on that submission and on a separate briefing by his political advisers, Cameron decided not to appoint her.'
Mr Cameron then appointed Sir Peter, a former Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, who has been credited with persuading the Prime Minister to remove British troops from Afghanistan by 2015.
Will that target date really be achieved ?
Earlier this month it was reported that Sir Peter had agreed to carry out the role for 12 months only before returning to the diplomatic service.
A source said: 'Pauline was absolutely furious that she did not get the top job. She threatened to resign, but took up the ministerial post once she realised that was the most she was going to get. She is still very bitter and prickly about being snubbed in this way.'
Insiders have pointed out that the Baroness's role is less wide-ranging than that of her predecessor Lord West, Gordon Brown's former security adviser. Although only a Home Office Under Secretary, he enjoyed a brief that spanned the globe.
As a Home Office Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Lord West had less executive power than Baroness Neville-Jones does as a Home Office Minister of State.
The two men at the centre of the controversy surrounding the Baroness are Ukrainian oligarch Dimitry Firtash and Russian tycoon Mikhail Chernoy.
Is it really acceptable, in the out of touch fantasy world of Whitehall and the Westminster village of politicians and mainstream media journalists, to think that alleged links to foreign billionaires who may or may not have links with organised crime gangs, somehow disqualifies someone from one sensitive advisory post involving national security, but that such allegations are ok for a Ministerial job also involving national security ?
If there was any substance to these allegations, then Baroness Neville-Jones could not be trusted to hold either post, something which is clearly nonsense.
Two years ago, the Baroness revealed in the House of Lords Register of Members' Interests that her office received £20,000 a year from British businessman Robert Shetler-Jones, who oversees the assets of Mr Firtash.
Why were these questions not raised two years ago then ?
Mr Shetler-Jones made the donations to the Baroness plus a further estimated £80,000 to the Conservative Party as a private individual and through his UK-registered company Scythian Ltd. The fact that it was a British-based company made the payments legal under political funding rules[...]
The Baroness said yesterday that she received the money from the Conservative Party.
But Mr Shetler-Jones said last night that he made donations to the people who managed the Baroness's office 'over and above what I gave to the Conservative Party'. He has since stopped supporting the Baroness financially.
The Baroness used the money to pay the salaries of her adviser Mark Phillips, a research associate for the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, and a part-time secretary.
Is that two salaries out of £20,000 a year or is Mark Phillips acting as both advisor and part time secretary ?
According to the RUSI staff biography of Mark Philips:
-
Prior to joining RUSI, Mark was Chief of Staff to Baroness Neville-Jones during her time as Shadow Security Minister and National Security Adviser to the Leader of the Opposition and, after the 2010 general election, Security Minister. In this capacity he managed all security legislation in Parliament, was speechwriter to Baroness Neville-Jones, and had a central role in developing the Conservative Party's national security policies and post-election implementation plan. His remit covered all aspects of national security, including the National Security Strategy, Strategic Defence and Security Review, machinery of government, intelligence, counter terrorism, resilience, Olympic security, stabilisation and conflict prevention, procurement and the role of industry in defence and security. Mark co-authored the Conservative Party's National Security Green Paper, A Resilient Nation (January 2010).
Given that this Green Paper acknowledged the obvious national security risks to the UK of over-reliance on Russian gas supplies and pipelines, there does not appear to be anything which favours Ukrainian gas billionaires there.
Mr Shetler-Jones, a property developer who speaks fluent Russian, is chief executive of Group DF - the holding company for the multi-billion-pound assets of Mr Firtash
[...]
Mr Firtash became a billionaire through a lucrative gas trading company RosUkrEnergo (RUE), which until two years ago had a monopoly over supplies from Russia into Ukraine and onwards to EU customers such as Poland and Hungary.
RUE has been the subject of an investigation by the US Department of Justice over its alleged links to Semyon Mogilevich, 64, a Ukrainian-born billionaire who is said to control RUE and is one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
So there is no proven link between Shetler-Jones, Dimitry Firtash and "the Russian mafia" at all.
Has Dimitry Firtash been banned from the UK or had any of his assets seized by the Serious Organised Crime Agency ? No.
The second oligarch with whom the Baroness has been linked is Mikhail Chernoy, a 58-year-old Uzbekistan-born Israeli industrialist, who made billions from the Russian aluminium industry.
He is the main financial sponsor of the Intelligence Summit, a Washington-based Right-wing anti-terrorist think-tank, whose executive council has included the Baroness.
Chernoy has been banned from entering the US because of allegations of money laundering, illegal business deals
13-Aug-10
Holiday reading for Spy Blog readers - reviews of a couple of books on the GCHQ and the NSA
These comprehensive reviews seem to give a good outline of a couple of books about a couple of the world's premier intelligence agencies, which deserve close study:
- The Yorkshire Ranter on GCHQ Review: Part 1, The World's Most Classified Blog and Other Stories
- Amazon: GCHQ by Richard Aldrich (hardback).
- Public Intelligence Blog - Robert Steele on Review: The Shadow Factory-The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
- Amazon: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford (paperback).
Spy Blog could be tempted to review
Securing the State by Sir David Omand GCB, the former éminence grise of the Cabinet Office Intelligence bureaucracy.
28-Jul-10
As always, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner tends to reveal a little more than either the Interception of Communications Commissioner or the Intelligence Services Commissioner ever do in their Annual reports.
Unlike the other two RIPA Commissioners, Sir Christopher Rose does actually have something to report about RIPA Part II:
CHIS = Covert Human Intelligence Sources
i.e. spies , undercover agents, paid informers, unpaid informers etc.
CHIS
4.8 There were 5,320 CHIS recruited by law enforcement agencies during the year; 4,495 were cancelled (including some who were recruited during the previous year) ; and 3,767 were in place at the end of March 2010. The figures for the previous year which were 4,278, 4,202 and 3,722 indicate a slight increase in usage.
4.9 During the current reporting year other public authorities recruited 229 CHIS of whom 182 were cancelled during the year with 90 in place on 31 March 2010.
During the previous year 234 were recruited, 153 cancelled and 106 were in place at the end of the year. Again just over half of CHIS usage was by government departments. The light use of RIPA/RIP(S)A powers by local authorities is even more pronounced in relation to CHIS recruitment. 97% recruited five or fewer and 86% did not use CHIS.
There are some criticisms of CHIS management and tradecraft:
5.9 There are too many occasions when inspections reveal poor tradecraft in managing CHIS. Infrequent physical meetings and reliance on communication by text messages are rarely adequate. There have also been instances where law enforcement officers have pretended to be the CHIS when communicating with
Such amateurism in the handling of CHIS should be punished by removal of those responsible from any positions of power or authority involving CHIS - they could literally get people killed through such incompetence.
Encryption Keys and RIPA Part III
At last a few details about RIPA Part III:
NTAC = National Technical; Assistance Centre, now run by GCHQ, politically controlled by the Foreign Secretary.
Section 49 - encryption
4.10 During the period reported on, NTAC granted 38 approvals. Of these, 22 had permission granted by a Circuit Judge, of which 17 have so far been served. Six were complied with and seven were not complied with, the remainder were still being processed. Of the seven that were not complied with, five people were charged with an offence, one was not charged and the other is still being processed. So far there has been one conviction with other cases still to be decided.
4.11 The conviction related to the possession of indecent images of children and this offence is the main reason why section 49 notices are served. Other offences include: insider dealing, illegal broadcasting, theft, evasion of excise duty and aggravated burglary. It is of note that only one notice was served in relation to terrorism offences.
These statistics further aggravate the injustice to someone who does not fall into any of these categories see the previous Spy Blog article: "JFL" provides some more details about his imprisonment for refusing to divulge his cryptographic keys under a RIPA Part III section 49 notice
4.12 These statistics are provided by NTAC which is able to be accurate regarding the number of approvals it has granted. But it is reliant on those processing notices to keep it informed regarding progress. It appears that there has been delay in serving some notices after approval has been granted (hence the difference between the number approved and the number served) . Notices, once approved, should be served without delay. If delays continue, I will require an explanation.
Sir Christopher does not seem to have delved into whether or not the de-crypted plaintext or the cryptographic keys were actually stored securely, ideally also using strong encryption or not, once they had been seized as evidence through the section 49 orders.
Unless and until the public is reassured about that, then there will be lots of non-cooperation from businesses which risk massive "collateral damage" to their core business systems, as a result of police investigations involving only part of their computer infrastructure, or a few employees or customers.
There is nothing specific about Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), but there is a section on CCTV:
Closed Circuit TeleVision - CCTV
CCTV
5.22 My Chief Inspector has met the Interim CCTV Regulator and, as a member of the Independent Advisors Group, he will represent me in the development of the National CCTV Strategy.
How things have changed. Previously the Surveillance Commissioners took no interest in overt or covert CCTV spy cameras.
5.23 I am pleased by the proliferation of protocols between local authorities and police forces. In particular, I am satisfied that there is a wider acceptance of the need for authorisations to be shown to those responsible for using cameras covertly. But I am concerned at the number of inspections reporting the ability of some police forces to control, remotely, cameras owned, solely by or in partnership with, a local council. Sometimes control can be taken without the knowledge of the council CCTV Control Room or the guarantee that an appropriate authorisation exists. Equally, there is no guarantee that the person remotely operating the camera is appropriately qualified to conduct such an operation. Protocols should clarify the procedures to be followed when control is taken by others outside the CCTV Control Room and ensure that suitable safeguards are in place to prevent misuse.
Report of the Intelligence Services Commissioner for 2009 (.pdf), by the Rt,Hon. Sir Peter Gibson
Just like all the previous Intelligence Services Commissioner reports, the lack of public detail makes a mockery of the whole RIPA oversight process - it takes 16 pages to say almost nothing at all.
Yet again, there has been no call for Sir Peter to oversee any RIPA Part III encryption key or plaintext orders. This appears to have been left to the Chief Surveillance Commissioner.
Part III of RIPA
34. As I have noted above, Part III of RIPA came into force on 1 October 2007. However, no notification of any directions to require disclosure in respect of protected electronic information has been given to me in 2009 and there has been no exercise or performance of powers and duties under Part III for me to review.
The Intelligence Services Commissioner has gone through the motions with the Identity Scheme Commissioner Sir Joseph Pilling, bearing in mind the scrapping of the scheme which is still in progress.
11. On 16 November 2009 the Identity Minister, Meg Hillier, signed the Commencement Order allowing the Identity and Passport Service to begin issuing identity cards to members of the public living or working in Greater Manchester with effect from 30 November 2009 though it should be noted that identity cards were also made available to Home Office/Identity and Passport Service civil servants as well as airside workers in Manchester and London City Airport for a few weeks beforehand. On 10 December 2009 I had a useful meeting with Sir Joseph Pilling, the Identity Commissioner, in which we discussed our respective areas of responsibility under the ICA. I informed him that I did not envisage that I would need to obtain information about the acquisition, storage and use of data in the National Identity Register by organisations other than the intelligence services. At the time of writing this Report I am not aware of any acquisition, storage and use made by the intelligence services pursuant to the ICA of information recorded in the National Identity Register and in view of the intended repeal of the ICA it is unlikely that there will be any such acquisition, storage or use
Obliviously he has a good professional working contacts with the Intelligence agencies, but does that automatically taint him as the chairman of the Inquiry looking into allegations of complicity in torture of foreign terrorist suspects by MI5 or MI6 etc, appointed by PM David Cameron ?
He is already looking at:
Guidance on detention and interviewing of detainees by intelligence officers and military personnel
39. On 18 March 2009 the Prime Minister made a statement to Parliament about the detention and interviewing of detainees by intelligence officers and military personnel and announced my agreement to his request that the Intelligence Services Commissioner should monitor compliance by the intelligence agencies with the consolidated guidance on the standards to be followed during the detention and interviewing of detainees. My role in monitoring compliance will not commence until the consolidated guidance has been published. Such publication has not yet occurred,
The Report contains exactly the same words as the Interception of Communications Commissioner regarding the Investigatory Tribunal. A public agency broke the law, but will not be published for doing so. Why can they not at least be named and shamed in public ? There cannot be any "national security" grounds for not doing so.
Another year, another brief Annual Report by a RIPA Commissioner
Interception of Communications Commissioner Annual Report for 2009 (.pdf) , the right hon. Sir Paul Kennedy.
As with all the previous RIPA reports, the statistics about the number of Interception warrants or about the number of Communications Data requests are deliberately not broken down into any meaningful level of detail and should be ignored, although there will no doubt be plenty of media articles which are based on the headline figures.
There should be a breakdown of Communications Data requests since not all Public Authorities are allowed to request the full set of subscriber details, "friendship tree" call or email patterns and location data. Revealing such figures would not prejudice ongoing investigations.
As before, there are a trivial number of minor reported procedural and form filling Errors by the Police and Intelligence agencies (Interception and Communications Data) and , to a lesser extent the hundreds of other Public Authorities who have Communications Data powers, mostly due to keyboard typing errors.
Fewer of these Errors are now even being reported, in order to reduce bureaucracy:
3.11 Accordingly I agreed to a change in the error reporting system whereby public authorities now only report errors which have resulted in them obtaining the wrong communications data and where this has resulted in intrusion upon the privacy of an innocent third party. Other errors are simply recorded.
[...]
As before, we challenge the claim that the public are in any way "reassured" by this RIPA Commissioner (or any of the other RIPA Commissioners):
2.2
[...]
The Agencies always make available to me the personnel and documents that I have asked to see. They welcome my oversight, as ensuring that they are acting lawfully, proportionately and appropriately, and they seek my advice whenever it is deemed appropriate. It is a reassurance to the general public that their activities are overseen by an independent person who has held high judicial office
National Technical Assistance Centre snooping infrastructure down for 3 days
The National Technical Assistance Centre was formerly under the Home Office / MI5 now it is under the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and GCHQ.
Amongst other things they operate the "black box" legally authorised snooping under RIPA infrastructure which taps into major telephone and internet company infrastructure (not the same as GCHQ's main interception infrastructure)
2.27 Three errors attributable to the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC) were reported during the period of this report, one of which I now explain. NTAC reported a technical fault within their infrastructure that resulted in the prevention of delivery of intercept related information to the intercepting agencies for three days. A project to prevent this type of error occurring has been initiated and is expected to deliver improvements in the system in 2010.
How much public money is now being spent on NTAC and its "black boxes" ?
No Interception of Communications Commissioner involvement with Encryption, again ?
Yet again, on RIPA Part III, whilst the boilerplate text explaining the legal section of the Act is copied from previous reports, there is no mention of the Interception of Communications Commissioner having been advised of any Section 49 Notices demanding access to cryptographic de-cryption keys or to the plaintext information which has been protected by encryption.
Were all the cases in the past year really dealt with by the Other RIPA Commissioners ?
There is no mention of any reports or inspections by the Inspectors or by the ICC himself into how well or how badly the Code of Practice is being adhered to regarding electronic information protected by encryption.
Mobile phones in Prisons
It is interesting to see that the ICC and his inspectors seem to have finally taken our suggestion regarding illegal Mobile Phones in Prisons, made in previous years, that whilst they are inspecting the procedures for Interception and Communications Data analysis in Prisons, something which technically they have no power to do under the RIPA, but which they have been asked to do by successive Home Secretaries.
4.12 The inspections have also revealed that an alarming number of Category B local prisons appear to have a very limited capacity to monitor prisoners who pose a real threat to good order and security and this is a cause for concern. The smuggling of drugs and illicit mobile telephones are serious problems for most prisons, irrespective of their security status, and if a serious incident were to occur, which could have been prevented through the gathering of intercept intelligence, then prison managers and staff could find themselves in an indefensible position. Regrettably on occasions my Inspectors still have to emphasise this point in a number their reports.
4.13 The Category B local prisons, which were inspected during the reporting period, were asked to provide details of the numbers of illicit mobile telephones and associated equipment that had been seized in a six month period. Statistics from 25 prisons were collated and these revealed that 1,456 mobile telephones and 797 SIM cards were seized. Under the Offender Management Act 2007 and Prison Order 1100 dated 26 March, 2008 it is now a criminal offence to convey a mobile telephone or a component part of this equipment into a prison without the authorisation of the Governor and 11 of the prisons were making use of this legislation. However, the availability of such a large number of illicit telephones in the prison system is a serious cause for concern because prisoners can also use them to access the Internet.
4.14 Following the publication of the Blakey report in 2008 the Chief Operating Officer issued the Mobile Phones Good Practice Guide which was designed to help prisons minimise the number of mobile phones entering prisons and disrupt the number of mobile telephones that they were unable to find. Intelligence from the Pin-phones does help to prevent and detect attempts to smuggle them into the prison and this was part of the strategy. Clearly quite a number of the establishments are unable to implement the strategy fully because the resources and equipment are weighted far too heavily in favour of the offence related monitoring and this is a continuing problem. It is crucially important that prisoners are prevented from using mobile telephones to conduct criminal or illicit activity inside and outside the prison. Better use of the Interception Risk Assessments will eventually reduce the amount of offence related monitoring which needs to be conducted and this will in turn increase the capability to conduct more intelligence-led monitoring.
No mention of the Wilson Doctrine
There is no mention of the Wilson Doctrine in this year's public report, except for the background reference to current Prisons policy:
4.2[...]
Communications which are subject to legal privilege are protected and there are also special arrangements in place for dealing with confidential matters, such as contact with the Samaritans and a prisoner's constituency MP
See the previous Spy Blog article: When will Prime Minister David Cameron re-affirm and extend the Wilson Doctrine on the protection from snooping on constituents' communications with their elected representatives ?
Still no progress on the use of Intercept Evidence in Court proceedings
2.10 Both the Advisory Group of Privy Counsellors and the government believe
that the potential gains from intercept as evidence justify further work in order to
establish whether the problems identified are capable of being resolved. The issues
involved are complex and difficult. I hope to be able to report on the progress
made on the planned further work in my 2010 Annual Report.
There are couple of positive bits of this report:
National Anti Fraud Network Single Point of Contact
3.40 Local authorities are required to adhere to the Code of Practice and requests for communications data are approved at a senior level, the level having been enhanced by recent changes to the legislation. In most cases this has been the head of the trading standards service or the head of the environmental health department or housing benefits sections although solicitors have also often been involved.The specialist staff who process applications for communications data are not trained to the same standard as their counterparts in other public authorities, and the infrequent use which most Councils make of their powers sometimes makes it difficult for relevant members of staff to keep abreast of developments in the communications data community. I am pleased that the Home Office has provided fundin
14-Jul-10
The Guardian reports:
Former MI6 worker pleads guilty over official secrets
Daniel Houghton, who faces prison, was arrested in Scotland Yard sting at central London hotel in 2009
* Haroon Siddique and agencies
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 July 2010 12.26 BSTA former British spy
Working for MI6 / SIS the Secret Intelligence Service does not automatically make you into a "spy". Perhaps Daniel Houghton's computer skills were used as a technician or website developer etc., rather than as an Intelligence Officer, who might analyse or control or participate in foreign spying missions with Covert Human Intelligence Sources or "secret agents" or informers or "intelligence assets" etc.
who tried to sell top secret files to foreign agents admitted two offences under the Official Secrets act today.
He did become a wannabe or failed spy, once he attempted to sell British secrets to what he thought was a foreign intelligence agency
Daniel Houghton, who worked for MI6 between September 2007 and last May, was arrested in a Scotland Yard sting at a central London hotel in March after offering to sell documents to Dutch intelligence agents for £2m.
Was the name of this "central London hotel" really not mentioned during any of the Court proceedings ?
Which one was it ? Any notoriety will soon become history and will bring in tourists.
The information consisted of MI5 files he had accessed while working for MI6
Why did an MI6 employee have access to MI5 files ?
What happened to "air gaps" or "data minimisation" etc ?
and a list of his former colleagues with their home addresses and mobile phone numbers.
Not just a copy of an internal email / office / job title directory then, but home addresses and mobile phone numbers. .
This really could have put their lives at risk of harassment or even physical danger.
Did the "Dutch intelligence agents" get their hands on some or all of this sensitive data ? Can they really be trusted ?
At the very least all the mobile phones listed should have been changed.
They should not just have changed the numbers or SIM cards, but also the mobile phone handsets as well, since the handsets supposedly unique International Mobile Equipment Identifiers can be so easily cross referenced with any Call Data Records made by the MI5 and MI6 people using the old phone numbers.
Appearing at the royal courts of justice,
Presumably that should read the "Royal Courts of Justice".
25-year-old Houghton denied a count of theft but admitted two charges of unlawful disclosure of material relating to security or intelligence contrary to the Official Secrets act.
The MI5 documents concerned specialist techniques developed by spies for gathering intelligence.
MI5 cannot claim exclusive copyright on such techniques, which they may have borrowed or stolen from someone else in the first place.
Houghton burned many of the files onto DVDs and CDs on his office computer before taking them home.
The former MI6 agent, who holds British and Dutch nationality, approached the Netherlands intelligence security and intelligence service offering to sell information in August 2009.
Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst(AIVD) (General Intelligence and Security Service)
N.B. an SSL/TLS encrypted website only ! When will MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ move to this ? (hint: it actually makes tracking visitors a bit easier) .
A meeting was arranged for 18 February 2010 but, unknown to Houghton, the Dutch had tipped off MI5. Houghton was secretly videoed and bugged as he used a memory card and laptop computer to show his wares to the Dutch agents.
The former spy said he would throw in two lists containing details of MI6 employees he had worked with.
One contained more than 300 names, while the second had the home addresses and mobile phone numbers of 39 agents.
300 names does sound like an internal email distribution list.
39 names are probably his former work mates and friends who he was willing to betray.
After Houghton's initial offer to sell the information for £2m, the price was negotiated down to £900,000 and, in a subsequent phone call, a meeting was set for the handover two weeks later. During negotiations, he revealed he had a second memory card, containing further information, hidden at his mother's home in Devon. This card has never been found.
Why did he put his mother and family at risk in this way ?
Many people would have tortured and killed them all for far less than £900,000, in order to get hold of that memory card.
There has been no mention of encrypted files in any of the reports on this case - why did Daniel Houghton not bother to use anything like PGP or TrueCrypt ?
Why did he not arrange to use a Dead Letter Drop or even a courier service ?
What about electronic funds transfers to foreign bank accounts in tax havens ?
On 1 March, Houghton handed over two memory cards and a computer hard drive after displaying the contents on a laptop.
As he left the London hotel carrying the suitcase, he was arrested by plain clothes officers from Scotland Yard's specialist operations wing after a brief struggle.
Why exactly did the idiot agree to any meetings in London ?
When Houghton handed over the information to supposed Dutch spies, he claimed he had given them "everything".
But officers from Scotland Yard's specialist operations unit found hard copies of classified paperwork, some marked top secret or secret, while searching his shared rented flat in Hoxton, east London.
Another wannabe spy or whistleblower who had paper copies of secret or top secret documents at home !
They also discovered a Sony memory card containing about 7,000 files, some of them deleted, thought to be copies of a list of MI6 agents and the files he tried to sell.
Deleted files can be recovered, especially from flash memory devices which do not always erase data very well due to
a) their local Wastebaskets (actually hidden under some Apple operating system versions !)
b) Many flash memory cards have WIndows FAT filing systems on them, for whichthere are plenty of "recover deleted photo images" programs avaialble.
c) Their Wear Leveling algorithms which spread used flash memory locations relatively evenly, because at some point flash memory cells become permanently burned into a logical one or zero state, unlike magnetic recording media.
See the section on CD-ROMs and DVDs and USB flash memory media our Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - Technical Hints and Tips for protecting the anonymity of sources for Whistleblowers, Investigative Journalists, Campaign Activists and Political Bloggers etc.
Maybe the "etc." should include "wannabe spies" .
Some of the documents held by him have yet to be traced, and security service officials have warned that unauthorised disclosure of the material could have a significant impact on operations to protect Britain.
Houghton is also said to hold potentially valuable experience of security techniques in his memory.
So what ? So do most readers of Spy Blog !
Piers Arnold, prosecuting, told the judge, Mr Justice Bean, that the pleas entered today were acceptable to the prosecution.
He asked for the theft matter to be adjourned until after Houghton had been sentenced "with the prosecution's intention to offer no evidence in respect of that charge".
Presumably they had little or no evidence of actual physical theft of memory device or hard disks etc.
Unless the hard copies of the secret or top secret documents were originals rather than photocopies or computer printouts, then proving an offence under the Theft Act 1968 section 1 would have been difficult.
Surely the Government's lawyers must have known that they cannot use the Theft Act 1968 section 1 for "intellectual property" or "trade secrets" or even "national security secrets" since its wording demands the permanent deprivation of something physical.
Houghton claimed his actions were "directed by voices" and the defence has submitted psychiatric reports in mitigation.
This BBC report claims, however, that
Poli
04-Jul-10
The British public deserves to know and trust that the powerful, secretive intelligence agencies like GCHQ the Government Communications Head Quarters, MI5 the Security Service and SIS/MI6 the Secret Intelligence Service are operating properly and cost effectively, especially given:
- The rise in actual real terrorist bomb attacks and killings in Northern Ireland
- The recent Court cases revealing complicity in "extraordinary rendition" by the US intelligence agencies and the tacit complicity of UK intelligence in the use of torture.
- Chinese internet espionage stories
- Personnel vetting and IT security failures highlighted by the trial of alleged wannabe ex-MI6 employee Daniel Houghton
- Major IT project failures and cost overruns e.g. the SCOPE project, the lack of backup disaster recovery data centres for the intelligence agencies.
- Still no viable plan for the use of electronic intercept as evidence in Court.
- Frightening and expensive plans for mass surveillance and data trawling against millions of innocent people.
- The ongoing threat from self radicalised Muslims, racists, animal rights or environmental extremists etc.
With the dire state of public finances, there must be financial cuts in the budgets of some or all of these secret agencies. How are we the public meant to know if these financial cuts are justified or not ?
That is the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, which is appointed by the Prime Minister.
However, like so much else, the last Labour Government left this in a shambles, with strong hints of political interference from Downing Street and / or the Cabinet Office, according to the outgoing (Labour) chairman of the Committee Kim Howells.
For no good reason that we can see, currently there is no Intelligence and Security Committee in operation at all.
When will Prime Minister David Cameron appoint a new Committee ?
Will it be given the extra investigative manpower and budgetary resources it needs to work independently of the Cabinet Office etc. ?
At the very least they need forensic accountancy and IT project management resources to be able to understand the technical complexity and impact of potential budget cuts on GCHQ, MI6, MI5 etc.
By the time the National Audit Office or perhaps the Commons Public Accounts Committee get a sniff of such secret projects, there could have been millions or billions of pounds of public money wasted.
The remit of this new Intelligence and Security Committee should be expanded beyond the roles of just the three maion intelligence agencies.
They should also cover units or agenciess which use the same technology and techniques as the main intelligence agencies do. e.g. the various UK Special Forces units like the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), or the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) or the Police units like the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU) or the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command.
It should also look the role of sub-contracted intelligence agency functions either to so called "friendly" foreign intelligence agencies like the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who, it appears, may have been allowed to breach British sovereignty by recruiting and running intelligence assets within UK Muslim communities
They must also investigate the shadowy and unaccountable world of Private Military Contractor / Mercenary companies, operating with UK Military and Intelligence agencies overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan etc. but, it appears, also being used within the United Kingdom.
As with the publication of the RIPA Commissioners' Annual Reports, it is not acceptable to delay the appointment of this Committee until September or October, they should already have been hard at work now.
Spy Blog would be interested to see in the(pseudonymous) comments or via email (PGP encrypted if you like) , your nominations for who you would trust to sit on this cross party committee of MPs and Peers., bearing in mind that most of the experienced former members of the ISC have now retired.
It looks as if the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government, like its Labour predecessor, needs to be reminded of its Statutory Duty, clearly stated in the text of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 - Part IV Scrutiny etc. of investigatory powers and of the functions of the intelligence services
Where is the Interception of Communications Commissioner Annual Report for 2009 ?
Section 58 Co-operation with and reports by s. 57 Commissioner.
(4) As soon as practicable after the end of each calendar year, the Interception of Communications Commissioner shall make a report to the Prime Minister with respect to the carrying out of that Commissioner's functions.
(5) The Interception of Communications Commissioner may also, at any time, make any such other report to the Prime Minister on any matter relating to the carrying out of the Commissioner's functions as the Commissioner thinks fit.
(6) The Prime Minister shall lay before each House of Parliament a copy of every annual report made by the Interception of Communications Commissioner under subsection (4), together with a statement as to whether any matter has been excluded from that copy in pursuance of subsection (7).
Where is the Intelligence Services Commissioner Annual Report for 2009 ?
Section 60 Co-operation with and reports by s. 59 Commissioner.
(2) As soon as practicable after the end of each calendar year, the Intelligence Services Commissioner shall make a report to the Prime Minister with respect to the carrying out of that Commissioner's functions.
(3) The Intelligence Services Commissioner may also, at any time, make any such other report to the Prime Minister on any matter relating to the carrying out of the Commissioner's functions as the Commissioner thinks fit.
(4) The Prime Minister shall lay before each House of Parliament a copy of every annual report made by the Intelligence Services Commissioner under subsection (2), together with a statement as to whether any matter has been excluded from that copy in pursuance of subsection (5).
Where is the Chief Surveillance Commissioner's Annual Report for 2009 ?
The Chief Surveillance Commissioner publishes a combined report under Police act 1997 Part III Section 107 Supplementary provisions relating to Commissioners. and under RIPA Part II Surveillance and covert human intelligence sources and RIPA 2000 (Scotland) section 22 Co-operation with and reports by Commissioner
In the past, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner has managed to publish his annual report before the other two RIPA Commissioners.
There are less than two weeks available for the Prime Minister David Cameron to lay these reports before Parliament, before the Summer Recess.
It would be as intolerable as it has been under Tony Blair or Gordon Brown for the clear Statutory Duty to report As soon as practicable after the end of each calendar year, is weaseled into a 9 or 10 or 12 month delay in publication of Annual reports.
Parliament adjourns for a long summer break in less than 2 weeks.
By that time, we are promised, the Identity Cards Act 2006 will have been repealed, all well and good. We will celebrate properly when the National Identity Register data is securely destroyed.
However, there are several things of interest to Spy Blog readers, which this Conservative / Liberal democrat coalition government has not yet done as they should have.
By convention, since 1966, each Prime Minister has re-affirmed the Wilson Doctrine, regarding the supposed ban on telephone and other interception of communications of Members of Parliament, especially with their constituents.
Sometimes they have hinted at slight changes in policy, in their short, bland, detail avoiding statements, which need heavy analysis by Downing Street kremlinologists.
Prime Minister David Cameron has not yet made any such statement.
If he does not want to appear just like his hated predecessor, then he will announce next week, a wider application of the Wilson Doctrine, as we wrote back in 2008:
The Wilson Doctrine should not be abolished, it should be clarified and extended
The Wilson Doctrine should be extended to cover not just Members of the House of Commons, and the Peers of the House of Lords, but also to the other equally democratically elected Parliaments and Assemblies, to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly, to the UK Members of the European Parliament, and probably to all foreign Members of the European Parliament as well.
In principle, the Constituency Communications of elected Local Authority Councillors should also be protected by the Wilson Doctrine.
The Wilson Doctrine is not about rights and privileges of elected politicians, it is about protecting the privacy of their communications with their constituents, who may very well be complaining or whistleblowing about the very Government departments and agencies and other tentacles of the State, who try to snoop on such communications.
Back in 1966, when the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced his policy, there were no direct dial international phone calls , let alone fax machines, mobile phones or internet email or WiFi communications etc.
The Wilson Doctrine should be extended to cover not just the interception of communications i..e. listening to phone calls or reading emails etc., but to the collection or analysis of Communications Traffic Data - who called or emailed who, when and where from etc.
It should also apply to all of the postal mail, public internet connections, private computer networks, email accounts, computers, fax machines and mobile phones etc. used by the elected representative or his office staff, provided that these are used for communications to and from the elected representatives constituents.
Given the scandal over the electronic bugging of an MP and his constituent in prison, who has not been charged with any crime in the UK, the Wilson Doctrine should also be made to cover face to face meetings with constituents. It should ban directed and intrusive surveillance of such face to face meetings and it should also ban the use of Confidential Human Intelligence Source informers to infiltrate an MP or other elected representatives offices.
Obviously where there are actual national security or serious crime investigations in progress, the Wilson Doctrine allows these to proceed, but this should be strictly limited and should require a formal warrant, not any kind of self authorisation by the investigating agency.
There must be no repeat of the appalling mess which the former Speaker of the House of Commons created over the police raid without a warrant of MPs offices.
The Wilson Doctrine should be made to apply not just to the three main UK intelligence agencies GCHQ, MI5 and SIS/MI6, but to any Police or Military units with the legal or technical capability e.g. Military Special Forces units, Association of Chief Police Officers units like NETCU and to any "quid pro quo" arrangements with Foreign Governments or agencies and also to any private sector companies or other non--governmental organisations as well.
If you cannot trust that your written or electronic communications or face to face meetings with your MP etc. is not being snooped on by state bureaucrats or private sector snoopers, then there is no elected democracy in the UK any more.
If the Government really means to restore public trust in the tainted institution of Parliament, then they should re-affirm and extend the Wilson Doctrine, something which will not even cost them any public money to do.
It is a measure of how inept the hated Labour party is in Opposition, that they have not bothered to table any Parliamentary Questions about the Wilson Doctrine, simply in order to embarrass the current Government.
Is it because the few Labour MPs who cared about democratic accountability of the powerful organs of the state, have retired or have not been re-elected, leaving behind only the creepy control freaks and apparatchiks ?
The Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs who used to care about these issues are now on the Government side, but they should not let that stop them from raising Questions fundamental issues of liberty and democracy either.
03-Jul-10
One detail in the ongoing "illegal" Russian spy scandal in the USA, seems to involve the abuse of a British Passport.
BBC copy of the District Court Indictment against 9 illegal spy suspects (.pdf) i.e. Christopher R. Metsos, Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Michael Zottoli, Patricia Mills, Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez.
48. Similarly, TRACEY LEE ANN FOLEY, has traveled on a fraudulent British passport, prepared for her by the SVR. One of the Boston Conspirators' Internet Messages provided FOLEY with instructions with respect to her then-upcoming trip to Moscow.
Itinerary to M. [Moscow] for D.; Paris - Wien (by train), Mar 18 in Wien exch[ange] doc's for British pass[port] - [Moscow] (Mar 19, flight OS 601). Very important: 1. Sign your passport on page 32. Train yourself to be able to reproduce your signature when it's necessary.
[...]
Will the Home Office and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office investigate this alleged abuse of the British Passport system by Yet Another Foreign Intelligence Agency ?
It is still unclear whether or not an Israeli diplomat was actually expelled, following the abuse of British passports in the Dubai assassination affair
See the previous Spy Blog article and comments: Has the Israeli diplomat / intelligence officer been expelled from London yet ?
Note that this Internet Message , presumably hidden through stenography and / or encryption, appears, given the abbreviations, to have been written in English rather than Russian.
N.B. the current British Passports no longer force you to sign page 32, your signature on the specified box on application / renewal form, which your are warned to to exceed the boundaries of, is digitised.
An approximately half scale image version of your signature is reproduced on the main Passport laminated page
How this is meant to be of any use it for comparison with your "usual signature" ? Many people will had had to modify their "usual signature" to fit within the cramped, "one size fits all" box on the application form. To then reduce this in size by a factor of two as it appears on the front of the laminated main passport page, completely devalues this as a "security" feature.
Why could they not put a full sized signature image on the back of the laminated page, which, apart from the embedded chip and antenna, is devoid of any important information, except for "official observations", which for most people will be utterly blank. ?
This laminated page has a stupid embedded contactless chip and antenna loop, which act as a a "let's blab the nationality and / or unique passport number to anybody with cheap unlicensed band radio frequency equipment" device, even before any encrypted data is sent between the chip and the passport reader equipment.
It has already been demonstrated that this can be done at ranges of several tens of metres, way beyond the few centimetres that the Passport and Passport reader equipment require. It therefore puts British travellers at risk of covert surveillance and tracking, as they pass by unseen detection equipment, operated by anbody with access to some cheap electronics..
They are therefore at potential risk from terrorist bombs which are detonated only once enough British passports are detected within range.
Spy Blog recommends, that just as with Oyster Travel Cards in London, you use aluminium metal foil etc. to line your Passport cover, so as to prevent this chip being sneakily detected or read, except when you are actually presenting it at passport control.
Doing so, will, of course, show up your radio frequency shielded passport as a "suspicious" object on intrusive "see under your clothes" Passive or Active Millimetre Wave radar or TeraHertz or Backscatter X-Ray scanners.
See Spy Blog: Foiling the Oyster card
The arrest of 10 Russian "illegal" suspected SVR spies, in the USA, including the photogenic Anna Chapman, who appears to have spent 5 years or so working in the United Kingdom, and who married and divorced a British citizen, is full of interesting technical tradecraft and legal issues.
The arrest of another 11th suspect, Christopher Metsos, in Cyprus, who then appears to have been allowed to flee the country "whilst awaiting an Extradition warrant" on "money laundering" allegations from the USA", is , in its own way rather worrying, given the obvious use of Entrapment by the US authorities in this affair.
One area in which the US judicial system is better than that of the United Kingdom is in the online publication of Indictments, signed by investigating police or counter- intelligence agents, detailing the alleged activities of the accused.
These are often made available for free by the major US newspapers and provide a check against the wretched culture of "anonymous briefings" which the British media allow themselves to be manipulated by.
The New York Times seems to have been the first to do this, but copies of the two Indictments are now available from the BBC website:
BBC copy of the District Court Indictment against Anna Chapman and Mikhail Semenko(.pdf)
BBC copy of the District Court Indictment against the other 9 illegal spy suspects (.pdf) i.e. Christopher R. Metsos, Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Michael Zottoli, Patricia Mills, Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez.
Both documents make a distinction between spies under diplomatic cover working from Embassies, Consulates and, in this case the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York and "illegals".
"Illegals" are in two categories - those who operate under totally false names and identities of, in this case, US citizens, or those who operate under their own (Russian) identities.
See the infamous "Hollow Coin" case in the 1950's involving Rudolf Abel / Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher.
Why arrest this alleged spy ring now, after several years of surveillance ?
It is unclear why the US authorities actually decided to make a propaganda fuss and arrest these alleged "illegals" rather than simply threatening to deport them under immigration laws.
Presumably there is some sort of internal power struggle for scarce budgets and prestige, amongst the various US intelligence agencies.
The case has certainly shifted a lot of mainstream media attention from the BP oil pollution scandal, which probably pleases the White House spin doctors.
No actual Espionage or even Economic Espionage charges
None of the suspects are actually accused of obtaining or passing on any actual classified information.
None are actually accused of Espionage, (up to 20 years in prison) or even Economic Espionage (up to 10 years in prison and half a million dollars fine for stealing certain trade secrets).
There are no charges under the catch all "national security" provisions of the so called PATRIOT Act either.
The likelihood is that the alleged spies were either as yet inactive "sleepers" awaiting orders in the future, or were meant to be "agents of influence", or perhaps low level logistics support team members, without direct contact with any US traitors or personal access to real secrets.
The fact that two of them are accused of undertaking "dead drop" operations of money and of a false passport, at the behest of the FBI agent provocateurs who had gained their trust, implies membership of the logistics tail of the SVR espionage rings in the USA.
Similarly in the United Kingdom, none of the alleged activities set out in the Indictments would have fallen foul of the the UK's Official Secrets Act 1989
Unregistered Agents of a Foreign Government
They are accused of Conspiracy to Act as Unregistered Agents of a Foreign Government which carries a penalty of up to 5 years in prison.
There is no such law in the United Kingdom.
If there was, how many Public Relations and Political Lobbying companies and individuals would be caught by such a law in the UK ?
Given the number of current and former MPs and Lords and Ministers (from across the political spectrum) who have acted for foreign clients and for foreign companies or organisations, which are controlled by foreign governments, it seems unlikely that any such law would be passed in the UK.
Entrapment
The interesting alleged technical details about the secret communications methods employed by this alleged spy ring are not in themselves illegal.
This is presumably why the US authorities went for their usual Entrapment method, using their people who managed to infiltrate or gain the trust of a couple of the suspects, to accept and deliver to a Dead Letter Drop, an envelope of cash or a false passport.
These acts were then videoed to provide evidence of activity as an "Unregistered Agent of a Foreign Government" a crime with a penalty of up to 5 years in prison.
Since US laws and regulations do not allow "Unregistered Agents of a Foreign Government" to make use of the US bank or credit card or other financial systems, anybody who receives or passes on any money "from a Foreign Government" can be accused of "money laundering" or more usually, as in this case, the even more catch all inchoate offence of "conspiracy to commit money laundering", which has a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
In previous cases, the US authorities have even claimed that the salaries paid by the US Government to to Federal employees working for the FBI etc. who turned out to have been recruited to be Russian or Chinese or Cuban or Israeli etc. spies after their initial employment by the US Government, was evidence of "money laundering" since they were obtained under false pretences by "Unregistered Agents of a Foreign Government".
This is not "money laundering" in the the sense that UK laws are framed, aimed at Serious Organised Crime gangs involved in illegal drug or tobacco or alcohol etc. smuggling, human trafficking. Neither does this sort of activity qualify as "terrorism" money laundering.
Entrapment is much more heavily frowned upon in the UK legal system than in the USA.
Communications Traffic Analysis of repeated ad hoc WiFi connections using the same two MAC addresses
The alleged use of ad hoc WiFi connections (i.e. directly peer to peer, between two portable computers, without logging in to a Wireless Access Point) by "Anna Chapman", sitting in a café or a bookshop, whilst a diplomat from the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations lurked nearby or drove past in a minivan was interesting.
The fact that the FBI used a "commercially available tool that can detect the presence of wireless networks" and had evidence of the same two Media Access Control (MAC) addresses from the WiFi chips / USB dongles or cards used by the portable computers making ad hoc Wifi connections with each other, on about 10 occasions would be as proper use of directed surveillance both in the USA and in the UK.
Such WiFi connections do not use a public Communications Services Provider like a telecomms or internet company, so the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 self authorisation for access to Communications Data does not apply - there are no log files to be copied or seized from third parties.
Since WiFi exploits the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical bands of radio frequencies, it is not illegal to intercept these if you have the technology to do so, even if you are a private citizen and not an intelligence agency.
Such activity would not be illegal in either country, especially since the contents of the the communications between the two computers are likely to have been protected with extra encryption or steganography over and above the strong encryption available through the standard WiFi connection
N.B. the only WiFi encryption which cannot be broken these days in real time or near real time is WPA2 using AES encryption, all the other modes i.e. the standard WEP or the more advanced but now broken TKIP can be compromised by free software available over the internet.
it is trivially easy to change the MAC address which a WiFi enabled laptop uses, either through a Windows Registry setting or by using free software available via the internet. e.g. KLC Consulting's SMAC
Writing down a long password on paper
The FBI investigators ap
25-Jun-10
We have been critical of the grasping information stealing powers which HM Treasury has abrogated to itself under the control freakery of the previous Labour government.
In spite of these unlimited powers, they do not seem to have a clue as to exactly where all the public money has been wasted.
It is therefore interesting to see the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government's new Web 2.0 (WordPress blog, promotion via Twitter, Facebook etc.) website entitled:
This attempts to solicit information about saving public money, from, initially, those people actually working in the Public Sector
i.e.
Armed forces
Central government
Education and training
Executive agencies & non-departmental government bodies
Local and regional government (including fire services)
NHS
Police (including civilians)
Private sector partners working with public sector
Third sector organisations working with public sector (e.g. charities)
Other
After July 9th, the wider general public, will, apparently, also be allowed to contribute ideas.
There is an encrypted web form, but no published email address for this Spending Challenge website.
Interestingly, this official UK Government website specifically mentions online anonymity and also the controversial and now insecure "whistleblower" website http://wikileaks.org
All ideas submitted to this site will be considered providing they meet the criteria below:
- Your idea should relate to the question asked ('How can we rethink services to deliver more for less money?')
- Anything you submit should contain a clear idea rather than containing a comment about the Spending Review or about the spending cuts in general
The Privacy Policy needs to be read very carefully:
Your idea should not include the following:
* Potentially libellous, false, or defamatory statements; nor should you impersonate or falsely claim to represent a person or organisation
Obviously sensible.
* Material which is potentially confidential, commercially sensitive, or which may cause personal distress or loss;
" may cause personal distress or loss;" is ok, but it should be separated out from
"potentially confidential, commercially sensitive,"
Can HM Treasury really not be trusted with "commercially sensitive information" which pertains to direct or indirect Government spending, waste or inefficiency ?
Since the "economic well being of the United Kingdom", is one of the vague definitions of "national security", surely HM Treasury, is under a legal duty to keep such information, if submitted, in the strictest confidence ?
* The names of individual officials of public bodies, unless they are part of the senior management of those organisations;
What exactly is the definition of "senior management" ?
* Language which is offensive, intemperate, or provocative. This not only includes obvious swear words and insults, but any language to which people review the questions could reasonably take offence.
Obviously sensible.
[...]
To submit an idea, you will be asked for your email address and which area of the public sector you work in. This will appear alongside your idea when it is reviewed by the Treasury. If you wish to remain anonymous, you can choose not to include your email address.
It is good to see that the authors of this website and hopefully their political bosses, recognise that without online anonymity, their attempt at getting good ideas online, especially from "insiders", will simply never work in practice.
When you make your contribution, you also need to be mindful of your obligations under your organisation's Code(s) of Conduct.
How does the Civil Service Code apply?
If you are a Civil Servant, in order for your idea or comment to comply with the Civil Service Code it should adhere to the following:
* Uphold the principles of impartiality, and not be party political in nature
* Avoid disclosing any confidential information
* Avoid being critical of government policies
* Not draw from papers or advice relating to the previous administrationYou should familiarise yourself with the guidelines for Civil Servants on working with social media: http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/about/work/codes/participation-online.aspx
How it is possible for a Civil Servant to comply with these restrictions and to actually submit any detailed, useful ideas ?
You should also make sure that you comply with your organisation's IT Usage Policy.
If anyone is threatened or is actually disciplined, for submitting ideas on how to save public money, to an official Government website consultation, then please let us know anonymously via this blog's comments, or via email to blog@spy.org.uk, using , so that the petty bureaucratic jobsworths responsible can be named and shamed.
You should not post personally identifiable information such as telephone numbers or private addresses.
It is not a good idea to post these on a public blog, but surely HM Treasury should be able to keep these private, especially as they will be moderating any blog comment feedback before publishing it.
If you choose to share your email address and department, it may be used as part of our response process to ideas and suggestions. For more information please see our 'How the Challenge Works' page.
Traffic data is collected anonymously for the purposes of analysing visitor usage patterns only.
Really ? How can we be sure of that "Traffic data" is not abused for other purposes, given the "national security" snooping powers of HM Treasury ?
Please note that contributions are not 'protected' i.e. if an idea is submitted, the user should expect that it may be taken forward for implementation by HM Government and that the idea becomes the property of HM Government.
No worse than say, Facebook, in terms of stealing your intellectual property.
N.B. if your public money saving ideas relate entirely or mostly to the Government department you work for, then you should not expect any financial reward for coming up with a good money saving idea.
However, if your novel, practical idea for saving money, relates to a different department, or public body, which you are not directly or indirectly paid by, then surely there should be at least some sort of monetary prize incentive scheme, ideally on a percentage of public money saved basis ?
All personal data will be treated in line with:
Why does the original link to the Directgov Privacy Policy employ some sneaky javascipt Page Tracker code ?
i.e.
onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.direct.gov.uk');"
Does that mean that it will be left on a train, or copied to an insecure laptop computer, USB memory device or CD/DVD and then lost ?
Will the WordPress blog response form data be left on an insecure web or email server, open to the internet or to privileged internal snoopers ?
No HM Treasury Spending Challenge email address ?
Why is there no HM Treasury Spending Challenge email address e.g.
SpendingChallenge@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk
(suitable for the low level Restricted Protectively Marked document security classification)
or
SpendingChallenge@x.hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk
(suitable for the medium level Confidential Protectively Marked document security classification)
for direct email contact or submissions of Spending Challenge ideas ?
Is it really too much to ask for the Spending Challenge team to also publish a
17-Jun-10
Will the Identity Documents Bill, which which should repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006 and scrap the centralised database of biometric and biographical details, get the proper detailed scrutiny it deserves ?
Will the Whitehall bureaucracy try to sneak in some extra, evil powers, buried in the detail of the Bill, whilst the Westminster Village politicians' and journalists' attention collective "attention span of a goldfish" is diverted by the main part of the Bill ?
Spy Blog's informed and passionate readers can try to influence the Identity Documents Bill Committee, which has issued a Call for Evidence.
Deadline for submissionsThe sooner you send in your submission, the more time the Committee will have to take it into consideration. The Public Bill Committee will meet for the first time on Tuesday 29 June and complete its consideration of the Bill by Thursday 8 July.
[...]
Your submission should be emailed to the Scrutiny Unit
Gosia McBride
Deputy Head (Legislation)
Scrutiny Unit
7 Millbank
London
SW1P 3JATelephone: 020 7219 8383/8387
Fax: 020 7219 8381
Email: scrutiny@parliament.uk
Full Call for Evidence and submission details:
Identity Documents Bill Committee issues call for evidenceDo you have relevant expertise and experience or a special interest in the Government's Identity Documents Bill?
If so, you can submit your views in writing to the House of Commons Public Bill Committee which is going to consider this Bill over the next few weeks.
Purpose of the BillTo abolish Identity Cards and the National Identity Register.
Key areas of the BillThe Bill will repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006, which provides the legal framework required to establish a National Identity Register and to issue Identity Cards to those on the Register.
Deadline for submissionsThe sooner you send in your submission, the more time the Committee will have to take it into consideration. The Public Bill Committee will meet for the first time on Tuesday 29 June and complete its consideration of the Bill by Thursday 8 July.
Guidance on submitting written evidence What should written evidence cover?Your submission should address matters contained within the Bill and concentrate on issues where you have a special interest or expertise, and factual information of which you would like the Committee to be aware. It is helpful if the submission includes a brief introduction about you or your organisation.
The submission should not have been previously published or circulated elsewhere. If you have any concerns about your submission, please contact the Scrutiny Unit.
How should written evidence be submitted?
Your submission should be emailed to the Scrutiny Unit. Please note that submissions sent to the Government department in charge of the Bill will not be treated as evidence to the Public Bill Committee.
Submissions should be in the form of a Word document. A summary should be provided. Paragraphs should be numbered, but there should be no page numbering. Essential statistics or further details can be added as annexes, which should also be numbered.
To make publication easier, please avoid the use of coloured graphs, complex diagrams or pictures. As a guideline, submissions should not exceed 3,000 words.
You should also include a separate covering email containing the name, address, telephone number and email address of the person responsible for the submission. The submission should be dated.
What will happen to my evidence?The written evidence will be circulated to all Committee Members to inform their consideration of the Bill. Most submissions will also be published. They will be posted on the internet as soon as possible after the Committee has started sitting, and will also be printed in hard copy at the end of the Committee's deliberations.
The Scrutiny Unit can help with any queries about written evidence.
Contact details for the Scrutiny Unit are as follows:
Gosia McBride
Deputy Head (Legislation)
Scrutiny Unit
7 Millbank
London
SW1P 3JATelephone: 020 7219 8383/8387
Fax: 020 7219 8381
Email: scrutiny@parliament.uk
Hat Tip to David Moss via the NO2ID discussion forum, for reminding us about this (.pdf) document:
the impact assessment prepared by the Identity & Passport Service and signed by Damian Green on 29 May 2010.
12-Jun-10
The new Conservative Home Office Minister of State for Security, Baroness Neville-Jones, revealed on Thursday, just how incompetent the Police and Home Office bureaucracy had become under the previous Labour regime.
They could not even "rubber stamp" the controversial Terrorism Act 2000 section 44 "stop and search" without reasonable cause legal powers for Constables in Uniform.
Ministerial Statement to the House of Lords:
Terrorism: Stop and Search
10 June 2010Baroness Neville-Jones (Minister of State (Security), Home Office; Conservative)
I wish to inform the House of errors relating to those periods in the past which have recently been identified following an internal review of the authorisation process for the stop and search powers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
[...]
I have to inform the House that it appears that stop-and-search powers have been used unlawfully by a number of police forces on a number of occasions. The Home Office has written to each of the police forces concerned to alert them to these errors and those forces are now in the process of assessing how many individuals were stopped and searched in the periods of invalid authorisations. They will do their best to contact those involved.
Remember, that under section 44, there is no legal power to demand your name and address, so where people have been stopped and searched and then let go (the vast majority of cases), there should be no way off contacting them to apologise or to pay them financial compensation.
However, one of the abuses of section 44 has been the sneaky "please fill in your details on this Stop and Search Form", which many people have been conned or intimidated into complying with, even by Police Community Support Officers, who have no legal powers under section 44, unless they are under the direct supervision, on the street, of a real Police Constable in Uniform.
We have first hand accounts of this sort of incompetent "intelligence gathering" malpractice
To summarise these errors, on 33 occasions authorisations were specified to be for 29 days, and two occasions when the authorisations were specified to be for 30 days, whereas the statutory maximum period is 28 days.
The text of the Act clearly says 28 days maximum.
How is it possible for 29 or 30 days to ever have been be specified in error even once, let alone at least 35 times ?
Why did nobody in the regional Police force, the Metropolitan Police Joint National Unit which is meant to coordinate such Authoristions, the Home Office / Office of of Counter Terrorism and Security, or at the Home Secretary's Private Office not check for this sort of error ?
Did the Labour Home Secretaries or other Ministers of State, not bother to actually read the details of what they were signing ?
[...]
I am aware that there is considerable concern about the operation of Section 44 stop-and-search powers going beyond these authorisation errors. The Government are committed to a wider review of counterterrorism legislation, including the operation of the Section 44 stop-and-search provisions. While I take some reassurance from the fact that no errors have occurred since December 2008 when the authorisation process was tightened, I want to assure the House that there will be utmost vigilance in future. It is with the need for this in mind that I have instructed Home Office officials unconnected with the administrative process to conduct the internal review of procedures.
Remember that these are very temporary, strictly time and location limited, extraordinary powers, which are supposedly strictly controlled.
It appears that they have become abused as if they were routine, general policing powers.
Remember also, that not a single terrorist has ever been caught red handed with weapons or explosives etc. by such section 44 stops and searches. Where there have been a few arrests, there has been plenty of "reasonable suspicion" and very often actual covert surveillance, before any arrests of terrorist suspects, under the panoply of other legal powers available to the Police.
Since the public interest in disclosure is now even more pressing, especially as the thousands of people subjected to illegal stops and searches may be entitled to an apology and / or financial compensation, Spy Blog has re-submitted the Freedom of Information Act request made originally on 14th November 2007:
05-Jun-10
Of interest to Spy Blog readers should be the forthcoming BBC Radio 4 Law in Action programme presented by Joshua Rozenberg
Broadcast times:
- Tuesday 8th Jun 2010 16:00 BBC Radio 4 (FM only) .
- Thursday 10th Jun 2010 20:00 BBC Radio 4
and online via the BBC iPlayer for a while thereafter.
1/4. Top legal journalist Joshua Rozenberg returns to present the first in a new series of the legal affairs magazine.
[...]
In this opening programme, he examines an issue that looks set to prompt widespread debate among the public as well as among those working in the criminal justice system. Increasingly the police are using digital cameras and intelligence tactics to create image libraries of campaigners and protesters. These are designed, senior officers say, to help the police prevent criminal acts from being committed. But critics see the creation and development of the photographic databases as potentially sinister, claiming that ever larger numbers of images are being added.
Joshua Rozenberg investigates how the police, the courts and those responsible for protecting personal data strike a balance between the need to safeguard civil liberties and the police's responsibility to prevent crime. Are there enough safeguards to protect the public from being unfairly linked with criminals? Is maintaining public order being used as an excuse to engineer a surveillance society? Or are the authorities simply taking the minimum steps to ensure a determined and well-organised minority of protesters bent on disruption do not wreck the lives of the law-abiding majority?
[...]
Allied with Forward Intelligence Teams is the snooping on and surveillance of. innocent public demonstrators and ordinary motorists etc. through the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology, which , worryingly for millions of innocent motorists, includes a flag on the Police National Computer, which could be so very easily misinterpreted,
See: Spy Blog ACPO policy on ANPR: The Management and Use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition
7 REASON - Protest could easily be abused for political purpose, or could be seen as such.
See also the The Guardian report about Project Champion
Surveillance cameras in Birmingham track Muslims' every move -About 150 car numberplate recognition cameras installed in two Muslim areas, paid for by government anti-terrorism fund
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There is some belated local opposition to this "Big Brother Surveillance State" abuse of technology: see the protest and petition and ANPR camera mapping website: Spy on Moseley
Spy on Moseley - Sparkbrook, Springfield, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. An MI5 Intelligence-gathering operation to spy on Muslim communities in Birmingham is taking liberties in every sense
[...]Unlike other CCTV schemes, this one has an altogether different and far more sinister purpose: it is connected to the government's 'Preventing Violent Extremism' agenda, or 'Prevent' for short. The Home Office funding came from the counter-terrorism budget of ACPO (TAM) - an acronym that stands for 'Association of Chief Police Officers (Terrorism and Allied Matters)'.
Project Champion is a surveillance exercise which utilises a grid of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras which now encircles the predominantly Muslim areas of the city, notably Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath Wards. There are also nine camera points in Moseley, where this campaign of opposition began - hence the name of this website. It should be noted that opposition to this scheme is not limited to a few Moseley residents, but is a much wider issue.
These spy cameras will record every vehicle entering or leaving a zone that has been designated as Birmingham's 'Terrorist Quarter'. This is a Home Office initiative from central government. Big Brother is watching you. Especially if you are Muslim, or just happen to live in Birmingham's "terrorist ghetto."
Some of the offending ANPR camera locations in Moseley have been plotted onto a Google Map:
We are waiting for the new Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition government to fulfil its promises on the abuse of ANPR and CCTV cameras etc.
Hansard source (Citation: HL Deb, 3 June 2010, c11W)
Vehicles: Automatic Plate Recognition
House of Lords
Written answers and statements, 3 June 2010Lord Corbett of Castle Vale (Labour)
To ask Her Majesty's Government what proposals they have to restrict the use of vehicle registration number-plate recognition cameras.
Baroness Neville-Jones (Minister of State (Security), Home Office; Conservative)
In keeping with our pledge to safeguard freedoms and protect civil liberties we believe it important to ensure that the use of automatic number-plate recognition technology is proportionate in order to command public confidence. We will therefore be considering whether more needs to be done to strengthen controls and safeguards relating to its use.
We accept the need for the Police to use such technology to help them to do the job that we expect of them.
However, the bureaucracy and secrecy behind which they have been allowed to hide the use or abuse of such technology, is utterly wrong.
There are still no easy, transparent procedures for innocent members of the public to be notified of errors and to get such mistakes rapidly corrected, both on the original Police databases and on all the other ones to which such inaccurate and possibly libelous data is routinely propagated to, both in the UK and internationally.
