International Law

Postman Patel - Edward Teague - Rest in Peace

Posted on June 09, 2009
Craig Murray has confirmed that political blogger Edward Teague has died: In Memory of Ed Teague, Postman Patel The Postman Patel blog http://postmanpatel.blogspot.com/ was one of Spy Blog's favourite blogs, with particularly interesting facts and commentary about Climate of Fear terrorism hype and on Russian oligarchs etc...

Who's Watching You ? - GCHQ's Sir David Pepper interviewed - but still too many surveillance topics in one tv documentary

Posted on June 08, 2009
Overall, the short BBC2 tv documentary series Who's Watching You ? was of considerable interest, but our initial criticism still stands - they tried to cover far too many "surveillance" topics, several of which need much more explanation and analysis, for the public and politicians to be properly informed about their implications...

DVLA still selling drivers names and addresses to dodgy Private Wheel Clampers, according to The Times

Posted on June 06, 2009
The Times reports that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is still selling your private name and address details to dodgy Private Wheel Clamping companies, despite their previous promises, after the previous scandal hit the media back in 2005...

signonnow@hotmail.co.uk - The Email Address Most Likely To Be Snooped On ? - Labour in crisis: the Hotmail conspiracy

Posted on June 03, 2009
The Guardian newspaper has a story about The Email Address Most Likely To Be Snooped On over the next few days, which has some points of interest for political whistleblowers, political conspirators and investigative journalists and bloggers. Labour in crisis: the Hotmail conspiracy Over past month 'rebellion of all the talents' has never met but plotted by email, borrowing tactics from Trotsky * Allegra Stratton, Patrick Wintour and David Hencke * The Guardian, Thursday 4 June 2009 [...

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Jacqui Smith to resign as Home Secretary - but when exactly ?

Posted on June 02, 2009
The mainstream media are reporting that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is due to resign - good riddance ! When exactly will she go ? No doubt the Westminster Village will concentrate on her expenses scandals, but it is the repressive yet incompetent Home Office polices which she should have resigned over...

Has any other political blogger been spammed by The Jury Team ?

Posted on June 02, 2009
Spy Blog is not aligned with any political party. We have had some unsolicited email spam today from Sir Paul Judge's The Jury Team: Return-Path: [...] (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) Good! Using START TLS should be the default for your SMTP email server - at least some of the intermediate email forwarding will then be strongly encrypted, and relatively secure against content snooping in transit N...

Steve Moxon - Home Office Immigration whistleblower vindicated by FOIA disclosures about Beverely Hughes

Posted on June 02, 2009
Perhaps some of the scandals which have been suppressed by the deliberate Whitehall political delays to Freedom of Information Act requests, may now be slowly starting to emerge. Home Office Immigration scandal whistleblower Steve Moxon, writes: Beverley Hughes is quitting 'cos she's just been found out to be a liar: new FOI disclosures Beverley Hughes, MP and children's minister, is standing down, she says, to spend more time with her family...

Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 / SIS worries about lost civil liberties

Posted on June 01, 2009
The annual Hay Festival, held at Hay-on-Wye near the Welsh border, is a very genteel affair, but some of the authors and speakers who entertain the arts and meedja intelligensia and other Guardianistas venture into the realms of politics and society etc...

Richard Tomlinson versus MI6 rapprochement ? Is this due to the amended Terrorism Act ban on eliciting or communicating information about former intelligence agency officers ??

Posted on May 30, 2009
Another Secret Intelligence Service MI6 anonymous briefing to the Sunday Times: From The Sunday Times May 31, 2009 MI6 woos home renegade ex-spy Richard Tomlinson David Leppard THE renegade former MI6 spy Richard Tomlinson has finally come in from the cold...

38 Degrees - will the data protection issues inhibit sign up ?

Posted on May 26, 2009
38 Degrees website (not a very snappy name) has launched, which hopes to somehow emulate the success of "grassroots" political campign movements like MoveOn.org, which successfully harnessed the internet to recruit activists and supporters and to raise money, in the USA...

RAF Innsworth stolen personnel security vetting files coverup

Posted on May 25, 2009
The Guardian and the BBC (see BBC2 tv documentary Who's Watching You ? starts Monday 25th May 9pm) seem to have found out a little more about Yet Another Ministry of Defence Data Privacy / Security Scandal and the subsequent Coverup: Stolen RAF vice files spark blackmail fear Vetting data included drug abuse and use of prostitutes by senior officers * David Hencke, Westminster correspondent * guardian...

Illegal retention of Police surveillance photos of innocent people

Posted on May 23, 2009
Will the Metropolitan Police and other Police forces curtail their "Surveillance State" abuses of photographs and videos of innocent people, following this legal Judgment in the England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) ? Wood v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis [2009] EWCA Civ 414 (21 May 2009) For an expert legal view, see the Panopticon blog Privacy and the Police - Important Court of Appeal Judgment It is important to note that the result of the Court of Appeal's judgment is that the taking of the photographs did not per se constitute a unlawful interference with Mr Wood's right to privacy...

BBC2 tv documentary Who's Watching You ? starts Monday 25th May 9pm

Posted on May 23, 2009
A new television documentary series: Who's Watching You ? begins on Monday, 25 May, 2009 at 2100 BST on BBC Two. According to the BBC web pages: Episode 1: Surveillance society? Richard Bilton meets people who watch us and those who have fallen foul of modern surveillance A new three part series looks at why the UK has become one of the most watched places in the world - with millions of CCTV cameras, a growing network of number plate recognition cameras, one of the largest DNA databases in the world and government plans for the basic details of all our phone calls e-mails, and every internet site we visit to be logged and kept...

Home Office and research about the (lack of) effectiveness of CCTV in reducing crime

Posted on May 19, 2009
The Home Office has been recently citing a review of published academic studies on Closed Circuit Tele Vision (CCTV). Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker even managed to use the word "privacy" in the same breath as "CCTV", which may be a first for a Labour Home Office Minister, or it may just be more NuLabour Orwellian newspeak re-definition of a common English word, to have virtually the opposite meaning...

ISC report (again) on the 7th July 2005 London bomb attacks - some jargon explained, but still no blame on MI5 or the Police for intelligence failures

Posted on May 19, 2009
It is hard to see how Yet Another Censored Report by the Intelligence and Security Committee into the 7th July 2005 London bomb attacks will satisfy the victims and their families and many others, who want an actually independent Public Inquiry. They still have not bothered to examine any possible links with the failed 21st July 2005 attacks...

Naming of the MP Expenses whistleblower leak intermediaries ?

Posted on May 17, 2009
The MP's expenses scandal seems to have paralysed the "Westminster village" of professional politicos for the last couple of weeks or so. Given Spy Blog's interest in Whistleblowers and in the privacy and security of anonymous whistleblowing sources (see our Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers, Investigative Journalists, Political Bloggers and Activists - http://ht4w...

SOCA Annual Report 2009/09 - Appendix III: SOCA Reports and Assessments 2008/09 - will these be made public ?

Posted on May 14, 2009
The secretive Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has published its SOCA Annual Report 2008/09 (.pdf) (72 pages) The Times recently published a comment, with which we agree: The budget for Soca is about £400 million, compared with the £2.5 billion a year designated for counter-terrorism, leading to criticism that the Government has never taken organised crime seriously...

Gordon Brown pretends that "knife crime" is a "new kind of crime"

Posted on May 12, 2009
Why is Gordon Brown still Prime Minister ? Both the BBC and The Times (UPDATE: and the official transcript of the speech on the number 10 Downing Street website) quote him, without seeming to notice or care about exactly what nonsense or deceit he was uttering: Mr Brown told a crime conference in west London: "We face new kinds of crime - especially knife crime, organised crime, e-crime and identity theft BBC: Brown unveils anti-crime strategy The Times: Failing Serious Organised Crime Agency to be overhauled [UPDATE] even the Official Transcript of the Speech on the No...

National Identity Cards Scheme creep - 4 Draft Orders laid before Parliament under the Identity Cards Act 2006

Posted on May 12, 2009
The Labour Government seem to be intent on their freedom and civil liberties "scorched earth" policy of inflicting the controversial centralised biometric database National Identity Register on us ahead of the General Election. Will Parliament rubber stamp these 4 new Statutory Instruments published today, and kick off the National Identity Register, even before a National Identity Scheme Commissioner is appointed ? Will the BALPA and UNISON trades unions who represent airside workers at Manchester and London City Airport, take industrial action and finance test cases through the courts, against this discriminatory imposition of ID Cards on them ? What they want is a single security credential, capable of opening doors and barriers to gain access "Airside", which is valid at all UK airports...

UK computer forensics expert Jim Bates wins High Court appeal against a police search warrant

Posted on May 09, 2009
Hopefully none of the Forensics Experts mentioned in the previous Spy Blog article Operation Alegbra child rape convictions in Scotland: open WiFi tracking, digital camera image forensics will get treated like the UK Digital Forensics expert Jim Bates, who, despite 30 years experience as an expert for both the Prosecution and the Defence, in many cases involving child porn images on computers, seems to have been targeted by the Police, and arrested, on exactly the same charges as most of the people in the Operation Algebra case were convicted of i...

Operation Alegbra child rape convictions in Scotland: open WiFi tracking, digital camera image forensics

Posted on May 09, 2009
"Child Abuse" is one of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse regularly invoked as a justification for ever more Government snooping and censorship of the internet, even though these problems have existed for thousands of years before the internet was invented...

Operation Algebra child rape convictions in Scotland: open WiFi tracking, digital camera image forensics

Posted on May 09, 2009
"Child Abuse" is one of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse regularly invoked as a justification for ever more Government snooping and censorship of the internet, even though these problems have existed for thousands of years before the internet was invented...

Home Office spinning about 6 and 12 years data retention for innocent people's DNA profiles and Fingerprints

Posted on May 07, 2009
The smug and complacent, yet incompetent and untrustworthy, Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and her side kick Vernon Coaker, have been spinning their grudging response to the European Court of Human Rights Judgment against them in the Marper case, regarding their illegal and immoral retention of innocent people's DNA human tissue samples and analysed DNA profiles on the Police National DNA Database...

GCHQ: our Intelligence and Security mission in the Internet age

Posted on May 03, 2009
The Daily Telegraph newspaper, used to be seen as a Tory leaning newspaper, but recently,it seems to have become a Labour government / Whitehall bureaucracy official mouthpiece. As such,it seems to be the only mainstream media publication which carries a denial of the report by The Sunday Times and The Register, regarding the internet snooping capability upgrade investment supposedly being made at the Government Communications Head Quarters GCHQ, electronic communications spying agency...

Communications Data public "consultation" with only one permitted option

Posted on April 27, 2009
The delayed and modified Home Office "consultation" on Communications Data snooping and retention. Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment (.pdf) 690Kb Responses, by Monday 20th July 2009 to: Nigel Burrowes Communications Data Consultation Room P...

Jacqui Smith: more weasel words about the hrassment of innocent photgraphers

Posted on April 22, 2009
More weasel words from Home Secretary Jacqui Smith about the harassment of innocent photographers: 20 Apr 2009 : Column 27 Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab): Can I seek an assurance from my right hon. Friend that the circumstances that led to the photographs being taken in Downing street do not lead to further pressures on the rights of photographers, both professionals and amateurs, to take photographs in this country, especially as this event coincided with an incident in the past few days where somebody was allegedly challenged by a police officer for taking photographs of a bus garage? We need to learn lessons from the event and draw together the common-sense work being led by my hon...

BBC Radio 4 iPM - Can U See Me ? CCTV camera spotting and sousveillance

Posted on April 21, 2009
Spy Blog has been counting visible CCTV spy / surveillance / safety cameras, for over 10 years now ("from habit that became instinct"). We have even conducted and advised on "spot the CCTV camera tours" for the benefit of artists, academics and the media etc...

Damian Green MP arrest - Police tampering with computer evidence or political snooping on civil liberties campaigner Shami Chakrabarti ?

Posted on April 18, 2009
The latest allegation in the Damian Green MP arrest scandal, is that, according to The Times: From The Times April 18, 2009 Shami Chakrabarti was target in police search Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson Police who arrested the Conservative frontbencher Damian Green trawled his private e-mails looking for information on Britain's leading civil liberties campaigner...

Public Consultation on reforming parts of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000

Posted on April 18, 2009
If we can summon up any enthusiasm, or delude ourselves that the Home Office politicians might genuinely listen to our concerns and practical suggestions, then Spy Blog might make a formal submission to this new Public Consultation: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000: Consolidating orders and codes of practice (...

The arrest of opposition Senator Stuart Syvert in Jersey - another Damian Green MP style scandal ?

Posted on April 17, 2009
The scandalous arrest of Damian Green MP is not the only case of an elected member of Opposition who has been arrested and snooped on by the Police and Government in the British Isles, for doing his job and raising controversial allegations from whistleblowers, actions which should be protected by Parliamentary Privilege...

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