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When will Labour's snooping scandals end ? More widespread Prison bugging allegations

When will the Labour database surveillance state scandals ever end ?

The Daily Telegraph has published some more whistleblower revelations , which claim that the abuse of of supposedly confidential client lawyer privilege, through the secret electronic eavesdropping in Prisons, is far more widespread than the Sadiq Khan MP / Babar Ahmad scandal.

Hundreds of lawyers 'bugged on prison visits'
By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor

The full scale of a nationwide policy to bug British jails can be disclosed today after a whistleblower revealed that hundreds of lawyers and prison visitors had been secretly recorded.

Why should anyone believe that these lawyers were only bugged when visiting their clients in prison ? Have they also been subjected to the full panoply of state bugging and interception surveillance techniques ?

Is this how the alleged Mobile Phone Intercept Voice Identification of Farid Hilali as the supposed "Shakur" was done, by sending the Spanish intelligence agency Centro Nacional de Inteligencia a copy of a legally priviliged conversation between him and his lawyers, obtained whilst he was at HMP Belmarsh or HMP Woodhill ?

[...]

Serious criminals, including the Soham murderer Ian Huntley and the letter bomber Miles Cooper, are also thought to have been targeted by the alleged secret bugging

What possible "national security" justification is there for bugging the legal conversations of a notorious child murderer, whose only peripheral accomplice is already in a protected witness scheme ?

Was this bugging actually due to corruption, with those involved hoping to sell sensational tidbits to the tabloid media ?

Continue reading "When will Labour's snooping scandals end ? More widespread Prison bugging allegations" »

Posted by wtwu on February 09, 2008 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Farid Hilali finally extradited to Spain - are the Spanish authorities flouting the UK House of Lords judgement ?

It appears that Farid Hilali, who faces terrorism charges based almost entirely on mobile phone Intercept Evidence and Voice Identification,
has at last been extradited to Spain, according to The Daily Telegraph:

Hilali, 39, was arrested in June 2004 and was flown out of RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on Friday.

Judgments - In re Hilali (Respondent) (application for a writ of Habeas Corpus)

Lord Hope of Craighead's Opinion, with which all his colleagues agreed:

Continue reading "Farid Hilali finally extradited to Spain - are the Spanish authorities flouting the UK House of Lords judgement ?" »

Posted by wtwu on February 09, 2008 01:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Privy Council Chilcot Review report on Intercept Evidence - more ***

The Government has now published the Privy Council Review of intercept as evidence: report to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary (.pdf 64 pages - censored) produced under Rt. Hon, Sir John Chilcot GCB.

This review makes the recommendation. that Intercept Evidence should, vaguely, at some undermined time in the future, be permitted in Courts in England and Wales (but not in Scotland or in Northern Ireland), for terrorism and serious crime cases , but not for Civil cases,. It is unclear if the recommendation for "terrorism" cases also include other national security cases such as espionage.

The tone of this Privy Council Review, gives Prime Minister Gordon Brown the opportunity to Pretend To Have Done Something and to spin some soundbites about "accepting the use of intercept evidence" in some, but not all Courts in the UK, and not for all the cases where it could be used.

There is no guarantee whatsoever, that the ban on Intercept Evidence will actually be rescinded in the foreseeable future.

Some impressions on reading the Review:

Continue reading "Privy Council Chilcot Review report on Intercept Evidence - more ***" »

Posted by wtwu on February 07, 2008 08:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

UK e-Borders excessive Passenger Name Record etc. demands - surely these break several of the Principles of Data Protection ?

Tom Griffin has published the further results of his FOIA request regarding the planned UK e-Borders data rape of personal information which is far in excess of what should be collected to travel across what is supposedly a Passport free border between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

See

e-borders data for British-Irish travel
Freedom of Information response on e-borders

Therefore these checks will also have to be applied, effectively, to internal travel within the supposedly United Kingdom, by aeroplane or by ferry, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

If they are allowed to get away with this, Soviet / Apartheid style internal travel bureaucracy, they try it on all other international travel and function creep and extend it to internal flights or trains or ferries in the entire UK.

We have no problem with the Police or intelligence agencies requesting such information for specific, narrowly targeted terrorist, espionage or drug or smuggling etc. investigations.

It is absolutely intolerable that such data is handed over, routinely, and automatically, in bulk, on the millions of innocent people who travel every year. Data Trawling through millions of innocent people's personal records is an expensive, ineffective and dangerous way of trying to protect our borders, and an unjustifiable abuse of our freedoms and liberties.

Continue reading "UK e-Borders excessive Passenger Name Record etc. demands - surely these break several of the Principles of Data Protection ?" »

Posted by wtwu on February 06, 2008 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BBC News 24: Intercept Evidence to be allowed in court

BBC News 24 reports that the Privy Council Review of Intercept evidence headed by Rt. Hon.Sir John Chilcot, is due to report that such evidence should be allowed in terrorism cases, which is currently forbidden by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 Section 17 Exclusion of matters from legal proceedings

What the caveats and provisos are, and whether they recommend that this will apply to other categories of crimes as well, we will have to wait until tomorrow, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown is set to make a Statement, which may not necessarily, of course, accept any of the recommendations of the Review.

Posted by wtwu on February 05, 2008 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jack Straw's Wilson Doctrine statement -Sir Christopher Rose to inquire into the Sadiq Khan MP / Babar Ahmad eavesdropping affair

Jack Straw made a statement in the House of Commons regarding the apparent breach of the Wilson Doctrine, involving the electronic eavesdropping on conversations which should have been protected by Constituent / Member of Parliament privilege and, perhaps also of client / lawyer privilege which seems to have occurred at Woodhill prison near Milton Keynes.

It announced Yet Another Inquiry, this time by Rt. Hon. Sir Christopher Rose, the current Chief Surveillance Commissioner, but with very limited terms of reference, and no power to compel testimony from the key witnesses.

Jack Straw did not clarify the details of the Wilson Doctrine, and ruled out an investigation of the bugging or interception of supposedly privileged client / lawyer conversations.

4 Feb 2008 : Column 660
HMP Woodhill (Inquiry)

3.34 pm

The Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor (Mr. Jack Straw): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement. As the House will be aware, there appeared in The Sunday Times yesterday allegations that conversations between my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) and a constituent of his, Mr. Babar Ahmad, detained in prison on an extradition warrant, had been subject to covert recording when my hon. Friend visited Mr. Ahmad on two occasions in 2005 and 2006 at Her Majesty’s prison Woodhill.

I was made aware of the burden of these allegations on Saturday afternoon. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I discussed the matter and we agreed that an immediate inquiry should be established. In a statement to The Sunday Times issued on my behalf early on Saturday evening I announced this, and expressed my concerns about the allegations, if true.

Somehow, as a former Home Secretary and former Foreign Secretary and now Minister of Justice / Lord Chancellor in charge of Prisons, Jack Straw has managed to elbow Home Secretary Jacqui Smith out of the limelight - she is supposed to be the Cabinet Minister who is politically accountable for the Police and the the counter-terrorism agencies, but she obviously is not up to the task, and she does not seem to have uttered a word in public about the scandal.

Continue reading "Jack Straw's Wilson Doctrine statement -Sir Christopher Rose to inquire into the Sadiq Khan MP / Babar Ahmad eavesdropping affair" »

Posted by wtwu on February 05, 2008 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wilson Doctrine should not be abolished, it should be clarified and extended

Some of the reaction in the UK political blogosphere and by extremist media pundits, to the electronic bugging of a Member of Parliament's privileged conversations with one of his constituents, rather misses the point about the Wilson Doctrine.

The "MPs are sleazy, so they should all be under surveillance, like the rest of us" attitude is predictable, but wrong.

The BBC's Security Correspondent Gordon Correra, for example, is mentioning on BBC News 24, the line that somehow the Wilson Doctrine should only apply to the targeting of MPs for surveillance for political purposes, and then only by secret government agencies. This narrow interpretation is not how we understand the Wilson Doctrine, after having read almost every very carefully worded Government statement about it over the years.

MPs are not exempt from investigations into any criminal activities which they may be engaged in their private lives, or in breach of election laws.

Some people are calling for the abolition of the Privilege of Members of Parliament to be outside the reach of some of the laws which apply to the rest of us, but they are wrong.

If you destroy the confidentiality of MP's communications with their Constituents, especially those whose lives are being made hell by the Government bureaucracy, then you will suppress the activities of legitimate whistleblowers who expose corruption. incompetence or illegality in the Government machine, to the detriment of society as a whole.

Such whistleblowers need all the protection they can get,, given the powerful technologies and bureaucracies ranged against them - see our updated Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers article.

Here are some thoughts to help stimulate debate on this important issue:

Continue reading "The Wilson Doctrine should not be abolished, it should be clarified and extended" »

Posted by wtwu on February 04, 2008 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sunday Times: illegal bugging of Muslim MP - Wilson Doctrine breached ?

The Sunday Times leads with an interesting scoop, involving two topics about which we have written about here on Spy Blog, namely the Wilson Doctrine executive administrative prohibition on tapping or bugging the communications of Members of Parliament, and the controversial attempt by the US government to extradite British Muslim IT technician Babar Ahmad to the USA, without presenting any prima facie evidence to a British Court.

From The Sunday Times February 3, 2008 Police bugged Muslim MP Sadiq Khan
Insight: Michael Gillard and Jonathan Calvert

SCOTLAND YARD’S anti-terrorist squad secretly bugged a high-profile Labour Muslim MP during private meetings with one of his constituents.

Sadiq Khan, now a government whip, was recorded by an electronic listening device hidden in a table during visits to the constituent in prison.

Sadiq Khan MP for Tooting has an almost perfect record of supporting and voting in the most repressive Labour legislation e.g. Terrorism, Extradition, and ID Cards etc.

Continue reading "Sunday Times: illegal bugging of Muslim MP - Wilson Doctrine breached ?" »

Posted by wtwu on February 03, 2008 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

European Arrest Warrant extradition to Spain - Law Lords overturn habeus corpus for Farid Hilali

The Law Lords have published their Judgment which overturns the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum which had been granted to Farid Hhilali.

Hilali was the first person to be arrested in the UK under the new, allegedly rapid, European Arrest Warrant extradition procedure under Part 1 of the controversial Extradition Act 2003.

See also the Press Release from his solicitor, the controversial Muddassar Arani, in the comments on one of our previous blog articles about the Farid Hilali case.

This case is of interest to us, partly because of the European Arrest Warrant, and also because the evidence seems to be rely on mobile phone intercept evidence and voice recognition evidence, in an alleged terrorist plot case, a topic which politicians and pundits should be debating here in the UK, if the secret Privy Council review under Sir John Chilcot, of Intercept Evidence is actually published before the relevant clauses of the new Counter-terrorism Bill are debated.

Continue reading "European Arrest Warrant extradition to Spain - Law Lords overturn habeus corpus for Farid Hilali" »

Posted by wtwu on January 30, 2008 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Margaret Beckett appointed as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee - 2006 - 2007 Annual Report published

The veteran former Labour Foreign Minister Rt. Hon. Margaret Beckett MP has been appointed as the replacement Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

She certainly has relevant Ministerial experience of reading classified material, but whether she is the right person to usher in the alleged new powers and more transparency into the Committee, which is what Prime Minister Gordon Brown was promising last summer, remains to be seen. We are struggling to recall any notable successes in her long Ministerial career.

The Intelligence and Security Committee's Annual Report for 2006 - 2007 (.pdf 51 pages) has also been published.

Why this 51 page censored report took only 7 weeks for the Prime Minister to publish, whilst the much shorter Interception Commissioner and Intelligence Services Commissioner reports (less than 8 pages each) took him 3 months, is a mystery.

There are some points to look out for if you can be bothered to read the censored Report:

Continue reading "Margaret Beckett appointed as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee - 2006 - 2007 Annual Report published" »

Posted by wtwu on January 29, 2008 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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February 09, 2008

When will Labour's snooping scandals end ? More widespread Prison bugging allegations

Farid Hilali finally extradited to Spain - are the Spanish authorities flouting the UK House of Lords judgement ?

February 07, 2008

Privy Council Chilcot Review report on Intercept Evidence - more ***

February 06, 2008

UK e-Borders excessive Passenger Name Record etc. demands - surely these break several of the Principles of Data Protection ?

February 05, 2008

BBC News 24: Intercept Evidence to be allowed in court

Jack Straw's Wilson Doctrine statement -Sir Christopher Rose to inquire into the Sadiq Khan MP / Babar Ahmad eavesdropping affair

February 04, 2008

The Wilson Doctrine should not be abolished, it should be clarified and extended

February 03, 2008

Sunday Times: illegal bugging of Muslim MP - Wilson Doctrine breached ?

January 30, 2008

European Arrest Warrant extradition to Spain - Law Lords overturn habeus corpus for Farid Hilali

January 29, 2008

Margaret Beckett appointed as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee - 2006 - 2007 Annual Report published

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