International Law

House of Commons lets the Government neuter the inquiry into the search of Damian Green MP's offices and emails.

Posted on December 08, 2008
The Government has managed to neuter the enquiry promised by the Speaker of the House of Commons last week into the search of the offices and emails etc. of opposition Conservative frontbench spokesman on Immigration, Damian Green. This was supposed to be an immediate Parliamentary Committee of 7 experienced MPs, with the power to call everyone involved in Government to report, in public, "as soon as possible", ,the Police and the House of Commons bureaucracy as witnesses...

Wilson Doctrine and Parliamentary emails and the arrest of Damian Green MP

Posted on December 06, 2008
Business of the House: Government Information (Unauthorised Release) (4 Dec 2008) Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock) (Lab):: A little while ago I had a hand in getting the Prime Minister to reaffirm the Wilson doctrine, and he extended it to modern electronic surveillance...

ECHR judgment on the Marper case - rules that UK Government and Police indefinate retention of innocent people's tissue samples, DNA profiles and fingerprints is illegal

Posted on December 04, 2008
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has finally published its judgement in the long running Marper case, about the indefinite retention of DNA tissue samples, DNA profiles and fingerprints by the Police, even when people are not charged or found not guilty of an alleged crime...

NPIA Practice Advice on Stop and Search in relation to Terrorism and on the War on Photographers

Posted on December 02, 2008
The National Police Improvement Agency, on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers has now issued some updated advice: 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...

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Damian Green - Conservative MP frontbench spokesman arrested for political whistleblowing to the media

Posted on November 27, 2008
Some people refer to the unpopular Labour Government as "New Labour" or "NuLabour", or, to draw parallels with the evil dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe as "ZANU Labour". 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"...

Privacy International - Speaking of Terror: A survey of the effects of counter-terrorism legislation on freedom of the media in Europe

Posted on November 26, 2008
Why is it that our politicians, both in the UK and in the rest of Europe, seem to be so weak, that they have allowed themselves to be manipulated by the terrorist threat, and vested securocrat interests, to weaken our fundamental freedoms and liberties, without any noticeable gain in actual security...

Tony Blair and phone security

Posted on November 25, 2008
ABC News in the USA has a whistleblower story: Whistleblower: U.S. Snooped on Tony Blair, Iraqi President 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...

BNP Membership List - the mainstream media seem to be at least 2 days behind blogs etc.

Posted on November 20, 2008
The BNP Membership List publication affair demonstrates how blogs and internet web sites can be 2 or 3 days ahead of the mainstream media regarding some news stories. 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...

Bomb resistant Architecture and Design competition from the Home Office - will the new US Embassy in London be next ?

Posted on November 15, 2008
Those lovers of awful Orwellian control architecture, the Home Office, which festered for years in the creepy, brutal and impractical 50 Queen Anne's Gate buildings, with their notorious heating and ventilation systems. have set up a Competition for Architects and Designers: 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...

Wandsworth Prison IMB report 2007-2008 - things have got even worse with illegal drugs and mobile phones in the last year

Posted on November 11, 2008
Apart from retaining the Communications Traffic Data on millions of innocent people (with plans for even more extensive snooping under the Communications Data Bill), and admitting to the electronic bugging of Member of Parliament Sadiq Khan (now a junior Government Minister) when visiting his constituent Babar Ahmad (who has not been charged with any offence in the UK, but is awaiting extradition to the USA, without any prima facie evidence having been brought against him in a UK court) in prison, what has this labour government done about the ongoing scandal of thousands of mobile phones in Prisons ? 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 (...

House of Lords minor amendment to the Counter-Terrorism Bill - removing your innocent DNA from Government databases

Posted on November 08, 2008
The House of Lords has voted to accept a minor Opposition Amendment regarding the removal of innocent people's DNA profiles, human tissue samples and fingerprints from centralised Government database, during the first part of the Report stage of the controversial Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008 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...

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions James Purnell loses Cabinet ministerial "red box" correspondence on a train

Posted on November 02, 2008
It is said that a fish starts to rot from the head first, so it comes as no surprise that the ambitious, the Government Minister with direct responsibility for the Government Gateway passwords etc. USB memory device scandal (see the immediately previous Spy Blog article) is James Purnell, the former Labour apparatchik and now Secretary of State for Work and Pensions...

Government Gateway USB memory device with system passwords and source code found in a pub car park

Posted on November 02, 2008
The Mail on Sunday has a scoop report, picked up by the other mainstream media, under a somewhat misleading headline, Yet Another Government IT Security Failure: 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...

Official Secrets Act prosecutions and media spin - Richard Jackson has been treated more leniently than Corporal Daniel James

Posted on October 28, 2008
Today's guilty plea by Richard Jackson, to a single offence under the Official Secrets Act 1989 section 8 Safeguarding of information 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...

BBC1 8.30pm Panorama - You can run... but can you hide? - personal data privacy and security abuses

Posted on October 27, 2008
Regular readers of Spy Blog will not be surprised by any of the revelations in tonight's BBC TV Panorama documentary, BBC1 8.30pm, You can run... but can you hide? which illustrates how easy it is for your personal data privacy and security to be abused, by supposedly trustworthy Government and Corporate authorised insiders, who sell or carelessly give out your data...

Icelanders are NOT Terrorists !

Posted on October 23, 2008
The bungling Labour Government and Gordon Brown's mis-handling of banking and financial market regulation, as Chancellor and as Prime Minister, makes him personally at least as much to blame as anybody else on the planet, for the current international financial and banking crisis of of confidence...

Kim Howells appointed as Intelligence and Security Committee chairman

Posted on October 22, 2008
Some of you may remember the empty promises made by Gordon Brown back in July, 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 (...

Counter-Terrorism Bill clause 83 reminder - chilling effect on reporting or speculation about military or intelligence service or police personnel ?

Posted on October 20, 2008
Just a reminder that the remaining Committee stages of the dreadful Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008, being debated in the House of Lords today, still contain plenty of things which should not be allowed onto the statute book. e.g. The Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008 clause 83 Offences relating to information about members of armed forces etc...

Sunday Times: mandatory mobile phone registration database ?

Posted on October 19, 2008
How long does it take to list the obvious impracticality and totalitarian evil of the idea of inflicting "identity checks" on the purchases of mobile phones and some sort of vague, inherently insecure registration plan for the 40 million or so unregistered prepaid mobile phones in the UK, as "leaked" or briefed, in today's Sunday Times article Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones ? Try it and see, and then compare your list with the many valid, reasonable objections, raised in the informed comments on the NO2ID Campaign's discussion forum: Times: Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones

Borders and Lothian Police ANPR data mining for "ethical income generation" and "creating and exploiting business opportunities" for Northgate Information Solutions

Posted on October 18, 2008
We will eventually get around to fisking Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's Communications Data Bill and dodgy history of terrorism speech, but here is another "database state" function creep announcement: It appears that Northgate Information Solutions, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Lothian & Borders Police, regarding some sort of Automatic Number Plate Recognition data mining service...

War on Photographers - Police "guidance" to be published in November ?

Posted on October 18, 2008
Do you trust Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, not to further encroach on our freedoms or liberties whenever possible ? Her record in office to date, is at least as bad as her notorious Labour predecessors as Home Secretary, therefore we are worried by this announcement of some forthcoming "guidance" to the Police: Written answers Tuesday, 14 October 2008 Home Department Terrorism: Stop and Search Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Law Officers; Beaconsfield, Conservative) To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what guidance her Department has given to the police on the exercise of their power under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to stop and search those taking photographs in public places...

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith - EU G6 plus USA Ministers discussing "remote searches of computer hard drives"

Posted on October 18, 2008
Before we try to decipher Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's speech which she made on Wednesday, there are a couple of clues to some more potential repression of innocent people, which she seems to be endorsing in the near future. In the perfunctory "going through the motions without actually informing Parliament of any details", Ministerial Statement on her "informal" meeting with a select few of her European Union police and "security" Ministers, the so called G6 group, together with the USA...

MoD statement confirms loss of the 1.7million record TAFMIS recruitment database, yet again

Posted on October 14, 2008
A Ministerial Written Statement confirms the story in The Sun, and our speculation that it was the TAFMIS (Training Administration and Financial Management Information System) database which has been lost, yet again: See the previous Spy Blog article - The Sun: MoD data on 1m is missing - EDS again 13 Oct 2008 : Column 28WS Data Security

Court of Appeal ruling on RIPA Part III section 49 notices and section 53 prosecutions regarding law enforcement access to encryption keys etc.

Posted on October 13, 2008
Hat tip to David Mery, for spotting this before us: The Court of Appeal has recently ruled on a case involving the Regulation of Investigatory powers Act 2000 Part III Investigation of electronic data protected by encryption etc section 49 notices and section 53 prosecutions regarding law enforcement access to encryption keys or forcing the hand over of de-crypted material etc...

Counter-terrorism Bill - covert DNA sampling and analysis with no effective safeguards

Posted on October 12, 2008
Media reports about the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008, currently being debated in the House of Lords, seem to be focussed exclusively on the 42 days internment without charge issue, which may or may not be dropped by the obstinate, unelected, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown...

The Sun: MoD data on 1m is missing - EDS again

Posted on October 10, 2008
According to The Sun, the UK Ministry of Defence appears to have lost Yet Another Unencrypted Hard Disk With Over a Million Sensitive Personal Data Records on it.

Home Office - Code of practice for public authorities disclosing information to a specified anti-fraud organisation under sections 68 to 72 of the Serious Crime Act 2007

Posted on October 08, 2008
It looks as if the combined efforts of the WhatDoTheyKnow.com FOIA request submission and tracking website, together with the interest in the topic shown by the BBC Radio 4 iPM programme - Share What They Know?, has eventually resulted in the disclosure of the "missing" Statutory Code Of Practice, which is supposed to regulate the infinite powers under the Serious Crime Act 2007, for public authorities to share your personal sensitive data, without your prior informed consent, with private sector "specified anti-fraud organisations"...

Cabinet Re-shuffle leaves vacancies for two Ministers of State at the Home Office, and the Chair of the intelligence and Security Committee

Posted on October 03, 2008
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's desperate attempt to save his political career by playing musical chairs with his inept crew of Ministers is being ignored somewhat by the main TV broadcast media. Neither the BBC News 24 nor Sky News have given this Cabinet Re-Shuffle story their top billing, and have concentrated on the twice disgraced Peter Mandleson, who oozes back to his former job at the Ministry of Trade and Industry , subsequently re-branded misleadingly as BERR, the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform...

Home Office promises £3.5 million for the new Police Central e-crime Unit - what happened to the £25 million that the old National Hi Tech Crime Unit launched with in 2001 ?

Posted on October 02, 2008
Who seriously believes that there is less "cyber crime" in the United Kingdom in 2008 than there was back in 2001 ? Presumably the Home Office does, given its announcement of the paltry £3.5 million over three years funding which they are spending on the new Police Central e-crime Unit (PCeU - hardly a memorable acronym), See the Home Office Press release:

Computer Misuse Act amendments come into force on 1st October 2008

Posted on September 29, 2008
The controversial amendments to the Computer Misuse Act 1990, which were brought onto the statute book by the Police and Justice Act 2006, are finally coming into force this Wednesday 1st October 2008. See: SI 2008 No. 2503 The Police and Justice Act 2006 (Commencement No...

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