GCHQ Sir Iain Lobban's valedictory speech

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A few comments, in context, on:

Sir Iain Lobban's valedictory speech - as delivered
Full transcript of the speech given by Sir Iain Lobban, Director GCHQ, at the Cabinet War Rooms on 21 Oct 2014.

Weirdly, the GCHQ website no longer seems to support the use of https:// SSL / TLS encryption at all, unlike Security Service MI5 and Secret Intelligence Service SIS / MI6

In the middle of the summer, when I resolved to give this talk, the following events were taking place around the world:

  • A commercial airliner flying at over thirty thousand feet over eastern Ukraine was shot down with a sophisticated surface-to-air missile system, with the loss of 298 lives, 80 of them children
  • Fierce fighting on the ground continued after Russia's annexation of Crimea
  • ISIL advances in Syria and Iraq continued, treating local populations with devastating savagery, and the video of the beheading of the first western hostage spread across the internet
  • the American, Canadian and British embassies suspended operations in Tripoli due to armed clashes between Libyan militias in the country
  • the National Crime Agency carried out further arrests of predators involved in child exploitation

  • thirty-five adults and children, one of whom died, were discovered in a lorry, illegally trafficked from Afghanistan
  • £100 million pounds-worth of cocaine was seized off the coast of Ireland
  • Nearly 200 cyber incidents against the UK's networks of national significance were detected and responded to.


As my teams pivoted to tackle such intelligence and security requirements, and I marvelled yet again at their dedication and tenacity, I decided I wanted to use the occasion of my departure from this post to reflect publically on the profession to which I've devoted the past 31 years: to explain why people like me are motivated to do what we do. After all, it's sometimes called the second oldest profession in the world, and like the oldest, you tend not to talk about it as a career choice. But that's exactly what I want to do now. That career choice is one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I want to tell you why.

I also want to think aloud about the place of intelligence in national life, which makes this exactly the right place for this final public speech. Has there ever been a politician who was so comprehensively focused on intelligence, and on the policy and processes underpinning the production of intelligence, as Winston Churchill?

I joined GCHQ in what felt like the dark days of the Cold War. The majority of my early postings in the department were focused on the Warsaw Pact: a massive challenge. And as I leave, once more we look towards and beyond the Urals. Perhaps I needn't have bothered... Certainly the bookends of my career illustrate how the world continues to be a dangerous and unpredictable place.

But there's a longer timespan in which we should situate the work that GCHQ does today.

UK Signals Intelligence celebrates its centenary this year. There was no Sigint organisation in this country on 4 August 1914, but in November 1914 the First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill, issued a Charter. That Charter prescribed the operating model for Room 40, the section in the Admiralty which had started producing intelligence from intercepted and decrypted messages, would operate. Churchill oversaw the birth of British Sigint, and was instrumental in the creation in 1919 of GCHQ, under its former name of GC&CS.

In another dark time, a sparkling generation radiated their genius from dingy huts at Bletchley to defend a beleaguered nation against the Nazi onslaught:

  • They sent the intelligence to leaders right here in these War Rooms
  • Just as today, GCHQ continues to supply our National Security Council with the intelligence necessary to make the right strategic decisions.

It was here that Churchill applied the lessons he had learned during the First World War about keeping the use and the protection of Sigint in balance: intelligence is of no use if you can't use it, but it will quickly disappear if those using it do not protect its source.

In his Charter for Room 40, Churchill proposed that his Sigint staff should study intercepts, past and present, and compare them with what actually happened in order to penetrate the German mind. This process of traffic analysis was further developed at Bletchley Park, where analysts built a picture of hostile activity by analysing communications for patterns, connections and abnormalities.

  • Today, we continue to look for the patterns, connections and abnormalities that indicate of illuminate hostile capability and intent.

Bletchley Park saved the lives of numerous seamen and the shipping, materiel, and other supplies criss-crossing the Atlantic and the Arctic, all the while stalked by enemy submarines, providing intercepts on which evasive action could be taken. They kept those vital supply routes open.

  • Today, we continue to use intelligence to safeguard the electronic networks on which our trade, our finance, our way of life, now depend.

By June 1944, Sigint could tell General Eisenhower about the German Order of Battle in Normandy, about German perceptions on where the Second Front would be opened, on German intentions to respond to it, and on the success of his deception plan.

  • I am not going to tell you the details of the way we support the UK military today, but let me assure you that our aim is to ensure that every British or allied Commander has the same complete Information Superiority that Eisenhower had. The stakes of our mission today engage life and death as compellingly now as they did then. We are fiercely proud of the work we do to support troops in the front line, foiling attacks on British and allied forces deployed anywhere in the world.

But today's ask is in some ways broader than that of Bletchley Park:

  • With our partners at Mi5 and SIS we apply all our skills to keep our streets safe from terrorists
  • We work to stop the spread of destructive weapons across the world
  • We strain sinews to locate hostages imprisoned in dark and dangerous places, tragically not always with success
  • With the National Crime Agency we battle serious and organised crime
  • We counter internet fraudsters and their malware to save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds.

We counter internet fraudsters and their malware to save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds

GCHQ appear to be spectacularly unsuccessful in this regard, given the estimates of billions of pounds of attempted internet fraud each year.

Perhaps this is because the same "phishing" and malware techniques used by fraudsters seem to be used by GCHQ themselves, according to the Snowden revelations.

How many malware authors and distributors have been prosecuted and convicted in the UK ? Almost none. How many were caught by GCHQ ? Zero.

How many foreign cyber attackers have been extradited to the UK ? Zero

And we also battle to save something upon which nobody can place a value: we strive to protect our children from terrible abuse.

Wars, terrorism, fraud, child sexual exploitation - nothing new in that, you might think. Until you recall that we're witnessing the biggest migration in human history. In the six years since I took up this post, almost one and half billion people have joined the enormous exodus to the internet. That's a doubling of the people accessing information and communicating online. There are over six and a half billion mobile subscribers in the world, nearly two billion active social network users.

We all know that the beautiful dream of the internet as a totally ungoverned space was just that - a beautiful dream. Like all utopian visions, it was flawed because it failed to account for the persistence of the worst aspects of human nature. Alongside the amazing benefits - the comprehensive information, education, health, the communities of interest, the commercial opportunities and efficiencies - there are the plotters, the proliferators and the paedophiles. From what we know of ungoverned spaces in the real world, do we really believe that the world would be a better place if the internet becomes an ungoverned space where anybody can act freely with impunity?

the other impractical utopian vision is the myth that the state can or should provide absolute security.

Those who would do us harm don't want to be found. They choose certain routers or applications to hide in the darkest places of the internet. We have to enter that labyrinth to find them. We work to crack their defences. We have to understand what adversaries seek to do to us, and dedicate ourselves to preventing them from realising their plans. And the vast majority of those criminal threats to the UK are posed by groups or individuals based overseas. So we need strong intelligence and cyber capabilities to identify them and, where international law enforcement doesn't work, to disrupt them directly. This combination is increasingly essential.

where international law enforcement doesn't work, to disrupt them directly

"Disruption" is particularly evil concept, as it does not seem to require any actual evidence or proportionality or regard for collateral damage to the innocent or an appreciation of the economic damage to the UK.


But how to find them in the first place? We used to map the frequencies of the Warsaw Pact's naval, ground, and air forces, just as our predecessors at Bletchley Park tracked the frequencies used by U boats and panzer divisions. But now most of the time there's no tell-tale frequency to intercept, and our adversaries use a diverse range of complex comms methods. Unfortunately, there's no 'badguy.com' for us to log onto and to find terrorists or serious criminals: instead we have to search for them in the vast morass of the internet.

N.B. of course there is already a is a badguy.com domain name and website registered, but hopefully GCHQ are not targeting it "just in case".

Again, I reach back to the First World War. The reason that there was no Sigint on 4 August 1914 was that the members of the Royal Navy's signal staff who had, from time to time, looked at foreign use of radio, had looked at random messages and had found little or nothing of interest. When they saw a message saying "Proceed to Grid 1596 by 0830 hours" it was dismissed as of no interest. It was only the collection and examination of many such messages that led to an understanding that such items were like tiny fragments of a mosaic: Sigint's job is to reveal the big picture. In the first few weeks of the war, those in Room 40 began to look at what today we would call the network,
focussing on the bigger patter of message traffic which produced intelligence about German intentions.

Today, of all the communications out there globally - the emails, the texts, the images - only a small percentage are within reach of our sensors.

  • Of that, we only intercept a small percentage
  • Of that, we store a miniscule percentage for a limited period of time
  • Of that, only a small percentage is ever viewed or listened to, as permitted by our legal framework, and self-evidently, constrained by resource.

TEMPORA snooping on fibre optic communications cables - "full take" cached for 3 days, "metadata" stored for 30 days, as revealed by Edward Snowden, appears to contradict these claims.

We access the internet at scale so as to dissect it with surgical precision. Practically, it is now impossible to operate successfully in any other way. You can't pick and choose the components of a global interception system that you like (catching terrorists and paedophiles), and those you don't (incidental collection of data at scale): it's one integrated system.
That process has other benefits beyond obtaining the intelligence needed by our nation and its allies. By understanding the technicalities of obtaining intelligence, we can help government, businesses and citizens to protect their systems and their data. And by understanding trends in both the technology itself and how it's used, we can help to build the kind of skilled workforce that our country will need in order to flourish in the future.

It is the duty of the state to protect its citizens and to develop a system of capabilities to ensure that its protection is as complete as it can be: the question becomes how we use that system in a way that is consistent with the law, and with values you and I are determined to uphold.

It's a process of intelligence-gathering laid down by law, pored over by parliament, inspected by independent commissioners and under the supervision of a Tribunal. And we wouldn't have it any other way. We've even implemented certain internal safeguards beyond what is required. We've done so because we want to belong to a society that can have confidence in its intelligence services. And so, even when we hear fellow citizens saying things like: "I don't mind being watched because I've nothing to hide" or "I don't mind because it's the price of security," that's depressing for us. The people who work at GCHQ would sooner walk out the door than be involved in anything remotely resembling 'mass surveillance'.

"mass surveillance" does not mean total blanket surveillance i.e. billions or trillions of events a day. It is still "mass surveillance" if only hundreds or thousands of people are caught up in it directly or indirectly.

I want to make it absolutely clear that the core of my organisation's mission is the protection of liberty, not the erosion of it. And that presenting our activities as some sort of binary option - security or privacy - is to represent a false choice: we are committed to doing our utmost to deliver security at the same time as protecting privacy to the greatest extent possible.

GCHQ's compliance regime, like those of our sister Agencies, is supported by a strong culture and ethos of personal accountability. My staff undertake mandatory policy and legalities training before they can access operational data. And we underpin all this internally with a series of processes to uphold not just the letter, but the spirit, of the relevant laws and policies. We respect privacy and take utterly seriously our obligations under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. We actively seek to minimise intrusion into everyday lives, working in accordance with the principles of necessity and proportionality. By definition, the acquisition, aggregation, usage, sharing and retention of information involve varying degrees of interference with, or intrusion into, the privacy rights of individuals. So those activities can only be undertaken if judged to be necessary in the interests of our statutory purposes - national security, economic wellbeing, or the prevention and detection of serious crime - and proportionate in what we seek to achieve.

This is perhaps the most interesting part of the speech, which seems to contradict the repeated questioning of the witnesses giving oral evidence in public to the Intelligence and Security committee last week about "balance" and "is privacy engaged at the point of collection ?" :

  • And so, even when we hear fellow citizens saying things like: "I don't mind being watched because I've nothing to hide" or "I don't mind because it's the price of security," that's depressing for us.
  • And that presenting our activities as some sort of binary option - security or privacy - is to represent a false choice: we are committed to doing our utmost to deliver security at the same time as protecting privacy to the greatest extent possible.
  • By definition, the acquisition, aggregation, usage, sharing and retention of information involve varying degrees of interference with, or intrusion into, the privacy rights of individuals

Why did the ISC waste so much time on these topics, when even Sir Iain agrees with the human rights activists and lawyers and academics on these points ?

Those principles of necessity and proportionality are fundamental to the functions and ethos of the Agencies, and are critical components of the legal framework within which the Agencies strictly operate. They are applied within every investigation, and are subject to multiple layers of scrutiny and controls.



From the Snowden revelations, it seems that none of this applies to NSA or other 5 Eyes partners (Australia, Canada and New Zealand) when they target UK citizens in the UK or overseas, or their internet or telecommunications traffic routed in transit overseas. They then share the raw data or the processed analyses with GCHQ and other UK intelligence agencies, in secret, with little or no effective UK oversight.

On top of that, GCHQ has an Ethical Framework, setting out our approach to ethical decision-making, applying objectivity and professionalism to those principles.

So why doesn't GCHQ publish this "Ethical Framework" so that the public can be reassured ? Surely this does not contain any "sources and methods" details ?

It's not for me to act as a cheerleader for the system of oversight and scrutiny that apply to GCHQ and my sister intelligence and security Agencies. But I will say that it is the most coherent and well-developed system of which I am aware in relation to such agencies around the world, with its triple lock of:

  • Authorisations by a Secretary of State
  • Informed, rigorous scrutiny by the Intelligence Services Commissioner and by the Interception of Communications Commissioner - and I commend Sir Anthony May's 87-page open report from April this year to the interested reader
  • Review by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, as strengthened by the recent Justice and Security Act.

2013 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner (.pdf)

And that triple lock is supplemented by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal which can hear, and indeed is hearing, legal challenges against our activities, with access to secret material.

This "triple lock" is worse than useless for investigating real or imagined abuses of the system against individuals or groups - it is all too secret and relies on public trust in government bureaucracies which simply does not exist.

And some things do need to remain secret. Let me reflect on the relationship between the intelligence profession and the journalism profession. That relationship may be complex, but let me be clear: we may get frustrated when our efforts are undone, our enemies advantaged, and our integrity questioned, but we're not frustrated by the free press itself. We do what we do precisely to safeguard the kind of society that has a free press.

Why can't GCHQ and the other intelligence agencies have official spokesmen, just like in the USA, to correct the misreporting in the press ?

"Neither confirm nor deny" is a counter-productive policy which literally insults the intelligence of the public, fuels conspiracy theories and destroys public trust, not just of GCHQ but of the UK government in general.

I wonder if it's worth musing upon the shared motivations between our professions. I don't just mean the mutual concern with sources and methods. I mean something more fundamental: at the height of their professions, intelligence officers and journalists both care deeply about knowledge; we are scrupulous about the integrity of the analysis that our reporting depends upon; we both seek the truth; and to get it, we both have to shine a light into dark and often dangerous places, places where we aren't exactly welcome. The difference is what happens to the truth we find. For journalists, the public interest is served by publicity itself; for us, the public interest is served by some things remaining secret.

Over my three decade career I've spent about half of it in roles where it's been necessary to consider whether, and if so how, to use Sigint, to employ it outside the ring of secrecy, to 'disclose' it. The trick is to release the facts so action can be taken if necessary, but to avoid risk to the sources and methods involved. These are, for the most part, very finely balanced judgements made by deep professionals with an instinctive feel for what needs to be released so it can be used, at the same time as applying structured tests so as not to throw away the fragile 'edge' of knowledge secured by intelligence penetration. Back to Churchill again! It's crucial that the targets whose communications we seek to exploit for the purposes of our national security do not know what we can and can't do.

Presumably Sir Iain is talking about the Police and (secret) Courts and the censored RIPA Commisioners' and Intelligence and Security Committee reports when he talks about disclosing Sigint "outside the ring of secrecy" because GCHQ has never bothered to give any useful information to the public, even at a general policy level, without exposing any tactical details.

Secret does not have to equal sinister. The idea that it does is perhaps inspired by the portrayal of uncontrolled intelligence operations in popular films and TV programmes. The reality is more mundane, but contrary to what you might expect, it's also more inspiring. GCHQ staff are drawn from the British population. Yes, we have people with diverse skills and talents, and geniuses from our past, like Alan Turing, remind us that neuro-diverse conditions can frequently unlock exceptional contributions. But basically they are normal, decent human beings - people who spend their lives outside work shopping at Sainsbury's or the Co-op, watching EastEnders and Spooks, listening to Radio 4 and TalkSport, drinking in pubs, wine bars and Cotswold tea rooms, and worrying about their kids, the weather, the football, cricket, and rugby, and what to have for tea. They give their time to charitable causes and help children in local schools.

N.B. No mention of Geoffrey Prime the KGB Communist spy, who was not detected by GCHQ counter-intelligence, but by the local Police ,who arrested him for paedophile sex attacks on local children in the Cheltenham area.

"Prime constructed a system of 2,287 index cards bearing details of individual girls; each card contained information on their parents routines and detailed when they were alone at home"

Imagine what such a cunning spy and paedophile could do with GCHQ insider access to the internet, regardless of any laws or internal policies.

It is the potential unauthorised abuse of powerful state surveillance systems by corrupt or fanatical privileged insiders which is the worry and which is not alleviated by "neither confirm, nor deny" or "it's all legal with oversight" platitudes.

Outside work, we are the people that the inhabitants of Cheltenham, Gloucester and the surrounding area regard as friends, neighbours and customers. We don't suddenly lose our souls the moment we swipe into the Doughnut. My staff are ordinary people doing an extraordinary job.

...Ordinary people, but their extraordinary job can demand extraordinary sacrifices.

Sometimes those sacrifices are economic. My staff choose public service even where they possess astonishing skills prized by the market.

Sometimes those sacrifices are social. Intelligence professionals can't share the details of their work with family and friends. Imagine having no chance to share the good days and download the difficult days. And the same goes for the gratitude of the wider population: it's a rewarding form of public service, but more often than not, the thanks are received behind closed doors.

Their enemies don't stop, so neither can they - the analyst who misses their Christmas dinner to rush in for an urgent task; the teams mounting a 24/7 operation to find a fellow citizen taken hostage overseas. They miss sleep and family commitments over days, weeks and sometimes months, working against the clock, trying to save someone they've never met. They scour far-flung networks for clues and identifiers, feeling the thrill of a breakthrough and, sometimes, despair if they are unsuccessful and people are harmed. One of my saddest duties is to talk to teams devastated by such an outcome.

And the psychological sacrifices can be severe. Like the police or the military, British "spies" have to deal with the worst of human behaviour. Have no doubt that dealing with that is emotionally arduous. They have to look at some highly disturbing images of grotesque things being done to children, at graphic videos of beheadings. They examine such things carefully for clues to the perpetrators. You can imagine the potential effect of looking at such images day-in and day-out, and so we have mechanisms to support people in these roles. I can assure you viewing of such material at GCHQ is not taken lightly. We do it because our job is to protect your loved ones.

So I believe - passionately - that intelligence and security work in the United Kingdom is a noble profession. It helps good decision-taking. It can prevent wars and disrupt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It does prevent terrorist attacks. It pursues criminals who threaten the most vulnerable. A monument in the National Memorial Arboretum honours those who have dedicated their careers to the pursuit of Signals Intelligence.

And, as I complete my own journey from Iron Curtain to Final Curtain, and give way to a distinguished successor waiting in the wings, I cherish my choice of career. My colleagues and I joined the intelligence services to protect others from those who would do them harm. That has always been the passion of our profession. It was our passion when we resisted the Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe; it was our passion during the Cold War when we wrestled the Soviet machine; and it's our passion today.

Back to Winston Churchill: he was responsible for two momentous decisions which transformed GCHQ, and which mark it to this day.

  • He personally approved the proposal to share every single one of Bletchley Park's secrets with the United States, a decision which led to what is the most enduring intelligence partnership in history.
  • And he personally answered the urgent appeal made to him by Turing, Alexander, Welchman and Milner-Barry for more resources: "Action this day: Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done". This decision transformed GCHQ: it became the organisation it is today, enabled by technology to produce intelligence at scale and at pace.

And even earlier than that, when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924, he demanded access to Sigint reporting, writing to the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin: "In the years I have been in office since Room 40 began in the autumn of 1914, I have read every one of these flimsies and I attach more importance to them as a means of forming a true judgement of public policy in these spheres than to any other source of knowledge at the disposal of the State". He shared our passion, and our predecessors recognised it and responded to it.

When I joined GCHQ, there were still veterans of Bletchley Park working in Cheltenham. They had worked alongside those who had started Sigint in 1914, learning not just how to do their jobs, but learning too why they did their work the way they did, and how GCHQ had grown and adapted as new sources became available, or productive sources were turned off. I learned from them, and eventually, as the Director of GCHQ, have had the responsibility of ensuring that the thread of continuity that links us to our past continues to extend into the future.

I won't pretend that I've enjoyed every minute of the media attention, but the only thing worse than being in the eye of the storm would have been to be anywhere else. Had that been so, I'd be unable to bear witness now to my fellow professionals, ordinary men and women whose integrity has been insulted time and again, and whose response to such provocation has not been a noisy retort but a quiet resolve - a resolve to continue doing extraordinary things for others. I will miss them, the friends who made the same career choice: their skill, their sacrifice, their silence.

I said this to the parliamentary committee in a closed evidence session, and I'll say it again now:

  • My staff are the embodiment of British values, not a threat to them.

Most current GCHQ staff are probably not a threat to British values, but the automated infrastructure of snooping is a huge threat to us all, including such privileged insiders themselves.

  • What if an extremist government takes power ?
  • What if a weak government fails to prevent the ponderous bureaucracy from sleep walking us into a repressive surveillance state on autopilot, as officials and politicians try to deflect blame and protect their budgets and empires, by seeking to "leave no stone unturned" in their surveillance activities ?

What will Sir Iain Lobban do next ? Will he enjoy a quiet retirement or will he magically appear as a Director or Consultant in the "revolving door" world of Defence / Intelligence / Lobbyist companies ?

How different, if at all, will his successor Robert Hannigan as Director of GCHQ ?

About this blog

This United Kingdom based blog attempts to draw public attention to, and comments on, some of the current trends in ever cheaper and more widespread surveillance technology being deployed to satisfy the rapacious demand by state and corporate bureaucracies and criminals for your private details, and the technological ignorance of our politicians and civil servants who frame our legal systems.

The hope is that you the readers, will help to insist that strong safeguards for the privacy of the individual are implemented, especially in these times of increased alert over possible terrorist or criminal activity. If the systems which should help to protect us can be easily abused to supress our freedoms, then the terrorists will have won.

We know that there are decent, honest, trustworthy individual politicians, civil servants, law enforcement, intelligence agency personnel and broadcast, print and internet journalists etc., who often feel powerless or trapped in the system. They need the assistance of external, detailed, informed, public scrutiny to help them to resist deliberate or unthinking policies, which erode our freedoms and liberties.

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Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g. see Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - or use this easier to remember link: http://ht4w.co.uk

BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

Digital Security & Privacy for Human Rights Defenders manual, by Irish NGO Frontline Defenders.

Everyone’s Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship for Citizens Worldwide (.pdf - 31 pages), by the Citizenlab at the University of Toronto.

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents - March 2008 version - (2.2 Mb - 80 pages .pdf) by Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Guide to Covering the Beijing Olympics by Human Rights Watch.

A Practical Security Handbook for Activists and Campaigns (v 2.6) (.doc - 62 pages), by experienced UK direct action political activists

Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress & Tor - useful step by step guide with software configuration screenshots by Ethan Zuckerman at Global Voices Advocacy. (updated March 10th 2009 with the latest Tor / Vidalia bundle details)

Links

Watching Them, Watching Us

London 2600

Our UK Freedom of Information Act request tracking blog

WikiLeak.org - ethical and technical discussion about the WikiLeaks.org project for anonymous mass leaking of documents etc.

Privacy and Security

Privacy International
United Kingdom Privacy Profile (2011)

Cryptome - censored or leaked government documents etc.

Identity Project report by the London School of Economics
Surveillance & Society the fully peer-reviewed transdisciplinary online surveillance studies journal

Statewatch - monitoring the state and civil liberties in the European Union

The Policy Laundering Project - attempts by Governments to pretend their repressive surveillance systems, have to be introduced to comply with international agreements, which they themselves have pushed for in the first place

International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance

ARCH Action Rights for Children in Education - worried about the planned Children's Bill Database, Connexions Card, fingerprinting of children, CCTV spy cameras in schools etc.

Foundation for Information Policy Research
UK Crypto - UK Cryptography Policy Discussion Group email list

Technical Advisory Board on internet and telecomms interception under RIPA

European Digital Rights

Open Rights Group - a UK version of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a clearinghouse to raise digital rights and civil liberties issues with the media and to influence Governments.

Digital Rights Ireland - legal case against mandatory EU Comms Data Retention etc.

Blindside - "What’s going to go wrong in our e-enabled world? " blog and wiki and Quarterly Report will supposedly be read by the Cabinet Office Central Sponsor for Information Assurance. Whether the rest of the Government bureaucracy and the Politicians actually listen to the CSIA, is another matter.

Biometrics in schools - 'A concerned parent who doesn't want her children to live in "1984" type society.'

Human Rights

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British Institute of Human Rights
Amnesty International
Justice

Prevent Genocide International

asboconcern - campaign for reform of Anti-Social Behavior Orders

Front Line Defenders - Irish charity - Defenders of Human Rights Defenders

Internet Censorship

OpenNet Initiative - researches and measures the extent of actual state level censorship of the internet. Features a blocked web URL checker and censorship map.

Committee to Protect Bloggers - "devoted to the protection of bloggers worldwide with a focus on highlighting the plight of bloggers threatened and imprisoned by their government."

Reporters without Borders internet section - news of internet related censorship and repression of journalists, bloggers and dissidents etc.

Judicial Links

British and Irish Legal Information Institute - publishes the full text of major case Judgments

Her Majesty's Courts Service - publishes forthcoming High Court etc. cases (but only in the next few days !)

House of Lords - The Law Lords are currently the supreme court in the UK - will be moved to the new Supreme Court in October 2009.

Information Tribunal - deals with appeals under FOIA, DPA both for and against the Information Commissioner

Investigatory Powers Tribunal - deals with complaints about interception and snooping under RIPA - has almost never ruled in favour of a complainant.

Parliamentary Opposition

The incompetent yet authoritarian Labour party have not apologised for their time in Government. They are still not providing any proper Opposition to the current Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition government, on any freedom or civil liberties or privacy or surveillance issues.

UK Government

Home Office - "Not fit for purpose. It is inadequate in terms of its scope, it is inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management systems and processes" - Home Secretary John Reid. 23rd May 2006. Not quite the fount of all evil legislation in the UK, but close.

No. 10 Downing Street Prime Minister's Official Spindoctors

Public Bills before Parliament

United Kingdom Parliament
Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons.

House of Commons "Question Book"

UK Statute Law Database - is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online, but it is not yet up to date.

FaxYourMP - identify and then fax your Member of Parliament
WriteToThem - identify and then contact your Local Councillors, members of devolved assemblies, Member of Parliament, Members of the European Parliament etc.
They Work For You - House of Commons Hansard made more accessible ? UK Members of the European Parliament

Read The Bills Act - USA proposal to force politicians to actually read the legislation that they are voting for, something which is badly needed in the UK Parliament.

Bichard Inquiry delving into criminal records and "soft intelligence" policies highlighted by the Soham murders. (taken offline by the Home Office)

ACPO - Association of Chief Police Officers - England, Wales and Northern Ireland
ACPOS Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland

Online Media

Boing Boing

Need To Know [now defunct]

The Register

NewsNow Encryption and Security aggregate news feed
KableNet - UK Government IT project news
PublicTechnology.net - UK eGovernment and public sector IT news
eGov Monitor

Ideal Government - debate about UK eGovernment

NIR and ID cards

Stand - email and fax campaign on ID Cards etc. [Now defunct]. The people who supported stand.org.uk have gone on to set up other online tools like WriteToThem.com. The Government's contemptuous dismissal of over 5,000 individual responses via the stand.org website to the Home Office public consultation on Entitlement Cards is one of the factors which later led directly to the formation of the the NO2ID Campaign who have been marshalling cross party opposition to Labour's dreadful National Identity Register compulsory centralised national biometric database and ID Card plans, at the expense of simpler, cheaper, less repressive, more effective, nore secure and more privacy friendly alternative identity schemes.

NO2ID - opposition to the Home Office's Compulsory Biometric ID Card
NO2ID bulletin board discussion forum

Home Office Identity Cards website
No compulsory national Identity Cards (ID Cards) BBC iCan campaign site
UK ID Cards blog
NO2ID press clippings blog
CASNIC - Campaign to STOP the National Identity Card.
Defy-ID active meetings and protests in Glasgow
www.idcards-uk.info - New Alliance's ID Cards page
irefuse.org - total rejection of any UK ID Card

International Civil Aviation Organisation - Machine Readable Travel Documents standards for Biometric Passports etc.
Anti National ID Japan - controversial and insecure Jukinet National ID registry in Japan
UK Biometrics Working Group run by CESG/GCHQ experts etc. the UK Government on Biometrics issues feasability
Citizen Information Project feasability study population register plans by the Treasury and Office of National Statistics

CommentOnThis.com - comments and links to each paragraph of the Home Office's "Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme".

De-Materialised ID - "The voluntary alternative to material ID cards, A Proposal by David Moss of Business Consultancy Services Ltd (BCSL)" - well researched analysis of the current Home Office scheme, and a potentially viable alternative.

Surveillance Infrastructures

National Roads Telecommunications Services project - infrastruture for various mass surveillance systems, CCTV, ANPR, PMMR imaging etc.

CameraWatch - independent UK CCTV industry lobby group - like us, they also want more regulation of CCTV surveillance systems.

Every Step You Take a documentary about CCTV surveillance in the Uk by Austrian film maker Nino Leitner.

Transport for London an attempt at a technological panopticon - London Congestion Charge, London Low-Emission Zone, Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, tens of thousands of CCTV cameras on buses, thousands of CCTV cameras on London Underground, realtime road traffic CCTV, Iyster smart cards - all handed over to the Metropolitan Police for "national security" purposes, in real time, in bulk, without any public accountibility, for secret data mining, exempt from even the usual weak protections of the Data Protection Act 1998.

RFID Links

RFID tag privacy concerns - our own original article updated with photos

NoTags - campaign against individual item RFID tags
Position Statement on the Use of RFID on Consumer Products has been endorsed by a large number of privacy and human rights organisations.
RFID Privacy Happenings at MIT
Surpriv: RFID Surveillance and Privacy
RFID Scanner blog
RFID Gazette
The Sorting Door Project

RFIDBuzz.com blog - where we sometimes crosspost RFID articles

Genetic Links

DNA Profiles - analysis by Paul Nutteing
GeneWatch UK monitors genetic privacy and other issues
Postnote February 2006 Number 258 - National DNA Database (.pdf) - Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology

The National DNA Database Annual Report 2004/5 (.pdf) - published by the NDNAD Board and ACPO.

Eeclaim Your DNA from Britain's National DNA Database - model letters and advice on how to have your DNA samples and profiles removed from the National DNA Database,in spite of all of the nureacratic obstacles which try to prevent this, even if you are innocent.

Miscellanous Links

Michael Field - Pacific Island news - no longer a paradise
freetotravel.org - John Gilmore versus USA internal flight passports and passenger profiling etc.

The BUPA Seven - whistleblowers badly let down by the system.

Tax Credit Overpayment - the near suicidal despair inflicted on poor, vulnerable people by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown's disasterous Inland Revenue IT system.

Fassit UK - resources and help for those abused by the Social Services Childrens Care bureaucracy

Former Spies

MI6 v Tomlinson - Richard Tomlinson - still being harassed by his former employer MI6

Martin Ingram, Welcome To The Dark Side - former British Army Intelligence operative in Northern Ireland.

Operation Billiards - Mitrokhin or Oshchenko ? Michael John Smith - seeking to overturn his Official Secrets Act conviction in the GEC case.

The Dirty Secrets of MI5 & MI6 - Tony Holland, Michael John Smith and John Symond - stories and chronologies.

Naked Spygirl - Olivia Frank

Blog Links

e-nsecure.net blog - Comments on IT security and Privacy or the lack thereof.
Rat's Blog -The Reverend Rat writes about London street life and technology
Duncan Drury - wired adventures in Tanzania & London
Dr. K's blog - Hacker, Author, Musician, Philosopher

David Mery - falsely arrested on the London Tube - you could be next.

James Hammerton
White Rose - a thorn in the side of Big Brother
Big Blunkett
Into The Machine - formerly "David Blunkett is an Arse" by Charlie Williams and Scribe
infinite ideas machine - Phil Booth
Louise Ferguson - City of Bits
Chris Lightfoot
Oblomovka - Danny O'Brien

Liberty Central

dropsafe - Alec Muffett
The Identity Corner - Stefan Brands
Kim Cameron - Microsoft's Identity Architect
Schneier on Security - Bruce Schneier
Politics of Privacy Blog - Andreas Busch
solarider blog

Richard Allan - former Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam
Boris Johnson Conservative MP for Henley
Craig Murray - former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, "outsourced torture" whistleblower

Howard Rheingold - SmartMobs
Global Guerrillas - John Robb
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends

Vmyths - debunking computer security hype

Nick Leaton - Random Ramblings
The Periscope - Companion weblog to Euro-correspondent.com journalist network.
The Practical Nomad Blog Edward Hasbrouck on Privacy and Travel
Policeman's Blog
World Weary Detective

Martin Stabe
Longrider
B2fxxx - Ray Corrigan
Matt Sellers
Grits for Breakfast - Scott Henson in Texas
The Green Ribbon - Tom Griffin
Guido Fawkes blog - Parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy.
The Last Ditch - Tom Paine
Murky.org
The (e)State of Tim - Tim Hicks
Ilkley Against CCTV
Tim Worstall
Bill's Comment Page - Bill Cameron
The Society of Qualified Archivists
The Streeb-Greebling Diaries - Bob Mottram

Your Right To Know - Heather Brooke - Freedom off Information campaigning journalist

Ministry of Truth _ Unity's V for Vendetta styled blog.

Bloggerheads - Tim Ireland

W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al.
EUrophobia - Nosemonkey

Blogzilla - Ian Brown

BlairWatch - Chronicling the demise of the New Labour Project

dreamfish - Robert Longstaff

Informaticopia - Rod Ward

War-on-Freedom

The Musings of Harry

Chicken Yoghurt - Justin McKeating

The Red Tape Chronicles - Bob Sullivan MSNBC

Campaign Against the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

Stop the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

Rob Wilton's esoterica

panGloss - Innovation, Technology and the Law

Arch Rights - Action on Rights for Children blog

Database Masterclass - frequently asked questions and answers about the several centralised national databases of children in the UK.

Shaphan

Moving On

Steve Moxon blog - former Home Office whistleblower and author.

Al-Muhajabah's Sundries - anglophile blog

Architectures of Control in Design - Dan Lockton

rabenhorst - Kai Billen (mostly in German)

Nearly Perfect Privacy - Tiffany and Morpheus

Iain Dale's Diary - a popular Conservative political blog

Brit Watch - Public Surveillance in the UK - Web - Email - Databases - CCTV - Telephony - RFID - Banking - DNA

BLOGDIAL

MySecured.com - smart mobile phone forensics, information security, computer security and digital forensics by a couple of Australian researchers

Ralph Bendrath

Financial Cryptography - Ian Grigg et al.

UK Liberty - A blog on issues relating to liberty in the UK

Big Brother State - "a small act of resistance" to the "sustained and systematic attack on our personal freedom, privacy and legal system"

HosReport - "Crisis. Conspiraciones. Enigmas. Conflictos. Espionaje." - Carlos Eduardo Hos (in Spanish)

"Give 'em hell Pike!" - Frank Fisher

Corruption-free Anguilla - Good Governance and Corruption in Public Office Issues in the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla in the West Indies - Don Mitchell CBE QC

geeklawyer - intellectual property, civil liberties and the legal system

PJC Journal - I am not a number, I am a free Man - The Prisoner

Charlie's Diary - Charlie Stross

The Caucus House - blog of the Chicago International Model United Nations

Famous for 15 Megapixels

Postman Patel

The 4th Bomb: Tavistock Sq Daniel's 7:7 Revelations - Daniel Obachike

OurKingdom - part of OpenDemocracy - " will discuss Britain’s nations, institutions, constitution, administration, liberties, justice, peoples and media and their principles, identity and character"

Beau Bo D'Or blog by an increasingly famous digital political cartoonist.

Between Both Worlds - "Thoughts & Ideas that Reflect the Concerns of Our Conscious Evolution" - Kingsley Dennis

Bloggerheads: The Alisher Usmanov Affair - the rich Uzbek businessman and his shyster lawyers Schillings really made a huge counterproductive error in trying to censor the blogs of Tim Ireland, of all people.

Matt Wardman political blog analysis

Henry Porter on Liberty - a leading mainstream media commentator and opinion former who is doing more than most to help preserve our freedom and liberty.

HMRC is shite - "dedicated to the taxpayers of Britain, and the employees of the HMRC, who have to endure the monumental shambles that is Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC)."

Head of Legal - Carl Gardner a former legal advisor to the Government

The Landed Underclass - Voice of the Banana Republic of Great Britain

Henrik Alexandersson - Swedish blogger threatened with censorship by the Försvarets Radioanstalt (FRA), the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishement, their equivalent of the UK GCHQ or the US NSA.

World's First Fascist Democracy - blog with link to a Google map - "This map is an attempt to take a UK wide, geographical view, of both the public and the personal effect of State sponsored fear and distrust as seen through the twisted technological lens of petty officials and would be bureaucrats nationwide."

Blogoir - Charles Crawford - former UK Ambassodor to Poland etc.

No CCTV - The Campaign against CCTV

Barcode Nation - keeping two eyes on the database state.

Lords of the Blog - group blog by half a dozen or so Peers sitting in the House of Lords.

notes from the ubiquitous surveillance society - blog by Dr. David Murakami Wood, editor of the online academic journal Surveillance and Society

Justin Wylie's political blog

Panopticon blog - by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops. Timothy Pitt-Payne is probably the leading legal expert on the UK's Freedom of Information Act law, often appearing on behlaf of the Information Commissioner's Office at the Information Tribunal.

Armed and Dangerous - Sex, software, politics, and firearms. Life’s simple pleasures… - by Open Source Software advocate Eric S. Raymond.

Georgetown Security Law Brief - group blog by the Georgetown Law Center on National Security and the Law , at Georgtown University, Washington D.C, USA.

Big Brother Watch - well connected with the mainstream media, this is a campaign blog by the TaxPayersAlliance, which thankfully does not seem to have spawned Yet Another Campaign Organisation as many Civil Liberties groups had feared.

Spy on Moseley - "Sparkbrook, Springfield, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. An MI5 Intelligence-gathering operation to spy on Muslim communities in Birmingham is taking liberties in every sense" - about 150 ANPR CCTV cameras funded by Home Office via the secretive Terrorism and Allied Matters (TAM) section of ACPO.

FitWatch blog - keeps an eye on the activities of some of the controversial Police Forward Intelligence Teams, who supposedly only target "known troublemakers" for photo and video surveillance, at otherwise legal, peaceful protests and demonstrations.

Other Links

Spam Huntress - The Norwegian Spam Huntress - Ann Elisabeth

Fuel Crisis Blog - Petrol over £1 per litre ! Protest !
Mayor of London Blog
London Olympics 2012 - NO !!!!

Cool Britannia

NuLabour

Free Gary McKinnon - UK citizen facing extradition to the USA for "hacking" over 90 US Military computer systems.

Parliament Protest - information and discussion on peaceful resistance to the arbitrary curtailment of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, in the excessive Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 Designated Area around Parliament Square in London.

Brian Burnell's British / US nuclear weapons history at http://nuclear-weapons.info

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UK Legislation

The United Kingdom suffers from tens of thousands of pages of complicated criminal laws, and thousands of new, often unenforceable criminal offences, which have been created as a "Pretend to be Seen to Be Doing Something" response to tabloid media hype and hysteria, and political social engineering dogmas. These overbroad, catch-all laws, which remove the scope for any judicial appeals process, have been rubber stamped, often without being read, let alone properly understood, by Members of Parliament.

The text of many of these Acts of Parliament are now online, but it is still too difficult for most people, including the police and criminal justice system, to work out the cumulative effect of all the amendments, even for the most serious offences involving national security or terrorism or serious crime.

Many MPs do not seem to bother to even to actually read the details of the legislation which they vote to inflict on us.

UK Legislation Links

UK Statute Law Database - is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online, but it is not yet up to date.

UK Commissioners

UK Commissioners some of whom are meant to protect your privacy and investigate abuses by the bureaucrats.

UK Intelligence Agencies

Intelligence and Security Committee - the supposedly independent Parliamentary watchdog which issues an annual, heavily censored Report every year or so. Currently chaired by the Conservative Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Why should either the intelligence agencies or the public trust this committee, when the untrustworthy ex-Labour Minister Hazel Blears is a member ?

Anti-terrorism hotline - links removed in protest at the Climate of Fear propaganda posters

MI5 Security Service
MI5 Security Service - links to encrypted reporting form removed in protest at the Climate of Fear propaganda posters

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Secure Your Fertiliser - advice on ammonium nitrate and urea fertiliser security

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Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure - "CPNI provides expert advice to the critical national infrastructure on physical, personnel and information security, to protect against terrorism and other threats."

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Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) recruitment.

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Government Communications Headquarters GCHQ

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National Crime Agency - the replacement for the Serious Organised Crime Agency

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Defence Advisory (DA) Notice system - voluntary self censorship by the established UK press and broadcast media regarding defence and intelligence topics via the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee.

Foreign Spies / Intelliegence Agencies in the UK

It is not just the UK government which tries to snoop on British companies, organisations and individuals, the rest of the world is constantly trying to do the same, regardless of the mixed efforts of our own UK Intelligence Agencies who are paid to supposedly protect us from them.

For no good reason, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office only keeps the current version of the London Diplomatic List of accredited Diplomats (including some Foreign Intelligence Agency operatives) online.

Presumably every mainstream media organisation, intelligence agency, serious organised crime or terrorist gang keeps historical copies, so here are some older versions of the London Diplomatic List, for the benefit of web search engine queries, for those people who do not want their visits to appear in the FCO web server logfiles or those whose censored internet feeds block access to UK Government websites.

Campaign Button Links

Watching Them, Watching Us - UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign
UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign

NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card
NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card and National Identity Register centralised database.

Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.
Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.

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FreeFarid.com - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain

Peaceful resistance to the curtailment of our rights to Free Assembly and Free Speech in the SOCPA Designated Area around Parliament Square and beyond
Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.

Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans
Data Retention is No Solution - Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans.

Save Parliament: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)
Save Parliament - Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)

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Open Rights Group

The Big Opt Out Campaign - opt out of having your NHS Care Record medical records and personal details stored insecurely on a massive national centralised database.

Tor - the onion routing network
Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

Tor - the onion routing network
Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress and Tor - useful Guide published by Global Voices Advocacy with step by step software configuration screenshots (updated March 10th 2009).

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Amnesty International's irrepressible.info campaign

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BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

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NGO in a box - Security Edition privacy and security software tools

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Home Office Watch blog, "a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team."

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Reporters Without Borders - Reporters Sans Frontières - campaign for journalists 'and bloggers' freedom in repressive countries and war zones.

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Committee to Protect Bloggers - "devoted to the protection of bloggers worldwide with a focus on highlighting the plight of bloggers threatened and imprisoned by their government."

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Icelanders are NOT terrorists ! - despite Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling's use of anti-terrorism legislation to seize the assets of Icelandic banks.

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No CCTV - The Campaign Against CCTV

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I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist !

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Power 2010 cross party, political reform campaign

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Cracking the Black Box - "aims to expose technology that is being used in inappropriate ways. We hope to bring together the insights of experts and whistleblowers to shine a light into the dark recesses of systems that are responsible for causing many of the privacy problems faced by millions of people."

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Open Rights Group - Petition against the renewal of the Interception Modernisation Programme

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WhistleblowersUK.org - Fighting for justice for whistleblowers