International Law

Daniel Houghton pleads guilty to Official Secrets Act charges only

Posted on July 14, 2010
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...

When will PM David Cameron appoint the new Intelligence & Security Committee with enhanced resources ?

Posted on July 04, 2010
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...

When will Prime Minister David Cameron publish last year's RIPA Commissioners' reports ?

Posted on July 04, 2010
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...

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 ?

Posted on July 04, 2010
Parliament adjourns for a long summer break in less than 2 weeks. just over 3 weeks, from 27th July until 6th September 2010. By that time, we are promised, the Identity Cards Act 2006 will have been repealed, all well and good.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...

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Russian "illegal" spy in the USA "traveled on a fraudulent British passport, prepared for her by the SVR"

Posted on July 03, 2010
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...

What laws would actually apply to a Russian "illegals" spy scandal in the United Kingdom ?

Posted on July 01, 2010
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...

HM Treasury Spending Challenge, online anonymity and the now insecure WikiLeaks.org

Posted on June 24, 2010
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...

Identity Documents Bill Committee issues call for evidence

Posted on June 16, 2010
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...

Police and Home Office bureaucrats could not even properly "rubber stamp" the Terrorism Act 2000 s44 stop and search without reasonable cause Authorisations

Posted on June 11, 2010
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...

BBC Radio 4: Law in Action Tuesday 8th June 16:00 - police image databases of innocent people, what about ANPR / CCTV ?

Posted on June 05, 2010
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...

Identity Documents Bill text is now online - will all the copies of the National Identity Register be destroyed ?

Posted on May 27, 2010
The text of the Identity Documents Bill text has been published online: Repeal of Identity Cards Act 2006 1 Repeal of Identity Cards Act 2006 (1) The Identity Cards Act 2006 is repealed. (2) But-- (a) sections 25 and 26 of that Act (possession of false identity documents etc), and (b) section 38 of that Act (verifying information provided with passport applications etc), are re-enacted (with consequential amendments) by this Act...

Identity Documents Bill First Reading and Select Committee Chair allocations

Posted on May 27, 2010
Even though the text has not yet been published, the Identity Documents Bill, to hopefully repeal the Identity Cards Act, scrap the National Identity Register and stop fingerprint or other biometrics from being shoe horned unnecessarily into passports, was given its formal First Reading in the House of Commons on Wednesday 26th May 2010...

SSL / TLS encrypted Google search - a bit more privacy for us as a side effect, unlike WikiLeakS.org who have dropped the use of SSL

Posted on May 22, 2010
A welcome move by internet infrastructure giant Google, is their offering of Secure Sockets layer (SSL) / Transport Layer Security (TLS) session encryption, for their core web search service. See the technical details of this offering: Google Web Search Help - SSL Search Spy Blog notes that: The URL link for the encrypted web search page is https://www...

Programme of Government - Civil Liberties: Error in establishing a database connection

Posted on May 20, 2010
The Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition government has published a new website with a few more details of their plans: http://programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/ However, when we clicked on the Civil Liberties link, http://programmeforgovernment...

Heather Brooke - The Truth about CCTV - well researched article

Posted on May 18, 2010
Spy Blog started out from concerns about the abuse of the rapidly improving technology of CCTV surveillance cameras, especially those encroaching on public spaces. This started out under John Major's Conservative government, but the "We Must Be Seen To Be Doing Something, So Let's Throw Public Money At A Possible Technological Magic Fix" attitude really festered, when the arrogantly self-deluded, yet technologically incompetent, Labour politicians got control of the Home Office under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown...

Prime Minister David Cameron and motorcycle outriders

Posted on May 16, 2010
The BBC reported that Prime Minister David Cameron shuns police outrider use - new window">BBC - Prime Minister David Cameron shuns police outrider use [...] But Andy Hayman, the former head of anti-terrorism at Scotland Yard, said the decision is misguided...

Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition agreement - the Civil Liberties section looks promising

Posted on May 12, 2010
The BBC reports: Full Text: Conservative-Lib Dem deal, which looks promising: Here is the full text of the coalition agreement reached by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats: This document sets out agreements reached between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on a range of issues...

"I don't read Spy Blog anymore, it frightens me too much !" - the prospect of another Labour government terrifies us

Posted on May 10, 2010
Some indirect feedback from someone who was introduced to Spy Blog by a friend: I don't read Spy Blog anymore, it frightens me too much ! The prospect of Gordon Brown and his Labour careerist henchmen still clinging on to power and inflicting their authoritarian Kafkaesque bureaucracy, Orwellian doublethink and technological incompetence on us, is terrifying and must be resisted...

Domestic Extremism - secretive, unaccountable, therefore untrustworthy Police units, ACPO, TAM, NCDE, NPOIU, NDET, NETCU

Posted on April 30, 2010
The unaccountable taxpayer subsidised private company, the Association of Chief Police Officers, has now published a "micro-site" about its complicated and even more unaccountable and secretive Domestic Extremism quangos. http://www.acpo.police.uk/ncde/ The National Coordinator Domestic Extremism was established in 2004, with the aim of reducing, and where possible, removing the threat, criminality and public disorder associated with domestic extremism in the UK, and working with police forces to ensure the facilitation of peaceful, lawful protest...

Has the Israeli diplomat / intelligence officer been expelled from London yet ?

Posted on April 22, 2010
It is just over a month since the cringeworthy Labour Foreign Secretary, David Miliband went through the motions in the House of Commons, over the abuse of British Passports in the Dubai murder case by the Israeli intelligence agencies. UK Passports (Use in Dubai Murder) - Oral Answers to Questions --Justice - House of Commons debates, 23 March 2010, 3:36 pm David Miliband (Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office; South Shields, Labour) [...

Erasing David film

Posted on April 17, 2010
We are looking forward with interest to the Erasing David film, which is in some cinemas from April 29th 2010. It is also to be screened on the UK digital Tv channel More 4 (broadcast time not yet published) on 4th May as part of their True Stories series of documentaries...

Daniel Houghton "also accused of unlawfully disclosing lists of intelligence staff" - MI5 and / or MI6 ?

Posted on April 15, 2010
BBC Radio 4 Six O'Clock News:15/04/2010 (iPlayer) 20.00 to 21.15 into the 30.55 broadcast. Here's our Home Affairs correspondent, Andy Tighe "The 25 year old is charged with stealing highly classified electronic files, containing intelligence gathering techniques belonging to MI5, the domestic Security Service...

Bribery Act 2010 - exemptions for MI6, MI5, Active Service Military ok, but why is GCHQ exempt, no public scrutiny of Government sanctioned bribery

Posted on April 10, 2010
One Parliamentary Bill which did just complete its passage through Parliament without the wretched "wash up" process was the largely symbolic Bribery Act 2010 We criticised this Bill when it first appeared for its flawed attempt to correct the stupid Anti Terrorism Crime and Security Act 200 Part 12 Bribery and Corruption sections 108 to 110...

The "wash up" makes a mockery of Parliamentary democracy

Posted on April 09, 2010
To add insult to the Parliamentary scandals over expenses, cash for lobbyists, cash for honours, cushy private sector jobs for ex-Ministers in areas where they had / have influence over Government contracts etc. the General Election itself, has, yet again, resulted in another insult to the electorate, through the wretched and totally undemocratic "wash up" process...

BBC Radio 4 - GCHQ Cracking the Code - GCHQ Director Iain Lobban denies any "super huge database" of Communications Data

Posted on April 04, 2010
The most interesting section of the BBC Radio 4 documentary, by the BBC's Security Correspondent Gordon Corera, entitled GCHQ: Cracking the Code is the couple of minutes almost at the end of the 40 minute programme. N.B. a hat tip to the professional GCHQ audio transcribers - even this short section from BBC broadcast quality sound, required multiple repeat playbacks of certain sections...

Intelligence and Security Committee Report 2009-2010 - interference by the Cabinet Office, MI5 DIGINT, Northern Ireland terrorism, new Cyber Defence bureaucracy but CESG financially bankrupt ?

Posted on April 04, 2010
The Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report 2009-2010 (.pdf) has been published, exactly as we predicted in our previous blog article: Intelligence and Security Committee publishes Two annual reports - Gordon Brown keeps one still secret i...

Hostile Reconnaissance: pre-election rally on Terror Laws, Civil Liberties and Press Freedom - 7pm, Tuesday 13th of April, Friends House, Euston, London

Posted on March 27, 2010
Event: Hostile Reconnaissance a pre-election rally on Terror Laws, Civil Liberties and Press Freedom When: 7pm, Tuesday 13th April 2010 Where:

BBC: The Great Offices of State - The Dark Department - the Home Office

Posted on March 21, 2010
BBC 4 is showing a 3 part series of one hour documentaries entitled The Great Offices of State by Michael Cockerell. The first one, about the notorious Home Office, entitled The Dark Department was shown last night, but it is available online via the BBC iPlayer, for the next few days...

Spy Blog article cited in leaked US Military intelligence report on Wikileaks

Posted on March 16, 2010
The controversial whistleblower website WikiLeakS.org, despite being still "on strike" to plead for financial donations, continues to publish a few headline grabbing "leaks", without the full wiki system which used to allow readers to analyse and comment on them on the website itself...

Intelligence and Security Committee publishes Two annual reports - Gordon Brown keeps one still secret

Posted on March 14, 2010
The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, who are supposed to provide the public with independent scrutiny of the secret intelligence services, has actually written two Annual reports in the last 9 months. 11 March 2010: The Intelligence and Security Committee's Annual Report for 2008-2009 was laid before Parliament today by the Prime Minister...

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