Practice Advice on Stop and Search in relation to Terrorism (.pdf)

Every person searched under section 44 should be told explicitly that they are not suspected of being a terrorist.

This is rather misleading, since if you are stupid enough to allow the Police conducting a Terrorism Act 2000 section 44 stop and search to take your Name and Address etc, something which they have no power to demand under that particular section, but which they very often attempt to do, especially when completing the cumbersome paper Stop and Search Form (or the new, supposedly quicker electronic version), you will eventually have this data logged on an electronic database, which may well be handed over in bulk to foreign police and intelligence agencies.

This information could also be disclosed , to your detriment when applying for jobs, in future Criminal Records Bureau Enhanced Disclosures.

The "Good News" is that this NPIA / ACPO practice advice, which must surely form the basis of the training and operational briefing of Police Officers, specifically re-iterates that there are no restrictions on Photography or Digital Imaging conferred by the Terrorism Act 2000.

2.8 PHOTOGRAPHY

The Terrorism Act 2000 does not prohibit people from taking photographs or digital images in an area where an authority under section 44 is in place. Officers should not prevent people taking photographs unless they are in an area where photography is prevented by other legislation.

If officers reasonably suspect that photographs are being taken as part of hostile terrorist reconnaissance, a search under section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000 or an arrest should be considered. Film and memory cards may be seized as part of the search, but officers do not have a legal power to delete images or destroy film. Although images may be viewed as part of a search, to preserve evidence when cameras or other devices are seized, officers should not normally attempt to examine them. Cameras and other devices should be left in the state they were found and forwarded to appropriately trained staff for forensic examination. The person being searched should never be asked or allowed to turn the device on or off because of the danger of evidence being lost or damaged.

Most people with an interest in politics in the UK take this joke / mild insult in their stride, but surely even members of the Labour party must feel scared by the news that the Conservative MP Damian Green, their frontbench Home Affairs spokesman on Immigration, has been arrested by the Metropolitan Police, and has had his homes and offices searched, including his office at the Palace of Westminster, by "Counter Terrorism Police".

Counter-terrorism police arrest Conservative frontbencher

The police action followed the arrest 10 days ago of a government employee who had allegedly leaked four documents to Green, who in turn passed them to the press. They were:

• A home office memo, which appeared in the Daily Mail on 13 November 2007, which showed that the home secretary Jacqui Smith had been warned four months earlier that thousands of illegal immigrants had been cleared to work in sensitive Whitehall security jobs. The memo emerged days after the Sunday Mirror disclosed that at least 5,000 illegal immigrants had been cleared by the Security Industry Authority to work sensitive Whitehall locations.

• An email to the then home office minister Liam Byrne in February this year which showed that he was informed about an illegal Brazilian immigrant who faked an identity pass to working parliament. The memo, which was published in the Sunday Telegraph on 10 February this year, said Byrne was informed on 31 January. Byrne was accused of a cover up.

• A list of Labour MPs who were likely to rebel against the government's plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge. This appeared in the Sunday Times on 20 April 2008.

• A letter from Jacqui Smith to Gordon Brown warning that a recession would lead to a rise in crime. This appeared in will papers, including the Guardian, on 1 September this year.

None of these stories involved any breach of security, only political embarrassment for the incompetent Labour party politicians.

The BBC in that intensely annoying way of theirs, have almost completely re-written their report of this story, but kept the URL the same Senior Tory arrested over leaks - new window">Senior Tory arrested over leaks

They quote a statement from the Metropolitan Police Service (which does not, of course, appear on the Met's website):

"The investigation into the alleged leak of confidential government material followed the receipt by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) of a complaint from the Cabinet Office.

"The decision to make today's arrest was taken solely by the MPS without any ministerial knowledge or approval."

There was no need to waste scarce "Counter Terrorism Police" resources on this blatantly political investigation. Are ordinary Policemen no longer capable of searching an office ?

It is irrelevant whether or not Gordon Brown or any other senior Labour politicians were aware of Thursday's arrest beforehand, or not, they are to blame politically.

This affair also reflects badly on Sir Paul Stephenson, the deputy to Sir Ian Blair, who is taking over as Acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. If he is seen to be continuing Sir Ian Blair's NuLabour political policing style, then he must not be allowed to be promoted into that job full time.

We strongly suggest that any other Home Office or Treasury etc. whistleblowers, and any investigative journalists, bloggers or opposition politicians should read our Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers and Political Activists - Technical Hints and Tips for protecting the anonymity of sources for Whistleblowers, Investigative Journalists, Campaign Activists and Political Bloggers

Some Obvious Questions:

Privacy International have a new report on the "effects of new counter-terrorism laws on media and free expression rights in European countries".

Speaking of Terror: A survey of the effects of counter-terrorism legislation on freedom of the media in Europe (.pdf)

Contents

Executive summary, page 3
I. Introduction, page 5
II. Effects of international bodies on Council of Europe member states, page 7
United Nations, page 7
The Council of Europe, page 8
The European Union, page 10
III. Limits on access and gathering information, page 13
Access to Information Laws, page 13
State Secrets Legislation, page 15
Limits on Photography, page 17
IV. Limits on freedom of expression, page 19
V. Protection of journalists' sources and materials, page 25
VI. Wiretapping and surveillance of journalists, page 29
VII. Conclusion, page 35
VIII. Appendix, page 37
Guidelines of the Committee of Ministers of the Council
of Europe on protecting freedom of expression and
information in times of crisis, page 37
Declaration on freedom of expression and information
in the media in the context of the fight against
terrorism, page 40

Summary of findings:

Initially this whistleblower David Murfee Faulk alleged illegal snooping on the phone calls of innocent US citizens, including journalists and the families of US soldiers serving in Iraq. He has worked as a US Army Arabic language translator at the National Security Agency "Black Hall" listening post at Fort Gordon, Georgia, before becoming a local news reporter. These allegations have been taken seriously enough for a US Congressional investigation into them to have been started.

He claims that he had access to a secret database called Anchory, formerly known as the SIGINT Online Intelligence System i.e. a signald intelligence database run by the National Security Agency.

Given that the British press are following the ABC News scoop, it is sad to see them getting simple details from the original wrong:

The Daily Mail has spoiled its report of the story with the following inaccuracy and misspelling:

Mr Blair was given the code named "Anchory" as his private telephone calls were routinely listened into and recorded.

The Daily Telegraph and the Press Association reports do not make that mistake, although somehow The Guardian's headline to the syndicated PA story more accurately describes him as an "ex-Navy Operator", (see the previous ABC News report which describes him as a "former Navy Arab linguist") even though the PA story text says "US Army Arabic linguist"

Such simple errors call into question the accuracy of the rest of these stories, and of these mainstream media organisations as a whole.

These UK media reports , whilst bemoaning some alleged "unwritten rule" about not spying on allies, miss the obvious question of how it was technically possible for anyone to intercept the phone communications of a British Prime Minister, no matter who they are.

• Is Gordon Brown's mobile phone or voicemail also being intercepted by the US National Security Agency ?

• How much UK mobile phone and landline and internet traffic is currently being handed over in bulk to the US National Security Agency by UK Government agencies like GCHQ ?

• Is the United Kingdom's GCHQ intercepting President Bush or President-Elect Barack Obama's mobile phones ?

• If GCHQ and the Whitehall securocats securocrats cannot even keep information of a "personal nature" about a British Prime Minister's "private life" out of the clutches of foreign intelligence agency phone interception systems, then why should they be trusted with the massive Communications Traffic Data centralised database, which Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is planning to inflict on tens of millions of innocent British people ?
  

We have been getting tens of thousands of visitors to our 21st December 2006 article:

Encryption and the BNP membership list - does your political party or campaign group protect your personal details with encryption ?

commenting on the laudable use of encryption by the BNP of their membership list details, something which is, obviously in this case, still vulnerable to betrayal by a privileged insider, just like so many UK Government centralised national databases are, despite the weasel words from the Labour party politicians..

We have been getting thousands of search engine queries, and actual , obviously fruitless blog search button searches for terms such as "bnp membership list", "bnp members list", "bnp member list", "bnp list", "bnp membership" etc., which have been growing exponentially for the last 3 days or so.

The alleged list is available online elsewhere, but obviously not here on this data privacy and security campaigning blog e.g. try the WikiLeakS.org controversial whistleblower website in Sweden, which, yet again, seems to have been overloaded by the mainstream media hyped demand for a voyeuristic peek at something illegal or forbidden, or Cryptome.org

• How many of the alleged December 2007 BNP members are actually still in the party, after all the scandals and splits in the last year ?
  
  
• Are there fake entries which have been added maliciously to these internet published versions of the alleged list ?

• Have there been some sneaky deletions of certain members details ? The media reports give widely varying numbers of records on the alleged lists.

• Is the BNP actually benefiting from the "oxygen of publicity" ?

• Will these names and addresses now be added in to Hazel Blears' "community tension monitoring" databases ? see Hazel Blears and Sergeant Flanderka - "tension monitoring" i.e. snooping on local communities

• Will the membership lists of other UK political parties and organisations now be "leaked" onto the internet ?

• Will any such lists be used as target lists for "hate crimes" and discrimination, or even "sectarian violence", "ethnic cleansing" and genocide, as has happened in the past around the world, and in Northern Ireland ?

• Will organisations which run such a list or database of personal details, urgently review the technical security barriers and human personnel aspects of their data security and privacy operations, or will they sit back complacently in the belief that such a data privacy breach "could never happen here" ?

Home Office launches counter terrorism competition for design students

It is easy to partially protect buildings for the elite, against suicide truck bomb attacks, through the use of ancient fortification techniques like moats and a raised piano nobile - which were originally designed against ancient or medieval battering rams and rioting mobs of peasants.

Many drab Government or Corporate buildings feature lots of reinforced concrete, small toughened safety glass windows, net curtains (with a large amount of slack at the bottom to gather up flying debris) etc., and vast numbers of intimidating or sneaky CCTV cameras, but to protect large crowds of the hoi polloi, is an altogether much more difficult task.

The actual competition brief is available from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, commonly known as the RSA.

Public spaces, safer places - designing in counter terrorism (.pdf)

A project for students of architecture and design

Developed in collaboration between the Home Office and NaCTSO (National Counter Terrorism Security Office), the RSA and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), this project aims to draw attention to the issues of security and counter-terrorism in the process of designing places visited and used by the public.

[...]

The Project Brief seems to be rather unrealistic

Two suicide PBIEDs and two suicide VBIEDs were deployed in Vincent Square, a piazza full of people enjoying lunch on a warm, sunny day. One VBIED was able to enter the front atrium of an office block facing onto the piazza. The resulting blast caused the building to collapse. The two PBIEDs were detonated within the crowd of people on the piazza and the second VBIED managed to get close to a building but was unable to penetrate it. Although there was extensive damage to the building it did not collapse

Not even the largest Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices have managed to penetrate a building atrium and collapse a modern building in recent years e.g. neither.the US Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983, nor the Baltic Exchange in City of London in 1992, nor the Arndale Centre in Manchester in 1996, nor the London Docklands South Quay attack in 1996, nor the very recent the Marriott Hotel bomb last month in Islamabad Pakistan.

Buildings which did suffer collapsed floors e.g. the FBI building in Oklahoma City in 1995 either had car parking access under the building or collapsed after subsequent fires. Even a bomb in an underground car park right up against the structural supports in not guaranteed to cause a building collapse - the World Trade Center in New York survived such an attack in 1993.

N.B. the current chief executive of the RSA, is the notorious Mathew Taylor, the NuLabour apparatchik who was Tony Blair's "chief political advisor", who verbally attacked the UK political blogosphere, but somehow now publishes his partisan Labour party political thoughts on his own blog which is, inappropriately hosted, on the Royal Society of Arts website.

Will anyone researching an entry for this competition, who takes photos of public buildings and their existing anti-terrorism "features", be harassed by jobsworths in the current "War on Photographers" ?

Will anyone researching an entry for this competition who does some proper calculations and research into bomb resistant materials, designs and techniques, be arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 section 58 collection of information "thought crime" law ?

Will the winners of this competition be snapped by companies competing for the planned new replacement for the "prize winning architect" designed US Embassy in Grosvenor Square ?.

See Spy Blog: Thousands of Mobile Phones seized in UK Prisons - evidence of corruption ?

What has Jack Straw and his Prisons Minister David Hanson, who made vague promises to the BBC, actually done about this scandal in the last year ?

The 2007 - 2008 Independent Monitoring Board annual report for Wandsworth prison (.pdf), which holds the largest number of prisoners in the UK, makes dismal reading in this regard.

Access to mobile phones:

- For the past three years in this report we have asked the Home Office and then the Ministry of Justice to implement an effective jamming system to curtail the use of mobile phones. We have been promised that trials are taking place but nothing is happening in the large Local prisons to jam the use of mobile phones. Within Wandsworth it is estimated that the drugs trade would be halved if phones were jammed. As with drugs mobile phones are very freely available within HMP Wandsworth. Last year 307 were found and the numbers being found in the first six months of this year show an alarming increase. Phones are not just used to drive the drugs trade in Wandsworth. We have seen a phone seized by Security which had the most graphic and violent images taken in another prison, including forced sex and stabbings. With the possession of mobile phones within prisons now being a criminal offence we look forward to the Police taking a more active role in arresting and charging those found with mobile phones in prison.

The Labour government have, as is so typical of them, legislated unnecessarily in the Offender Management Act 2007 section 22 Conveyance of prohibited articles into or out of prison , which amends section 40 of the Prison Act 1952, to make smuggling mobile phones into a prison a criminal offence, pretending that it was not already illegal under drug dealing or prison escape conspiracy laws.

However they seem to have done nothing to actually implement any sort of mobile phone blocking or precise location tracking of handsets, (the controversial Path Intelligence Footpath technology used in some shopping centres, could be used for this).

Astonishingly, at HMP Wandsworth, it appears that the available metal detector anti-mobile phone smuggling technology is not being used !

We had very high hopes last year that the BOSS (Bodily Orifice Security Scanner) chair would be used to try and detect more phones being brought in by prisoners. Unfortunately it has hardly been used at all.

Is this because there is only the one BOSS chair, which cannot cope with the large number of movements in and out of the security perimeter every day ?

Or is there resistance to its use from corrupt prison staff ?

- Availability:

Drugs appear to be more widely available than at any time previously. The Mandatory Drugs Tests targets have been met with difficulty until recently primarily because of the relatively low level of drugs usage in Onslow. The current target for positive tests is 14%. The current annual market for drugs in Wandsworth was recently estimated to be worth £1million .Drugs of any sort are freely available.

[...]

Drugs enter the prison within prisoners, through visits, over the wall or via staff. Considerable progress appears to have been made to curb supplies through the first three categories of supply. There are concerns that a small number of staff is responsible for bringing the lion's share of drugs into the prison. Clearly this is an area for intensive investigation and the creation of the Ministry of Justice's new Anti-Corruption Unit is to be welcomed.

Who is holding Labour Ministers and Senior Civil Servants to account for their utter management failures e.g.

Spy Blog: Home Office and PA Consulting lose the names and addresses of all the most serious criminals in the UK

Given the years of failure by both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to sort out both the drugs and mobile phones scandals in prisons throughout the UK, one has to ask if the corruption extends beyond individual corrupt prison staff, and includes senior civil servants, private sector companies and Labour politicians as well ?

They are either incompetent, or corrupt, or both - they cannot be innocent of any blame.

See the debate and the vote: Tuesday, 4 November 2008 Counter-Terrorism Bil

The wording of the amendment:

"National guidelines on fingerprint and sample database

(1) The Secretary of State shall by regulations publish national guidelines for governmental agencies establishing--

(a) a procedure by which a person can request a statement of what information relating to fingerprints and samples is held on them or on a dependent;

(b) a procedure by which a person can request that such information held on them or a dependent is destroyed

(c) the circumstances in which a request under paragraph (b) may be refused.

(2) If a request made under paragraph (1)(b) is refused under paragraph (1)(c), the relevant agency shall write to the person setting out why such information will not be destroyed and when such circumstances as prevent it being destroyed may no longer apply.

(3) In drawing up guidelines under subsection (1), the Secretary of State shall consult such bodies as he thinks appropriate.

(4) Regulations under subsection (1) shall not be made until a draft copy is laid before, and approved by resolution of, both Houses of Parliament."

Given that there are no penalties for any bureaucrats or politicians who refuse to comply, or who deliberately delay this process, it is unlikely that any such new regulations will make any practical difference.

The Government could simply copy the existing ACPO Guidelines, which make it as hard as possible for innocent people to have their DNA profiles and samples and fingerprints, removed.

The only positive aspect of this wording "national guidelines for governmental agencies " is general enough so that it is not restricted to just the sneaky Counter-Terrorism DNA Database, run by the Metropolitan Police Service, which is what is under "clarification" in this part of the Bill, but it applies to all Government and Police DNA and fingerprint databases, including the controversial National DNA Databases.

UPDATE: 19th November 2008

The House of Commons has rejected even this minor amendment.

See the Public Whip for the detailed list of how MPs voted.

Why is the Opposition to this Labour Government so useless ?

The Sunday Mirror reports that:

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell leaves red box secrets on train

By Kelly Jenkins and Vincent Moss, Political Editor 2/11/2008

CABINET Minister James Purnell has sparked a security row after losing confidential documents on a packed train.

The rising Labour star - tipped as a future PM - broke strict guidelines by taking documents out of his "red box" on the trip.

Ministers are warned against taking their Cabinet briefcases on public transport amid fears secret papers could be lost or stolen.

The embarrassing gaffe comes days after civil servant Richard Jackson was fined for leaving top secret documents relating to al-Qaeda and Iraq on a train.

Shocked passengers told how Work and Pensions Secretary Mr Purnell left his red box wide open while he wandered around the train making calls on his mobile.

To make matters worse, the 38-year-old then raced off the train, leaving a file of documents behind.

When can we be rid of such dangerously incompetent and arrogant people from positions of trust and power?

Tax website shut down as memory stick with secret personal data of 12million is found in a pub car park

By Daniel Boffey
Last updated at 11:06 PM on 01st November 2008

Ministers have been forced to order an emergency shutdown of a key Government computer system to protect millions of people's private details.

The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park containing confidential passcodes to the online Government Gateway system, which covers everything from tax returns to parking tickets.

An urgent investigation is now under way into how the stick, belonging to the company which runs the flagship system, came to be lost.

The Department for Work and Pensions insisted that the system's security has not been breached, but a computer expert told The Mail on Sunday that in the wrong hands the data on the memory stick could enable hackers to access personal details of the 12million people who have registered on the system, including their passwords.

Users trying to log on to the site yesterday were met by the message: 'The Government Gateway is temporarily offline. We apologise for any inconvenience. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.'

The Government also closed down access to self-assessment tax applications via the Revenue and Customs website.

The HMRC income tax self assessment system is still the Government department which uses the Government Gateway website, even after all of these years of alleged "joined up e-government".

The Government Gateway website appears to be back online, for now.

[...]

The lost memory stick was found two weeks ago outside a Brewers Fayre chain pub in Cannock, Staffordshire, but the Department of Work and Pensions, which owns the Government Gateway, was made aware of its loss only last week when the 2in device was passed to this newspaper.

An expert who examined it for The Mail on Sunday said it contained confidential passwords, security software and the technical blueprint to the system known as the 'source code'. The memory stick is now in the hands of the police.

Therefore this USB memory device must have been unencrypted

The BBC reports Official fined over missing files

A senior civil servant has been fined after pleading guilty to leaving top secret documents on a train.

Richard Jackson admitted negligence by losing the files on a service from London Waterloo to Surrey on 10 June.

City of Westminster Magistrates Court heard the documents "had the potential to damage national security and UK international relations".

Cabinet Office official Jackson, 37, of Yateley, Hampshire, was fined £2,500 and will have to pay £250 costs.

[...]

See also the report in The Guardian Civil servant fined £2,500 for leaving secret al-Qaida files on train

[...]

A member of the public found them inside an orange cardboard envelope on a train from Waterloo station to Surrey and passed them on to the BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner.

Would this scandal have been covered up if the member of the public had simply not returned the documents, or had not used the BBC to do so ?

One of the documents was a seven-page report by the joint intelligence committee entitled Al-Qaida Vulnerabilities.

Classified as top-secret, the intelligence assessment on al-Qaida was so sensitive that every document was numbered and marked "for UK/US/Canadian and Australian eyes only". It is understood the assessment also contained reports on the state of the Islamist terror network in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan.

The document reportedly contained names of individuals or locations that might have been useful to Britain's enemies.

The second document, commissioned from the committee by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), contained an analysis of Iraq's security forces. It included a top-secret and in some places "damning" assessment of Iraq's security forces.

Jackson was on secondment to the Cabinet Office from the MoD at the time the documents were lost.

The court heard that the intelligence files "had the potential to damage national security and UK international relations".

This is an extraordinarily lenient "punishment" for potentially tipping off terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies to the UK intelligence communities highest level strategic intelligence assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of our enemies.

What assurance is there that the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Joint Intelligence Committee, and their Assessments Staff, have made it physically and culturally impossible for such highly classified documents to actually be printed out and taken physically out of a secure reading room in Whitehall ?

Why are there no airport style, pat down searches, "see through your clothes" body scanners and physical searches of bags and briefcases, on every one of the small number of people who are handling such top secret documents, without exception, to physically prevent them from ever taking such unencrypted documents home, either deliberately or by accident ?

Unless and until, the Labour Government and the Whitehall bureaucracy, at the senior level at which Richard Jackson worked at, can demonstrate a real change in attitude and culture to our data security and privacy concerns, they simply cannot be trusted with national scale databases of our personal data.

This case contrasts sharply with the Official Secrets Act trial of Corporal Daniel James, a foreign born interpreter who worked for General David Richards in Afghanistan, who has now been promoted to be head of the British Army.

Despite the much more severe risk to UK anti-terrorism and national security, which Richard Jackson's negligence or arrogance put at risk, he has not been vilified in the mainstream media or by the prosecution, in court, like the Iranian born Corporal Daniel James has.

It is worth reading the blog articles by Michael James Smith, who has an insider's perspective of machinations in such Official Secrets Act cases, having served time in prison after having been convicted of passing technical defence contractor documents to the KGB in 1993, which he is trying to have overturned. He has actually visited and interviewed Daniel James in Wandsworth prison (what are the chances that this prison visit was electronically snooped on ? )

See Daniel James - the sacrificial lamb

The prosecution case against Corporal Daniel James appears to rest on 7 unencrypted emails between Daniel James and the Iranian military attache in Kabul, Afghanistan, which must have been intercepted whilst he was back in the United Kingdom, awaiting a return to duty.

Presumably these are therefore US government intercepts of UK email communications, being used in a British civilian court case, something which is forbidden by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 section 17 Exclusion of matterd from legal proceedings,

This has implications for the ongoing Chilcot Review of Intercept Evidence - see the Spy Blog article Privy Council Chilcot Review report on Intercept Evidence - more ***

It also has implications for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's totalitarian Communications Data Bill and her attempts to piggyback a secret centralised communications data traffic database onto the GCHQ Intercept Modernisation Programme.

Meanwhile, there does not appear to be any prosecution over the incident which emerged a few days after the Richard Jackson stupidity, also involving HM Treasury and sensitive terrorist financing and money laundering documents, also left on a train:

See the previous Spy Blog article: Terrorist financing and money laundering Treasury documents left on a train - time for Whitehall mandarins and Ministerial heads to roll

Is this because a favoured political apparatchik was the culprit ?

Perhaps some of the politically active tv audience may just start to question the Labour government's betrayal of our individual rights to the security and privacy of our personal data.

There is a recent recent Hollywood film called How to Lose Friends & Alienate People , and that is exactly what Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling have managed to do to our friends and allies, in the strategically vital country of Iceland.

Icelanders are not terrorists

Help us stop abuse of the Anti-terrorism Act

Gordon Brown unjustifiably used the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 against the people of Iceland for his own short-term political gain. This has turned a grave situation into a national disaster, affecting families in both Iceland and the United Kingdom. Help us avert greater damage by signing this petition now.

See Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 Part 2 Freezing Orders

On Wednesday October 8th, the British Government invoked Anti-terrorist legislation, which was in effect aimed at the people of Iceland. This devastating attack on our society was received with disbelief here in Iceland. The people of Iceland have always considered themselves great friends of the United Kingdom. Our nations have a long history of mutually beneficial trade and have been close allies in NATO and Europe.

Hour by hour and day by day the actions of the British government are indiscriminately obliterating Icelandic interests all over the world and, in so doing, diminishing the assets that could be used to reimburse depositors with Icelandic banks in the United Kingdom and Iceland. The government's actions are also endangering the future of nearly all Icelandic companies and of the entire nation, in addition to over 100,000 employees of British companies with Icelandic connections. In this regard we would like to stress that the Icelandic authorities have always maintained their intention to honour their obligations in this matter, contrary to claims made by Chancellor Alistair Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

In these trying times, it is vital that we all work together to meet the troubles that lie ahead. We cannot let leaders, like Gordon Brown, destroy the long-term relations of our nations for their own short-term political gain. Mr. Brown would never have reacted to the collapse of a bank from a larger and more powerful nation by tarnishing its people as terrorists and criminals.

We, the people of Iceland, ask you, our friends from the United Kingdom and elsewhere, to join us in the common cause of ending diplomatic hostilities between the Icelandic and UK governments. It is our hope that this will stop the unnecessary economic damage on both sides, so that we can start to rebuild and make amends.

Sign the on-line petition

The Government media spin line is that somehow the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 is not just "anti0terrorism" legislation, but that is not how it was sold to Parliament and the public at the time, with worthless promises of safeguards by Ministers, who did not actually amend the detailed text of the legislation accordingly, a political trick which has been used time after time by this Government and its torrent of complicated repressive legislation.

The toothless Intelligence and Security Committee, tried, in producing their Annual report for 2004 / 2005 (.pdf), to get a single, coherent definition of "the Economic Well-being of the United Kingdom", which is one of the vague definitions of "National Security", in various bits of legislation.

They failed in this seemingly simple task - each Whitehall department and agency seems to have its own slightly different definition (most of which are kept secret from the public).

The proposals published in this green paper, 'The Governance of Britain', seek to address two fundamental questions: how should we hold power accountable, and how should we uphold and enhance the rights and responsibilities of the citizen?

See : 'The Governance of Britain (.pdf 63 pages)

There is a Chapter called:

2. Making the executive more accountable

Paragraphs 89 to 96 promised to reform, ever so slightly, the secretive and defective (in terms of public scrutiny and transparency) Intelligence and Security Committee of "experienced" Parliamentarians.

This supposedly keeps a democratic check on GCHQ, the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, the Security Service MI5, and the Defence Intelligence Staff, and perhaps the Serious Organised Crime Agency SOCA, with the occasional mention of what used to be regional Police "Special Branch" units and the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, through the totally inadequate mechanism of a heavily censored Annual Report, which the House of Commons cannot even be bothered to debate every 12 months.

The ISC does not seem to bother to scrutinise other intelligence gathering and snooping organisations such UK military Special Forces e.g. the SAS or the Special Reconnaissance Regiment etc. or the ACPO National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (who concentrate on animal rights extremists and on environmental and peace camp demonstrators), or any of the Treasury's terrorist finance financial snooping and asset freezing units, or HM Revenue and Customs etc. It does not scrutinise any of the European Union intelligence agencies to which the UK is signed up to e.g. Eurojust, Frontex , Europol or SitCen etc. It does nothing to question the supposed "special relationship" with United States intelligence agencies.

There is no evidence whatsoever of any reform at all, given that a new Labour chairman of the Committee i.e. Yet Another Ex-Minister, has been been appointed by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, without any public hearings, consultation or debate.

Written Ministerial Statements Tuesday, 21 October 2008

21 Oct 2008 : Column 8WS

Prime Minister
Intelligence and Security Committee

The Prime Minister (Mr. Gordon Brown): In accordance with section 10 of the Intelligence and Security Act 1994, I have appointed my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Kim Howells) to be the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) for her distinguished leadership of the Committee in providing effective and independent parliamentary oversight of the work of the Security and Intelligence Agencies.

Will we see Kim Howells grilling the Ian Lobban, the newly appointed Director of GCHQ and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, over her attempts to subvert this obviously necessary investment in new equipment for GCHQ under the Intercept Modernisation Programme, and to sneak in a democratically and judicially unaccountable secret data mining database of all Communication Traffic Data in the UK, thereby spying on millions of innocent British citizens, thereby circumventing the existing, audit trails and weak safeguards under the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 ?

The Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008 Clause 83 Offences relating to information about members of armed forces etc.

UPDATE: this clause has now been re-numbered to be Clause 75, in the version of the Bill which goes forward to the Report stage in the House of Lords.

(1) After section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (c. 11) (collection of information)

insert--

"58A Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc

(1) A person commits an offence who--

(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been--

(i) a member of Her Majesty's forces,
(ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or
(iii) a constable,

Why are all police constables covered by this ?

Why not current and former Judges, prosecutors and prison warders ?

Why are witnesses not "protected" in this way either ?

which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or

(b) publishes or communicates any such information.

(2) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section
to prove that they had a reasonable excuse for their action.

Why should you have to prove that you are innocent ? It should be the prosecution who have to prove that you are guilty.

The increasingly common "reverse burden of proof" evil, which the Home Office keeps inflicting on everyone - they really do not like the traditional "golden thread" of English justice, that of "Innocent until proven guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, on actual evidence", do they ?

Surely this will have a chilling effect on journalists , bloggers and biography writers etc. ?

Will the study of military history be illegal ?

All the senior members of the Royal Family are current or former military officers. Will the vast publishing and media industry which surrounds them now be deemed to be illegal ?

It is likely that this law will be used by petty jobsworths, to try to harass anyone who takes a photograph of any military , or police personnel.

Since it also covers former members of the armed forces, surely this will chill any reporting of, or even the organisation of, Remembrance Sunday / Poppy Appeal memorial parades and events etc ?

(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable--

(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years or to a fine, or to both;

(b) on summary conviction--

(i) in England and Wales or Scotland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both;

(ii) in Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both.

(4) In this section "the intelligence services" means the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ (within the meaning of section 3 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994 (c. 13)).

[...]"

Why is any of this necessary given the "thought crime" over broadness of the existing Terrorism Act 2000 section 58, which has been used to convict Abu Bakr Mansha to 6 years in prison, for the possession of a single, out of date address of a serving British soldier ?

Given the hundreds of thousands of military names, addresses and other personal details which have been lost or stolen recently, what use is this clause 83 in practice ?

See the previous Spy Blog article: Counter-Terrorism Bill Clause 83 - chilling effect on reporting or speculation about military or intelligence service or police personnel ?