International Law

The arrest of opposition Senator Stuart Syvret 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...

Operation Pathway arrests - where are the explosives or weapons ?

Posted on April 14, 2009
Fascinating as the repellent Downing Street spin and defamation scandal involving Gordon Brown and his Labour party apparatchik henchmen is, it is not the only scandal to have emerged last week. There was also the resignation of Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, who was the head of the Counter-terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police Service...

Re-appointment of the Interception of Communications Commissioner and the Intelligence Services Commissioner

Posted on April 04, 2009
2 Apr 2009 : Column 79WS Written Ministerial Statements Thursday, 2 April 2009 Prime Minister Interception of Communications Commissioner and the Intelligence Services Commissioner Gordon Brown (Prime Minister; Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Labour) In accordance with Section 57 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, I have re-appointed the right hon...

Is Huwaei really more of a security risk to the UK Critical National Infrastructure than other foreign telecommunications equipment companies like Cisco or Ericsson ?

Posted on March 29, 2009
The Sunday Times has an article about the unspecified potential threat to the UK's telecomms cloud, and thereby to the UK's Critical National Infrastructure, posed by Chinese designed and manufactured equipment from

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Is Huawei really more of a security risk to the UK Critical National Infrastructure than other foreign telecommunications equipment companies like Cisco or Ericsson ?

Posted on March 29, 2009
The Sunday Times has an article about the unspecified potential threat to the UK's telecomms cloud, and thereby to the UK's Critical National Infrastructure, posed by Chinese designed and manufactured equipment from

The state of the UK Database State

Posted on March 23, 2009
The

How much "war on terror" training for "tens of thousands" of people is the Labour government providing ? As little as 3 hours (including a coffee break)

Posted on March 23, 2009
Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown's article in The Observer yesterday, managed to use the headline "war on terror", even though, only a few months ago, the consensus seemed to have been, that this phrase is actually counterproductive. We are about to take the war against terror to a new level Gordon Brown The Observer, Sunday 22 March 2009 [...

Passion and Dalliance blog: Why you need balls of steel to operate a Tor exit node

Posted on March 19, 2009
This blog posting about the experience of a former Tor exit node server operator in the UK, is worrying: Passion and Dalliance blog: Why you need balls of steel to operate a Tor exit node I became interested in Tor in the spring of 2007 after reading about the situation in Burma and felt that I would like to do something, anything, to help...

OGC finally publish the two Stage Zero Gateway Reviews of the ID Cards programme - 1510 days = 4 years 1 month 18 days after the initial Freedom of Information Act request

Posted on March 19, 2009
The Office of Government Commerce, an Agency of Her Majesty's Treasury, has finally publish the two Stage Zero Gateway Reviews of the ID Cards programme It has taken- 1510 days i.e. 4 years 1 month 18 days after the initial Freedom of Information Act request, which should, according to the law, and the principle of "open government" and public transparency, have taken no more than "20 working days"...

The Polygraph Rules 2009 - more "Lie Detectors", but not for the politicians and spin doctors

Posted on March 17, 2009
Julian Assange, investigative editor of the whistleblower leak publishing website WikiLeakS.org, rightly bemoans the decline in paid investigative journalists - he says that there are as few as 40 such journalists working for newspapers in the USA these days...

Metropolitan Police terrorism fear Propaganda Poster lies about bombs, reconnaissance and CCTV cameras

Posted on March 16, 2009
The contract of advertising agency Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy with the Metropolitan Police Service expires at the end of March. They are being replaced by Gordon Brown's favourite Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, who gave him "Design services" during his Labour party leadership non-election "coronation" campaign)...

The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 come into force on 6th April 2009

Posted on March 16, 2009
If you search for news articles about the European Union Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC, you will, unfortunately find several articles, even from the computer and telecommunications technical press, which claim that the new mandatory requirement to store Communications Traffic Data logfiles for 12 months came into force yesterday, something which is not strictly accurate in the United Kingdom...

The BBC botnet - UK cyber crime policing is still hopeless

Posted on March 14, 2009
The BBC TV program Click, which showcases new technologies, especially internet related ones, has broadcast an interesting half an hour special today (available for the next 7 days via the online BBC iPlayer). They investigated the world of Botnets, of thousands of trojan horse malware infected, mostly home PCs running Windows, connected via broadband internet connections, which are used to send most of the world's spam email and also for Distributed Denial of Service attacks...

National Security Forum appointees - why is there no pandemic disease or biotech or financial markets or cyber security expertise ?

Posted on March 10, 2009
Back in August last year, we were puzzled by the National Risk Register, which supposedly reflects the Government's strategic planning underpinning our national security. See: Has the National Risk Register been politically censored ? This National Risk Register seemed to magically reduce the risk of nuclear war to zero, and decided that the risk of pandemic flu was at least as likely as that of severe weather...

Weekend newspaper briefing spin that the controversial Data Orders Clause 152 of Coroners and Justice Bill is to be abandoned

Posted on March 08, 2009
Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for (In)Justice, appears to Governing Through Weekend Newspaper Briefings, again, with the news that the controversial Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, which could have effectively destroyed the Data Protection Act, is to be dropped from the Bill...

Intelligence and Security Committee report for 2007 - 2008 - SCOPE Phase 2 cancelled, even more snooping planned

Posted on March 07, 2009
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is an increasingly useless way for the Government to pretend to provide independent scrutiny of the secret intelligence agencies. The ISC's highly censored Annual report, sometimes provide a few tantalising glimpses of what these agencies are wasting our public money on, without providing any hard evidence of any actual successes, and with no indication of value for public money...

MPs vote to try to keep their constituency home addresses secret

Posted on March 02, 2009

The Convention on Modern Liberty is over - now what are you going to do to save our freedom and liberty ? Get rid of Clause 152 from the Coroners and Justice Bill

Posted on March 02, 2009

Convention on Modern Liberty video streams

Posted on February 28, 2009

Liberal Democrats - Freedom Bill 2009

Posted on February 26, 2009
The Liberal Democrat's Home Affairs spokesman Chris Huhne has launched a rough, work in progress Freedom Bill 2009.: http://freedom.libdems.org.uk/ This picks 20 of the repressive NuLabour (and a few Conservative) bits of legislation to repeal , or rights and freedoms to restore...

Sir David Omand on Protint - 'protected information' data mining of personal sensitive data by intelligence agencies

Posted on February 25, 2009
Perhaps because of the media interest in the Convention on Modern Liberty, both The Guardian and the Press Association via the The Independent newspapers, have quoted from a discussion paper published over 2 weeks ago by the NuLabour "think tank" lobbyists at the Institute for Public Policy Research, through which several Labour party surveillance nanny police state policies have been "market tested", to see if they can be slipped through past the public and Parliament, without too much vocal opposition...

Practical things to do and bring to the Convention on Modern Liberty

Posted on February 23, 2009
Apart from an open mind, there are several things which you can bring along to the Convention on Modern Liberty - Bloggers Summit on Saturday. The list of speakers is interesting enough, but the real benefit of such events is the chance to meet and interact with like minded people, face to face, and to to establish a foundation of trust in future online communications...

Privy Council Intercept as Evidence Advisory Group interim progress report 9th February 2009

Posted on February 20, 2009
The House of Commons Library now has a copy of the bPrivy Council Intercept as Evidence Advisory Group interim progress report 9th February 2009 (.pdf image scan only) As predicted in our previous blog article, Chilcot Advisory Group on Intercept Evidence (lack of) Progress Report, there has been little tangible progress in the last year...

Information Tribunal orders publication of the early ID Cards Programme Gateway Reviews, again

Posted on February 20, 2009
The Information Tribunal, re-constituted after the previous one was overruled by the High Court, on the grounds of Parliamentary Privilege, has yet again ruled in favour of the publication of the the by now very out of date, but still important, Office of Government Commerce Gateway Reviews into the early stages of the Home Office's controversial ID Cards Programme which became the compulsory centralised biometric database National Identity Register scheme...

Former MI5 Director General Stella Rimington's interview with La Vanguardia

Posted on February 17, 2009
The Daily Telegraph (followed by the rest of the mainstream media and plenty of blog commentators) have reported the comments of the former Director General of MI5 the Security Service, Dame Stella Rimington, about her unease with the the current Labour Government's legislative assault on our civil liberties...

Where are all the Home Office press releases ? 177 spin doctors but only 5 press releases a week ?

Posted on February 16, 2009
Spy Blog was trying to be fair to the Home Office Minister of State for Policing, Crime and Security Vernon Coaker, who was quoted on the topic of Communications Traffic Data retention, access and snooping, in this article in the Daily Telegraph, last Thursday Councils to be given power to snoop on calls and emails Councils and public bodies are to be able to access all email, telephone and internet records, sparking new fears over the surveillance state...

Chilcot Advisory Group on Intercept Evidence (lack of) Progress Report

Posted on February 14, 2009
It is now over a year since Spy Blog commented on: Privy Council Chilcot Review report on Intercept Evidence - more *** in which we noted the lack of any technical telecomms or internet or computing expertise amongst the group of Privy Counsellors who conducted it...

Sir James Crosby's Review on Identity Assurance being written out of history by Gordon Brown ?

Posted on February 12, 2009
Sir James Crosby's resignation as Deputy head of the Financial Services Authority quango yesterday occupied much of the political news agenda yesterday. One point which stood out during Prime Minister's Questions, was when Gordon Brown was squirming and tried to dissociate himself from the resignation, by attempting to downplay the closeness of Sir James as an economic advisor to Gordon Brown himself...

A couple of photos of some Police officers and VIP vehicles - whilst we still can

Posted on February 12, 2009
Before publishing such images is banned under the Terrorism Act section 58A which comes into force on Monday, (they might still be banned retrospectively), here are a couple of photos of some Metropolitan Police motorcycle outriders, delaying ordinary traffic, in favour of possibly Gordon Brown or someone else who thinks that they are important, traveling in a two car convoy, turning from Holborn into Kingsway in central London, yesterday...

Home Office reponse to Consultation on second phase of EU Comms Data Retention Regulations (internet email, internet telephony etc.) coming into force on 6th April 2009

Posted on February 12, 2009
The Home Office has now published its responses to the Consultation on Consultation: Transposition of Directive 2006/24/EC which closed back in October 2008. This is the extension of mandatory Communications Traffic Data Retention, beyond what would be otherwise permitted under the Principles of Data Protection i...

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