Recently in Anonymity Category

This Royal Navy whistleblower is absent without leave, but claims he will give himself up to the police soon.

William_McNeilly_Passport_and_Royal_Navy_ID.png

My name is William McNeilly. I am an Engineering Technician
Submariner for the UK's Trident II D5 Strategic Weapons System.
I sent this report on the 05/05/15 to every major newspaper,
freelance journalists, and whistleblower I could find.
It is now the 12/05/15. Ive had one email reply

so he published it on scribd as a .pdf

http://www.scribd.com/doc/265119365/The-Sec-ret-Nuc-lea-r-Th-re-At

Creator : Microsoft® Word 2013
Modify Date : 2015:05:14 20:04:06+01:00
Author : William Mcneilly
Create Date : 2015:05:12 20:10:06+01:00

Clearly he was not thinking clearly or else nobody gave him any sensible whistleblowing advice:

Why did William McNeilly expect a reply from any UK newspapers etc. only 2 days before the General Election of the 7th of May ?

The Sunday Herald seems to be the first media outlet to publish the whistleblower allegations, early on Sunday 17th May2015:

Trident whistleblower says nuclear subs are insecure, unsafe and 'a disaster waiting to happen'

N.B. The story was mentioned on their Twitter feed on Saturday night

https://twitter.com/newsundayherald/status/599677536113729536
9:47 PM - 16 May 2015

WikiLeaks have jumped on the bandwagon by publishing their "exclusive" version of what he probably sent them on 5th May, some 20 hours after The Herald

https://www.wikileaks.org/trident-safety/

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/600046188851757056/photo/1
10:12 PM - 17 May 2015

and 10 hours after the Scottish National Party (which opposes Trident) had issued a press release.

"Safety blunders & security lapses" at Faslane
Sun, 17/05/2015 - 11:55

He has also updated his Facebook page, and published images of his UK passport and his Royal Navy ID Card.

This whistleblower has eschewed anonymity, but seems to be trying to keep his physical location secret for now.

The security and safety allegations need to investigated immediately by the Ministry of Defence, not just by the Navy on its own and a Minister needs to make a statement to Parliament and the public

McNeilly claims to have infiltrated the Trident program on purpose, to gather information on it, by working hard and passing the engineering courses with distinction.

I knew I had to get assigned to a boat and go on patrol as soon as possible in order to gather this information. Fast Track to a Leading Engineer was the answer. If I got fast tracked I would be on the first available boat after training. I worked hard day and night, and at the end of the 10 week course I had the achieved the highest test result on average out of a 20plus people on the SMQ course. At the end of SMQ dry training No-one received fast track. However the achievement went onto my JPA record. There was just one course left, one last shot.. The

Trident Training Facility (TTF). At the end the course I was told I had more SWS (Strategic Weapons System) knowledge than most of the supervisors onboard. It was a nice compliment but I doubt it. I was awarded Fast Track to Leading Engineering Technician and received an award for best student.

Just weeks after passing out of training I had a draft for HMS Victorious. My work mates started calling me a terrorist robot because I remembered everything and I have a Northern Ireland accent. This reputation would have undoubtedly made it difficult for me to gather information. I needed to create distance between them, and create a new persona; I aimed for mixture of dumbness and eagerness to learn for simple curios reasons. Within days of being on patrol I was no longer the terrorist robot, soaking up all the information for terrorist reasons. Playing dumb came easy for me, I've been doing it and been it most of life. It makes people open up and explain a lot more. If someone assumes you know something they might leave that part out of the conversation, meaning you've just lost information which might have been valuable. It also helps with getting out of certain situations. I watched a lot of Columbo when I was a kid.


Apart from the safety hazards he himself apparently witnessed, he seems to have collected reports and ancedotes from his ship mates about HMS Victorious on which he was posted, but also on the lucky / unlucky HMS Vanguard.


He warns about the lax checking of military ID cards, the lack of adherence to top secret security procedures and the lack of enforcement of the bans on prohibited items such as mobile phones with cameras, BlueTooth devices (in the Trident missile room) and e-cigarettes.

Clearly no effective crackdown on mobile phones (with cameras) has happened on Trident nuclear missile submarines since the 2012 spy case invovling Edward Devenney, a depressed, drunken HMS Vigilant Petty Officer, who like McNeilly, is also from also from Northern Ireland.

RN Trident submariner wannabe spy jailed for 8 years - used mobile phone to contact Russian Embassy, but caught in MI5 sting

Devenney stupidly phoned the Russian embassy offering to sell secrets, which he was able to photograph and smuggle onshore with his mobile phone. Thankfully the "Russians" he thought he was talking to were MI5 agents, although there are still unanswered questions why he was not spotted as a security risk - passed over for promation, depressed, drinking heavily.

McNeilly alleges;

This contains references to CB8890: The instructions for the safety and security of the Trident II D5 strategic weapon system. I'm sure all the Strategic Weapon System (SWS) personnel are scratching their heads and wondering how I'm writing this on my personnel laptop and referencing a book, which is contained within a safe in the Missile Control Centre (MCC). The MCC is the compartment used to control the launch of the nuclear missiles. It can only be accessed by people on the access list, and no personnel electronics are allowed. I was on the access list but how could I have gotten a copy of every single chapter on to my phone? A hidden camera? No. Smuggled the book out then filmed it? No. What I did was walk into a room were no recording devices are allowed. I sat down; took my Samsung Galaxy SII (white) out of my pocket, and recorded the entire book word for word. I held the phone still, about a foot in front of my face and anyone who looked at the screen or used common sense, would've seen I was recording. There were other SWS personnel in the room; in the video you can see a SWS JR about 3 feet in front of me talking to another SWS JR sitting right beside me. You probably think that's impossible but I've got the evidence to prove it. The complete lack of concern for security worries me. The fact is it would've been even easier for me to cause a nuclear catastrophe than to gather that information, and gathering that information was actually quite simple, due to the amount of ignorance.

McNeilly also notes a couple of crew mates who seem to be aggressive and unstable, so perhaps the psychological monitoring of Trident nuclear missile submarine crews has not improved since the Devenney case either.

McNeilly's own mental state is, of course, being questioned by the anonymous Royal Navy press briefings, but they do seem to confirm that he is a genuine Trident submariner, who has not yet revealed anything which damages national security.
e.g. BBC:

Navy probes leaked Trident safety claims

As one would expect, the Royal Navy is trying to downplay any security or safety issues with the Trident nuclear missile system, but, given the involvement of SNP politics, it is doubtful if they will be believed, unless there is a fully transparent independent inquiry.

Hopefully the Government will not try to prosecute this whistleblower.

Spy Blog welcomes most of the long overdue changes to the libel law brought in by the Defamation Act 2013, which has now come into force on 1st January 2014.

However, the evil Defamation Act 2013 section 5 Operators of websites
is totally unacceptable to those of us who offer pseudo-anonymous or anonymous publication and comment, as per our and our contributors, fundamental human right of free speech.

Supposedly the new Defamation Act section 1 has raised the threshold for libel actions to "serious harm", but that is unlikely to reduce the number of frivolous or intimidatory threats of expensive legal action by the rich or the mentally unbalanced or by those with a political agenda.

However, whilst section 5 imposes all sorts of duties on website Operators and Posters of content, it assumes no possible malicious intent by Complainants. There are no penalties for a Complainant who fails to provide enough information in a Notice nor for failing to provide genuine name and address contact details or who lies about not having sufficient details to sue a Poster for defamation.

It appears that a Complainant can attempt to censor a blog article or comment and have it taken down "within 48 hours" (excluding weekends and public holidays) without actually proving any reasonable case as to why this should be done, especially if the author or poster cannot be contacted by the website Operator.

There is no time limit on this censorship, so long as a complainant pretends that they are just contemplating a libel case at some indeterminate time in the future. i.e. censorship within 48 hours even if it never goes to court !

Neither does this stupid law acknowledge the real life experience of blog operators. Some of the Complainants may turn out to be "sock puppets" and to have posted the controversial comments themselves (or to have caused their friends, allies or underlings to do so) in order to harass and try to bring the entire blog offline for political or other malicious reasons.

There are no penalties for collusion between anonymous blog comment posters and Complainants.

Spy Blog is usually amenable to a civilised email (ideally using our public GPG Public Encryption Key) or public blog comment correcting an error of fact or asking for a redaction of personal information (which is very rarely published in the first place, except for a few non-threatening details of public figures).

Therefore, be warned, anyone who is stupid enough to attempt to use the Defamation Act 2013 section 5 Notice against Spy Blog which seeks to remove the new protections which apply to every other form of publishing, will have to comply with our website policy and our interpretation of the unfair law and complicated Regulations:

1) Spy Blog will not accept any alleged section 5 Notices from automated "lawyer bot" systems as brought into disrepute by the dire example of US DMCA takedown notices. N.B. More than 2 electronic threats will be treated as a criminal offence under the Protection from Harassment Act 1977 and will be reported to the Police.

2) Spy Blog will not accept any alleged section 5 Notices from lawyers or any other third parties claiming to act on behalf of a client - the Act and the Regulations (perhaps stupidly) only mention a Complainant, therefore he or she is the only person who can submit a section 5 Notice for consideration. Any such correspondence from shysters will be published, especially if it attempts to impose illegal secrecy conditions.

3) All such section 5 Notices must include, as per the Act and Regulations, the Complainant's Name and Email Address details and exactly what is being complained about and where on the website the allegedly libellous article or comment is located.

4) Any section 5 Notices which do not comply in full, will be rejected - as per the Regulations & Guidance, we do not have to state why.

5) Any section 5 Notices, including faulty, rejected ones, are liable to be published in full, including the Complainant's alleged Name and Email details and any other metadata e.g. DNS resolved IP addresses, on this or other blogs or websites.

N.B. there is nothing in the Act to prevent this, only some vague crap about giving the Complainant the option of telling the Operator not to pass on such details to the Poster, but only if the Operator has some sort of private electronic communications channel to the Poster (unlikely for anonymous Posters). There are no penalties for non-compliance under the Act, which stupidly seems to assume that all websites require people to truthfully Register with them before publishing anything.

6) Anybody stupid or malicious enough to try to censor Spy Blog will be told to confirm that they understand what the Streisand Effect is and that they understand the words "the Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it"

In practice, for most bloggers and self publishers on the internet, the supposed section 5 "defence" against a libel action is no such thing and is unlikely to ever be used.

A legal defence can only be tested in Court, by which time it is too late for those of us on a zero or limited budget - even one day's legal costs far exceeds the typical blog hosting budget for a whole year, so it is more likely that Spy Blog would be forced offline by the threat of legal costs, regardless of the fact that we would "win" in Court,

Controversial Labour MP Tom Watson, is one of the politicians who inflicted the NuLabour surveillance state on us and who helped to ruin the UK economy, but he is also one of the most experienced MPs when it comes to using the internet. He has been prominent in the News International mobile phone voicemailbox hacking scandal and was even put under surveillance by private investigators hired by that tainted media group.

Recently he has been doing what many other politicians have failed to do for so many years, by calling attention to some "old news" but still toxic paedophile ring allegations.

His recent blog post

10 days that shook my world

November 3rd, 2012

It's ten days since I raised a question about intelligence suggesting a paedophile ring that touched the very heart of a previous government. I'd done so because a very credible retired child protection professional had lived with a gnawing suspicion of a cover up for many years.

[...]

All very worrying, but this is exactly what we expect backbench MPs to be doing.

However, Tom Watson goes on to mention:

the 50 plus emails and numerous phone calls and letters I have received

and

I'm not going to let this drop despite warnings from people who should know that my personal safety is imperilled if I dig any deeper. It's spooked me so much that I've kept a detailed log of all the allegations should anything happen

We have some Questions for Tom Watson and for every other Member of Parliament who such alleged victims and whistleblowers may try to contact.

  1. What steps have you taken to protect the anonymity of your whistleblower sources ?
  2. Are you and your staff at least keeping encrypted copies of these allegations, stored in multiple locations ?
  3. Why not publish a PGP Public Encryption Key - you are now quite experienced with computer and internet technology, but if you need help, then contact some experts e.g. at the next CryptoParty London
  4. At the very least, why not install a Digital Certificate on the web server used to process your online web contact form so that the contents can be submitted through an SSL/TLS encrypted session ?

  5. Why not remove all the evil 3rd party tracking from your Contact web form e.g. http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/contacting-tom-watson hands over the IP address and browser details etc. of every visitor to a Google Analytics server in the USA (and therefore also to the UK and US intelligence agencies).

If "powerful people" really are trying to cover up such scandals as organised child rape (the academic term "paedophilia" hides the horror of the crime), then any potential witnesses or whistleblowers should practice some basic techniques to preserve their anonymity when contacting a Member of Parliament. e.g. see the resources listed at http://ht4w.co.uk - Technical Hints and Tips for protecting the anonymity of sources for Whistleblowers, Investigative Journalists, Campaign Activists and Political Bloggers etc.

The Wilson Doctrine is supposed to prevent the "tapping" (interception of the content of communications) of landline and mobile telephones (and fax and email and postal mail) of Members of Parliament by government departments or the Police

However it does not apply to the Communications Data (i.e. who communicated with whom, when and where etc.), which will usually be enough to betray the identities of your confidential contacts in such a scandal.

The "Wilson Doctrine" applies nowadays to the Members of the House of Commons and to Peers in the House of Lords, but does not apply to the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament or the European Parliament, even though these bodies are also directly elected.

Neither does the "Wilson Doctrine" apply to tabloid journalists, private investigators, ex-spook/military/police "security" company mercenaries or foreign intelligence agencies with privileged telecomms and internet infrastructure insider access, who may also be trying to identify your contacts to intimidate them, or to prepare propaganda to discredit their allegations.

N.B. there are no criminal sanctions specifically for the abuse of Communications Data, not even in the current Draft Communications Data Bill

Even if there is no conspiracy of people in positions of power, who might try to silence or suppress such allegations, Members of Parliament and Investigative Journalists have a duty to protect all of their confidential sources, no matter how seemingly low level and mundane. They should use readily available, often free, technical and procedural safeguards, including the use of encryption, just in case there is one whistleblower whose case really needs such precautions, either now or in the future.


Last weekend there were some suspiciously timed Distributed Denial of Service attack against the Home Office website (offline for about 12 hours until Sunday morning) and to a lesser extent the Ministry of Justice and the Prime Minister's Number 10 Downing Street (about an hour's disruption each, on and off) .

None of these websites are vital to the running of the country, especially not on a Saturday evening on a Bank Holiday weekend, when nobody is visiting them, but they are symbolic targets.

The organisers of this supposed "hactivism" were some self appointed faction under the hydra headed #Anonymous twitter hive mind.

See the Twitter hashtag #OpTrialAtHome

The "justification" they claimed was to somehow "support" the controversial Extradition cases of Gary McKinnon, Richard O'Dwyer and Chris Tappin, something which they have not achieved..

Nevertheless these people declared the event a success and then, on the Sunday, they threatened to do the same to the GCHQ website , starting at 8pm GMT on Saturday 14th April 2012.

This "news" has been reported by IT trade publications and picke dup by the national newspapers and broadcast media, especially following the arrests of a couple of teenagers in the West midlands, who may be the vaguely associated with the #teampoison attacks on the Metropolitan Police Anti-terrorism hotline.
(misreported by the "hackers" and far too many other online "news" sources as somehow being MI6 the Secret intelligence Service, who have nothing to do with any public hotlines whatsoever)

As with MI5 and the MI6/SIS websites, only http://www.gchq.gov.uk is valid, not http://gchq.gov.uk on its own

A few hours before the announced attack time, the default GCHQ web page started to be re-directed down a level to:

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/Pages/homepage.aspx

At about 19:40 BST i.e. 18:40 GMT British Telecom , on whose servers this public website appears to be running, put a temporary 302 redirect to e.g.

http://213.121.151.40/TPpRO/c3aba573/43de84c1/www.gchq.gov.uk/

instead of the previous IP address of http://195.171.165.115 which was advertised ahead of time on a Twitter Twitpic graphic:

gchq_ddos_graphic.jpg

http://twitpic.com/97d6yn

Note the ambiguous slogan: "Fight Online Privacy" - are the anonymous organisers / manipulators behind this DDoS attack actually on the same side as GCHQ - both of them appear to be fighting against your right to online privacy.

Note also the inevitable confusion - many of the "script kiddies" and gullible journalists will not have read the announcement properly and will assume that 8 PM British Summer Time is somehow the same as 8pm Greenwich Mean Time. (9pm BST)

Much more seriously, the published comment on this web page is actively encouraging the "hactivists" to download a scritpt kiddy "point and click" Denial of Service attack tool called "High Orbit Ion Cannon" - hence the "pew pew pew - fire your Laz0rs" instructions to the exploited cult followers.

There are no warnings whatsover about the fact that participating in this DDoS attack or even just downloading the HOIC tool is a criminal offence in the UK, with up to ten years and two year in prison respectively.

See the control freak Labour government's amendments to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 which came into force in October 2008 and which claims worldwide legal jurisdiction:

The timing of these DDoS attacks appears to have been deliberately (or utterly incompetently) chosen to minimise any political impact on the Government or civil servants i.e. on a Saturday evening when nobody in the Government department concerned is likely to have anyone ringing up to complain that their website is unavailable, and well past the print run deadlines for the Sunday newspapers.

If people want to protest by accessing a Government website, then they should be able to, but they must also be made aware of the risks of legal prosecution and potential punishments.

The fact that the organisers of these attacks have not done so, smells of Entrapment by Agents Provocateurs, perhaps like the notorious #Sabu, who are under the control of an intelligence or law enforcement agency and who are actually helping to jusify the repressive Communications Capabalities Development Programme being promoted by the securocrats in Whitehall to the bumbling Coalition politicians.
.

20:05 BST - the GCHQ website seems to be running smoothly


The Daily Telegraph story which names last year's expelled Russian diplomat / spy as Mikhail Repin, is illustrated with this photo (see the immediately previous Spy Blog article)

rep_2081087c.jpg

with this caption

Repin, left, was a regular on the party circuit

The obvious question is who are the other 3 people in the photo ?

It is not unreasonable to suppose that anybody who recognises them, will assume that they could be Russian spies or that they are the alleged British potential recruitment targets of Mikhail Repin.

If you save a copy of the image and look at the EXIF meta data with a tool like ExifTool this reveals:

Comment: Russian spy Mikhail Repin (far left) next to Gennady Vladimirov (yellow tie)..At Russian embassy BBQ 2010

Mr Gennady E. Vladimirov was still listed as a Counsellor, a more senior diplomatic rank than Mikhail Repin who was a 3rd Secretary, in the 30th June 2011 London Diplomatic List, but he is no longer listed in the 29th July 2011 London Diplomatic List

Whether that makes him a spy, or not, is unclear.

However, if you click on the Jason Lewis hyperlink, to see which other stories the award winning investigative journalist (who used to work for the Daily Mail / Mail on Sunday), has published recently, you will see this cropped version of the image just showing the face of Mikhail Repin as a smaller thumbnail image with links to the two versions of the story:

a_2081232g.jpg

However the EXIF meta data for this image reveals:

CC_emb27_russia13.gif...Michael Repin (Russia), Gennady Vladimirov (Russia), Matt Boyles (BMW Park Lane) and Joey Zegerius (BMW Park Lane)

Matt Boyles describes himself on his LinkedIn profile as Sales Manager at BMW Park Lane

Joey Zegarius describes himself on his LinkedIn profile as Official Embassy and Security Car Specialist at BMW Group International & Specialist Sales Division

Were any BMW employees the targets of industrial espionage by the Russians ?

Did the Daily Telegraph nick the photo of Mikhail Repin from Embassy Magazine ?

The original of this photo appears to have been taken (without any acknowledgement by the Daily Telegraph) from the Court Circuit pages of Embassy Magazine:

Embassy Magazine 27 - Court Circular - Russian BBQ

The scene was set for a perfect summer BBQ - a warm evening, lush gardens of the Russian Ambassador's Kensington Palace Gardens residence, kebabs grilled on hot coals and ice-cold vodka cocktails. No wonder the Russian Ambassador's party is one of the favourite events of the summer!

Photo Credit: : PIERRE DE VILLIERS

Embassy_Magazine_Russian_BBQ_450.jpg

The original photo image on the Embassy magazine website is called CC_emb27_russia13.gif which ties in exactly with the EXIF Meta Data on the cropped thumbnail image just of Mikhail Replin's face on the Daily Telegraph website.

This Embassy magazine web page also has a photo showing the attendance at the same BBQ event of the Liberal Democrat MP at Simon Hughes, who is also mentioned in the Daily Telegraph story.

Pierre de Villiers is the South African Director of Photography and Multimedia at Embassy Magazine

One of the Premier Partners of Embassy Magazine is, unsurprisingly, BMW International and Specialist Sales

This illustrates the potential threat to anonymity and privacy which even experienced mainstream media organisations like the Daily Telegraph pose, when handling digital images.

See the section on Photo Image Files in Spy Blog's

Technical Hints and Tips for protecting the anonymity of sources for
Whistleblowers, Investigative Journalists,
Campaign Activists and Political Bloggers etc.

http://ht4w.co.uk

if you are a potential whistleblower or an investigative journalist or political blogger or even a police or intelligence agency handler of Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS), you may well need to obtain or recommend, a hard (but not impossible) to trace, disposable "burner" pre-paid mobile phone, to arrange face to face meetings or document / data / money etc. dead drops.

If you have established initial contact with a potential confidential source or whistleblower, at least do them the basic security courtesy of not having to share a contact number with other confidential sources - an investigation into one such source, may very well draw attention to and betray the identities of other unrelated sources who have contacted the same phone number.

See our Hints & Tips for Whistleblowers etc. article: Buying a pre-paid phone card or mobile top up calling credit voucher anonymously

Tesco supermarkets are currently selling what they claim to be the "Cheapest Unlocked Mobile on the High Street" for under £10:

997_450.jpg

Samsung_GT-E1080i_display_450.jpg

Samsung_GT-E1080i_from_Tesco_450.jpg

This is a very basic voice and SMS only phone (no camera, no removable SD memory etc.) but consequently with a long standby battery life (a claimed 560 hours i.e. over 3 weeks), so it could be used as a disposable Tracking device, if registered with a web map phone tracking service.

The choice of Free SIM cards (otherwise available for 99p each) is: Lycamobile and Lebara (often used for cheap international calls) and the main UK brand names i.e Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Virgin.

Tempting as it is to buy two or more such cheap phones (for the spare battery and power charger alone), do not do so from Tesco. They seem to have an arbitrary, unpublished or poorly advertised "rationing" policy in place, limiting the number of such "bargain" phones which an individual customer can buy at a time e.g. "one per customer in 24 hours".

You do not want the supermarket checkout operator to have to "consult" with the floor supervisor or have to argue about how many phones you are allowed to buy, not if you are trying to remain forgotten and anonymous in case of future whistleblower leak investigations.

Obviously if you are getting a trusted third party to buy the pre-paid mobile phone for you, this may be less of a risk to consider.

If you are a potential or actual whistleblower, working in the United Kingdom intelligence services, who had information regarding involvement in torture, which might contradict what the senior managers and officials who will be appearing before Sir Peter Gibson's Detainee Inquiry, would you be satisfied with the assurances given below ?

Would you risk your career or life, or those of your family and friends, on such such assurances ?

See our previous blog article of the 11th August 2011, before the revelations from Libya: Spy Blog letter to the Detainee Inquiry re: lack of whistleblower anonymity protection and immunity from prosecution

The Detainee Inquiry
35 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BQ
Telephone: 020 7276 5544


From the Secretary to the Inquiry

13 September 2011

[name]
Spyblog
Via E-mail [email address]

LACK OF ANONYMITY PROTECTION FOR POTENTIAL OR ACTUAL WHISTLEBLOWERS TO THE DETAINEE INQUIRY.

Thank you for your e-mail to Sir Peter Gibson on behalf of Spyblog and its readership, in reference to the provisions of anonymity protection for whistleblowers and a number of issues related to the Inquiry's work. I am responding on Sir Peter's behalf.

The Inquiry takes the welfare and safety of any witnesses who provide evidence to us very seriously. The Inquiry's Protocol (available on our website) makes clear that witnesses may provide evidence to the Inquiry in private if the Inquiry believes that there is a good reason for them to do so.This is designed to ensure both the welfare and safety of witnesses by the protection of their identity, and the provision of full and frank evidence to the Inquiry. Any request by a witness to appear in private will be given careful consideration by the Panel. By way of further reassurance, the only people present during private hearings will be the witness and any one person they choose to accompany them, the panel, Counsel to the Inquiry, members of the Inquiry staff and contracted stenographers with the appropriate security clearance (see paragraph 37 of the Protocol). Should we find it necessary to seek further information from a Department or Agency as a result of evidence given by a witness, we would not reveal the source of the information leading to the request. We believe that the current measures are sufficient at this stage to protect the anonymity of whistleblowers or anyone else who has good reason to give evidence in private, but we will keep this under review

As you have identified, the Prime Minister stated in his letter of the 6 July 2010 to Sir Peter Gibson that 'the Attorney General has agreed to provide an undertaking that evidence given by witnesses may not be used against them in criminal proceedings, whether their evidence is given in public, private or both (other than in proceedings where he or she is charged with giving false evidence or conspiring to do so in the course of this Inquiry)' We are currently liaising with the Attorney General's office on producing a comprehensive undertaking which we are confident will address the concerns you have around potential prosecution of whistleblowers under legislation such as the Official Secrets Act. We hope to receive a final version of the undertaking soon and will then publish it on our website as you suggest. We will then confirm with the Cabinet Secretary and the Heads of the intelligence services their analogous undertakings to staff in respect of disciplinary proceedings based on the evidence provided, this was also set out in the Prime Minister's letter.

You raise an important point about assurances from the UK Intelligence Agencies in respect of their cooperating with the Inquiry. We have been assured by the Prime Minister that we will receive full co-operation from the Government and its Security and Intelligence Agencies. The Inquiry believes that this would cover all of the activities you have mentioned, as the type of behaviour you have explained regarding the Agencies deploying surveillance techniques on the Inquiry's Staff or asking Agencies in other countries to do likewise would go against this assurance of full cooperation.

Thank you for your recommendation in reference to encryption of the website to allow for individuals to submit evidence while protecting their identity. We continue to review our website and its security and will consider the points you have raised.

Finally on the important point in reference to ensuring that redactions placed on documents cannot be removed, the Inquiry takes its obligation to redact sensitive material, including individuals' personal details where they must be kept private, very seriously and are mindful of this risk. We shall, of course, do everything we can to ensure that this situation does not arise.

Yours Sincerely,

Alun Evans

With your help and feedback (either in the comments or via encrypted email, ideally using Tor or other IP Address obfuscation techniques) we will respond to the Detainee Inquiry, to press them further about the points in our Letter which they did not properly answer.

N.B. there are only a couple of working days left before the Attorney General and the Cabinet Secretary must reply to our Freedom of Information Act Requests for the promised Undertakings:


Spy Blog readers may recall our criticism of US style political campaigning web services "as used to help President Barack Obama get elected":

How sneakily are Blue State Digital tracking NGO political campaign emails ?

Several UK NGO's looked at this technology and chose to make use of it, without using its most privacy endangering features such as the use of hidden "web bug" graphics in HTML emails.

Just in case you thought that the Labour party has somehow changed its penchant for control freakery and mass surveillance, the iPad wielding apparatchiks have now launched a campaign website for the odious Ken Livingstone in his attempt to get re-elected as Mayor of London called http://yourken.org

The social media integrated web based political campaign service which the yourken.org website is using is called NationBuilder.com based in California, USA.

Snazzy integrated political campaign tools - but no privacy

To a political campaign or other non government organisation, this commercial service offers some snazzy tools, setting volunteer activists goals to achieve in terms of organising events or spreading the campaign message. There are blog pages and Google Maps showing where registered supporters are located , with tools to graphically "turf carve your voter file" amongst different local organisers etc. There is integration with Twitter and FaceBook.

NationBuilder_turf_cut_450.jpg

All very slick, but all very American when it comes to privacy and data protection - there is none.

NationBuilder.com clearly states in its "privacy" policy that they make routine use of web tracking technologies like "web bugs":

Clear Gifs Information: When you use the Service, we may employ clear gifs (also known as web beacons) which are used to track the online usage patterns of our users anonymously. In addition, we may also use clear gifs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened by recipients. The information is used to enable more accurate reporting, improve the effectiveness of our marketing, and make NationBuilder better for our users.

Third Party Services: 3dna uses Google Analytics to help understand use of the Service. This service collects the information sent by your browser as part of a web page request, including cookies and your IP address, and their use of it is governed by their Privacy Policy.

No SSL / TLS encryption for registration of Sensitive Personal Data , which is exported to the USA

Although the main NationBuilder.com website does have a working SSL / TLS Digital certificate, presumably so that they can process credit card or other online payments, this feature is totally lacking from the yourken.org website, which handles donations on the main kenlivingstone.com website.

Before even being able to browse the website to see what it it all about, all new visitors are already assumed to be supporters and are asked to fill in a registration form with their Personal Data i.e. home, address, phone and mobile phone, email details, Twitter and FaceBook accounts.

By implication, by virtue of registering for a Labour party political campaign, this Personal Data is being tagged with their presumed political affiliation. Legally this is Sensitive Personal Data defined under the Data Protection Act - there is no excuse for not protecting this in transit with standard SSL / TLS strong encryption.

Simply by accessing http://yourken.org, your computer's IP address and web browser details are logged by both Google Analytics and also by Quantserve, two third party commercial web tracking companies in the USA, through hidden JavaScript and sneaky 1 x 1 pixel sized transparent .gif images which are pulled from the tracking companies web servers rather than from the yourken.org website.

Email Blaster - is a tool for spam, not for responsible political campaigning

The worst aspect of the NationBuilder service is the "Email Blaster" campaign email tool. The NationBuilder website gives advice on creating a "Killer Email Blast" etc. This is email spam marketing rather than proper permission based email.

Just like the Blue State Digital tool we wrote about in 2009, the HTML emails (signed by Ken Livingstone himself, allegedly) sent out by this Email Blaster tool contain hidden "web bug" invisible 1 x 1 pixel graphics, not from Quantserve or Google Analytics, but from london@email-new.labour.org.uk, which is an alias for the NationBuilder.com system in the USA.

If, like most people, this email is read using HTML enabled email software, this "web bug" allows NationBuilder and the Labour Party to track not only whether a recipient has opened the email, but it also tracks other people to whom the "web bugged" email has been forwarded to.

NationBuilder_email_tracking_with_web_bugs_450.jpg

Remember that all such log file tracking information is available, on demand, to US Government agencies, under their PATRIOT Act, or can be freely sold by these commercial US companies.

This is not appropriate for a list of a particular UK political campaign's supporters' home address, phone and mobile phone, email details, Twitter and FaceBook accounts details etc.

The Labour party is welcome to spy on those of its own supporters, who have actually given their prior, informed consent to do this. We suspect, however, that many ordinary Labour party members and supporters will be annoyed, or perhaps horrified, that this is being done to them without such informed prior consent.

We hope that no other UK political party will be tempted to abuse their supporters or potential supporters in this way and that they will shame the Labour party for doing so.

Will NationBuilder.com shut down yourken.org becuase of US trade embargos and sanctions against Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez ?

NationBuilder.com, based in California, may well be dealing with Labour party social media apparatchiks, but they may be unware of the toxic nature of "Red Ken"s authoritarian political policies and fantasies.

It is possible that NationBuilder.com, which is run by Democrat supporters, or their upstream US based ISPs, could shut down the yourken.org website, because of his sycophantic support for the communist dictators Fidel and Raul Castro in Cuba and the anti-American Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They could use the excuse of US trade embargo and economic sanctions laws, or they could simply take a moral stand against "Red Ken".

If the Labour party and Ken Livingstone's apparatchiks really cared about Londoners, they would not have outsourced the yourken.org website to the USA and would have employed a local London based company to provide exactly the same sort of social media integrated web campaigning tools, without the odious "web bug" tracking of people without their prior informed consent.

The Rt. Hon. Sir Peter Gibson
c/o Secretariat
The Detainee Inquiry
35 Great Smith Street
London
SW1A 3BQ

Dear Sir Peter,

Please accept my apologies for this rather long email, but the issues it raises are of critical importance to the Detainee Inquiry.

I am writing to you on behalf of Spy Blog and its readership, which includes many people within the privacy and human rights audience and also people within the UK Government and Intelligence Agencies, as well as Foreign Governments and their Intelligence Agencies.

Spy Blog has been very critical of your (and your predecessors') Annual Reports as the appointed Intelligence Services Commissioners under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

However, unlike some trained lawyers, human rights activists and even former British Ambassadors, we do *completely understand the constraints placed upon you by the relevant sections of the Act* and cannot believe that you are likely to have come across anything directly relevant to your current chairmanship of the Detainee Inquiry, which would question your independence and honesty.

Unfortunately, the Detainee Inquiry Protocol, which you have agreed with senior Government Civil Servants, is all very well for protecting senior managers and officials of the UK Intelligence Agencies from embarrassment or the threats of prosecution.

However, it is is totally inadequate, if you put yourself in the shoes of a potential whistleblower e.g a junior official or sub-contractor to the Intelligence Agencies, whose testimony might contradict the official corporate line, which the senior managers and officials of those Intelligence Agencies have been briefed with.

Currently, there is basically no Whistleblower Anonymity Protection offered by your Detainee Inquiry at all.

Therefore, no matter what evidence or testimony you hear in public or private and no matter what your public report actually says, the Detainee Inquiry will inevitably be portrayed as a coverup and whitewash - trust us on this - we have a lot of experience in dealing with conspiracy theorists.

Perhaps there are no real whistleblowers, with "smoking gun" evidence which would have a major effect on your Inquiry, but you cannot be sure that story you are hearing from the senior officials and managers of the intelligence agencies is actually completely true - they may themselves have been deceived by their subordinates.

However, if, as you claim, your Detainee Inquiry is really independent of Government, you must be seen to make every effort to encourage and protect even a single potential whistleblower.

Spy Blog would like to see you publish, on your public website, your requests / demands to those people mentioned in the Prime Minister David Cameron's letter of over a year ago, setting out the Terms of reference for your Detainee Inquiry i.e. the detailed Undertakings by the Cabinet Office and the Intelligence Agency chiefs and the Attorney General.

We also expect that the Advocate General for Scotland, the Rt. Hon. the Lord Wallace of Tankerness QC, should also re-iterate the promises of immunity from prosecution which the Attorney General for England and Wales and the Advocate General for Northern Ireland, the Rt. Hon. Dominic Grieve QC MP, should by now have made, bearing in mind the slight differences in the relevant Scottish legislation.

Potential Whistleblowers

Spy Blog can "neither confirm nor deny" that we are in contact with potential whistleblowers within the Intelligence Agencies, who may or may not, be considering contacting the Detainee Inquiry.

Such whistleblowers may very well suggest lines of inquiry, or name specific documents or witnesses, which the Detainee Inquiry would be unprofessional not to pursue.

However, your published Protocol for the Detainee Inquiry is very obviously flawed, if you put yourself in the position of a potential whistleblower

There is one oblique reference to potential whistleblowers:.

Paragraph 34

"c) would giving evidence in private ensure the witness's welfare, security or freedom to speak frankly, for example in the case of junior staff who may wish to give evidence that runs counter to that of others?"

The Protocol does *not* provide any practical promises of whistleblower immunity from prosecution.

Just as important is the concept of "giving evidence in private". The Protocol may well suffice for hiding their testimony from the public and the mainstream media, but it does nothing to protect whistleblower or just potential whistleblowers, from identification and persecution by their colleagues and senior managers, cloaked under the veil of "national security" secrecy.

You need to give an explicit, absolute guarantee to potential whistleblowers, that you will *never* consult with members of the intelligence agencies about their potential or actual testimony or documentary evidence.

Publish all of the detailed Undertakings regarding criminal prosecution or internal discipline

The Detainee Inquiry should publish detailed copies of the "undertakings" promised in the Prime Minister David Cameron's letter of 6th July 2010 setting out the terms of reference for the Inquiry, especially:

"The Cabinet Secretary and the heads of the intelligence services will require staff in their departments and agencies to cooperate fully with the inquiry and expect them to cooperate with the Inquiry's requests for oral evidence. The Attorney General has agreed to provide an undertaking that evidence given by witnesses may not be used against them in criminal proceedings, whether their evidence is given in public, private or both (other than in proceedings where he or she is charged with giving false evidence or conspiring to do so in the course of this Inquiry). The Cabinet Secretary and heads of the intelligence services will set out analogous undertakings to staff in respect of disciplinary proceedings based on their evidence, whether public or private. "

i.e. at least 8 written undertakings need to be published from:

1) Attorney General for England and Wales and the Advocate General for Northern Ireland: the Rt. Hon. Dominic Grieve QC MP

a) The Attorney General needs to clearly state that the Prime Minister's Letter of 6th July 2010 and the promised undertakings made by

"The Cabinet Secretary and the heads of the intelligence services"

constitute "official authorisation" and "lawful authority" under the

Official Secrets Act 1989 section 7 Authorised disclosures.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/6/section/7

for the disclosure of any Official Secrets or Information via Questions, Statements, Evidence or Oral Testimony etc. offered to the Detainee Inquiry.

Such leaked documents or other tipoffs from insiders, may help to guide the Detainee Inquiry to demand documents or computer files or human witnesses etc., which even some of the senior management of the intelligence agencies may have been deliberately kept unaware of.

This legal immunity should be regardless of whether Detainee Inquiry evidence is published in public or kept private and must apply to any current or former member of the intelligence agencies, any other current or former Crown servant, or any other current or former Notified Government Contractor etc.

b) Since the Detainee Inquiry is not a court of law or a tribunal or an inquiry set up under the Inquiries Act 2005 and therefore has no criminal sanctions or immunity from prosecution, the Attorney General also needs to give a public undertaking, exempting the Detainee Inquiry members, staff , sub-contractors, witnesses and whistleblowers etc. from prosecution under the controversial

Terrorism Act 2000 section 58A.Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58A

which requires his consent for prosecutions.

This specifically covers "attempting to elicit" information about current or former members of the armed forces, the intelligence service or police constables.

This even applies to those who have been criminally convicted, fired in disgrace or forced to retire, for breaches of security or corruption etc.

This obviously could apply to the Detainee Inquiry, as you will inevitably be "attempting to elicit" information about the identities of current or former Intelligence Agency staff, regardless of whether or not you actually publish any such information.

There is a statutory defence of having a "reasonable excuse", but that can only come into play after the modern day executive punishment ordeal of Arrest, Fingerprinting, DNA sampling, charging, Bail / Remand and a court appearance. Any arrest under Terrorism legislation, does permanent damage to one's reputation, regardless of whether there is ever an actual charge, let alone a conviction, because of the immediate knock on effect this as you are automatically and permanently put onto international travel and financial watchlists and databases and you remain the collective online memory of internet search engines, around the world.

The threat posed by this legislation could easily be used to harass and obstruct members of the Detainee Inquiry or their staff etc, given that they are certain to be asking about current or former members of the intelligence agencies and / or the armed forces and that whistleblower evidence or testimony may include such information, regardless of whether it is eventually redacted or censored in the final Detainee Inquiry report.

Therefore the Attorney General should prevent the chilling effect of this law from hindering the Detainee Inquiry by clearly undertaking, in public, not to allow any prosecutions under the Terrorism Act 2000 section 58A, which might conceivably arise.

c) Potential whistleblowers may currently have, or may formerly have had, access to information gathered under the

Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
Intelligence Services Act 1994
Security Service Act 1989
Police Act 1997 part III
etc.

Such legislation could prevent them from communicating relevant information to the Detainee Inquiry e.g. under RIPA section 19 the disclosure of the mere existence of Interception warrants, or RIPA section 54 the tipping off offences regarding demands for cryptographic keys etc ,

The Attorney General's public undertakings must make them exempt them from prosecution in relation to the Detainee Inquiry, in the public interest.

d) The various inchoate offences of conspiracy to breach the Acts mentioned above, should also be suspended in respect to the Detainee Inquiry and potential witnesses or whistleblowers

There must be no doubt at all in the minds of any potential whistleblowers or witnesses, that they will not ever be arrested or charged, let alone prosecuted, for making any whistleblower disclosures or leaks to the Detainee Inquiry.


2) Advocate General for Scotland The Rt. Hon. the Lord Wallace of Tankerness QC

He must publish the same undertakings not to prosecute under the legal system in Scotland, where it differs slightly from that in England and Wales or Northern Ireland, for example the

Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Act 2000
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2000/11/contents

3) Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell GCB

4) Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6 Sir John Sawers KCMG

5) Director General of the Security Service MI5 Jonathan Evans

6) Director General of GCHQ Iain Lobban CB

7) Chief of Defence Intelligence, Air Marshal Christopher Nickols, CB CBE


These officials must make it clear that the Detainee Inquiry itself i.e. the members, secretariat staff, sub-contractors and all their their families and friends, must *not* be subjected to the powerful techniques of surveillance, which the Intelligence Agencies routinely deploy every day.


"Don't ask / don't tell about contact with the Detainee Inquiry" and Developed Vetting Security Clearance interviews

These officials also need to publish instructions for a "don't ask / don't tell" policy about attempted or actual contact with the Detainee Inquiry by potential or actual whistleblowers and any future Developed Vetting interviews or forms, for current or future staff

If the Detainee Inquiry does somehow manage to preserve the anonymity of any intelligence agency whistleblower sources, there must be a clear "don't ask, don't tell" policy for when intelligence agency staff next undergo their periodic Developed Vetting security clearance interviews.

They should never be asked whether they tried to contact the Detainee Inquiry or not.

No shame or blame should be attached to those officials who do choose to testify to the Detainee Inquiry in public or in private, regardless of how politically embarrassing that might be to their colleagues or superiors.

This "don't ask, don't tell about the Detainee Inquiry" policy needs to apply to both the current Developed Vetting (DV) interviews and forms handled by each of the intelligence agencies themselves and also to any future DV interviews conducted by the Defence Vetting Agency etc., when personnel move jobs to other intelligence agencies or government departments or private sector contractors or consultancies and vice versa.

Therefore, in addition, you need to publish a written undertaking from the

8) Chief Executive of the Defence Vetting agency - Jacky Ridley,

that the Defence Vetting agency will also operate the "don't ask, don't tell about the Detainee Inquiry" policy, when they conduct Developed Vetting interviews with former intelligence agency staff moving to other Government departments or List X private sector companies etc.

Get assurances that the Detainee Inquiry itself will never be treated as a national security investigation target

Some people within the UK Intelligence Agencies will inevitably take the view, that anybody cooperating with the Detainee Inquiry, will have broken the internal code of honour / "omerta" and can therefore not be trusted with any other confidential information. These people, who may be in senior positions of power and influence, must be given explicit, very clear and unambiguous orders, that anybody associated with the Detainee Inquiry is strictly off limits, for any "national security" investigation or snooping.

Knowing what we do about Communications Data Retention and Analysis abuses, there should be clear, public, written instructions from the heads of each of the Intelligence Agencies, from the Cabinet Office and ultimately from the Prime Minister David Cameron, absolutely prohibiting these techniques from being used on the members of the Detainee Inquiry, or their staff, their website, email addresses, landline or mobile phone and postal mail etc.

This prohibition also needs to apply to the *private* phones, emails, social networking accounts etc. of the families and friends of people associated with the Detainee Inquiry.

Most importantly, this public prohibition must also apply to any *potential or actual witnesses* who attempt to contact the Detainee Inquiry.

There must be no Communications Data snooping or Communications Interception authorised under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and no intrusive surveillance e.g. the planting of electronic bugging or tracking devices or cameras etc. sub-contracted out to any Police units, under the Police Act 1996 part III.

There must be no attempts to recruit or coerce any Confidential Human Intelligence Sources amongst the Detainee Inquiry members and staff, nor any or their sub-contractors nor service any of their providers (e.g. their website design or email hosting companies) , neither directly, nor from amongst their families and friends.

The Intelligence Agencies should also be forbidden from using their access to Unregulated Databases such as the ACPO National Automatic Number Plate Recognition Database or the London Congestion Charge monitoring vehicle journeys or the London Oyster Card monitoring Tube and Bus journeys etc. , or the e-borders access to Passenger Name Records from the airline and ferry industries, or CCTV footage in general, which they will be tempted to use to try to track down possible face to face meetings, or document dead drops, between Detainee Inquiry staff and potential or actual whistleblowers.

The Intelligence Agencies should be expressly forbidden from asking their colleagues and contacts in friendly foreign intelligence agencies e.g. in the USA, or in UK Police Forces, or private sector companies, to carry out any of these activities against the Detainee Inquiry or potential or actual whistleblowers, on their behalf.

These instructions need to be made public, so that staff at the Communications Service providers (telephone, mobile phone, internet and postal) are aware of them as well and can question or refuse even alleged "national security" requests for Communications Data or for Electronic Communications or Postal Intercepts.

GCHQ and MI5 should be given the budget and the explicit task of protecting the Detainee Inquiry from attempts to snoop on it by private military contractors, private investigators, foreign intelligence agencies, tabloid or mainstream media journalists and amateur hacktivists etc.

Make http://www.detaineeinquiry.org.uk into a proper whistleblower leak website

The current website Contact pages: http://www.detaineeinquiry.org.uk/contact/ provide no security or anonymity mechanisms to protect the identities of potential whistleblowers, either from foreign intelligence agencies, serious organised crime gangs, terrorists groups or from the UK intelligence Agencies, the UK Police, the press and media or from amateur or professional computer hacker wannabees.

Publish a PGP Public Encryption Key

At the very least the Detainee Inquiry should publish a Public PGP Encryption Key

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

and be properly trained in how to use it in conjunction with their published email addresses.

A Digital Certificate to encrypt a web submission form and a whistleblower submission workflow acknowledgement mechanism might also help with the credibility of the Inquiry.
see Leak Directory wiki (backup site) for examples.

http://leakdirectory.wikispaces.com

Document Meta-Data should be removed before public publication

Please learn from the mistakes made by the Hutton Inquiry etc. when it comes to censoring or redacting any emails or other documents, which the Detainee Inquiry decides to publish on its website.

Please ensure that you do not simply use Adobe Acrobat to put a black rectangle over sensitive personal data e.g. names or email addresses, which can be simply overcome by copying the censored data to , for example , Microsoft Windows notepad.exe.

Please ensure that you remove any sensitive digital or photo or scan or document Meta-Data before publication e.g. using the multi-platform ExifTool

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/index.html

This may all sound a bit paranoid, but the people the Detainee Inquiry will be dealing with, cannot be treated as ordinary members of the public - they have privileged access to powerful surveillance techniques, which, if there is any sort of coverup, will inevitably be deployed against the Detainee Inquiry itself, in order to hunt down and neutralise any potential whistleblowers.

Please feel free to contact Spy Blog for any technical assistance in beefing up your whistleblower anonymity protection protocols and procedures.

regards

[name]

----
http://SpyBlog.org.uk - Spy Blog
blog@spy.org.uk

PGP Public Encryption Key for blog@spy.org.uk:
http://spyblog.org.uk/ssl/spyblog/Spy_Blog_PGP_Key.pl
PGP Public Encryption Key ID: 0x281EBE28
Fingerprint: 9F7A 3F39 BA97 0148 2A1C 65F2 BDAC 5BBB 281E BE28

If you are researching, or writing, or protesting about anything to do with National Security, or Government spin and secrecy, you should take some basic precautions:

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers
http://ht4w.co.uk

This constitutes a valid Electronic Signature, as per the
Electronic Communications Act 2000 section 7,
Electronic Signatures and related certificates

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000007_en_2#pt2-l1g7



The BBC reports that

21 June 2011 Last updated at 16:32

Teenager arrested on suspicion of hacking

A teenager has been arrested in the UK in a joint Scotland Yard and FBI probe into the hacking of websites.

The man, named locally as Ryan Cleary, 19, was arrested in Wickford, Essex. Police have not identified him.

Make your mind up BBC - is he a "teenager" or a "man" aged 19 ?

Scotland Yard said the raid followed a series of distributed denial of service attacks.

It comes days after hackers from a group called Lulz Security (LulzSec) attacked a number of websites both in Britain and the United States.

Scotland Yard would not say if Tuesday's raid was connected to LulzSec but said it had been a "pre-planned, intelligence-led" operation.

However, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said the Metropolitan Police's e-crimes unit had confirmed the raid was linked to the recent intrusion attacks on the websites of the CIA and Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

It says the teenager's computer was being examined for data linked to Sony, which recently came under cyber attack.

Mr Cleary was arrested under the Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act and is being questioned at a central London police station.

Earlier a Scotland Yard spokesman said: "The arrest follows an investigation into network intrusions and distributed denial of service attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group.

"Searches at a residential address in Wickford, Essex, following the arrest last night, have led to the examination of a significant amount of material. These forensic examinations remain ongoing."

Mr Cleary's mother spoke to BBC Essex and confirmed her son had been arrested at 0330 BST on Tuesday.

She said he had been obsessed with computers since he was 12 and added: "Computers were his world."

It is one of the more disgraceful aspects of the mainstream and tabloid media, that they "name and shame" people who have been merely arrested, but who have not yet actually been charged with any offence and who may never charged or convicted of anything i.e. before the sub judice contempt of court rules apply.

What happened to the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" ?

Why did the BBC send a tv satellite outside broadcast van around to the family home in Wickford, Essex and broadcast voyeuristic pictures of it around the world ?

See this Teenager arrested on suspicion of hacking video clip, which was broadcast repeatedly by BBC televeison news, around the world.

BBC_satellite_OB_van_450.jpg

Note the BBC satellite Outside Broadcast van

BBC_Wickford_Essex_1_450.jpg

The number plate of this parked car is clearly visible in the broadcast, although it probably has nothing to do with the house and the alleged computer hacker. - this is "guilt through association".

BBC_snoops_bedroom_windows_450.jpg

What genuine news value is there in the slow pan across all three upper floor bedroom windows ?

Are the BBC complicit in police / government harassment and intimidation, or are they just uncaringly voyeuristic, or both ?

For what it is worth, the inherently untrustworthy @LulzSec Twitter feed claims that :

Clearly the UK police are so desperate to catch us that they've gone and arrested someone who is, at best, mildly associated with us. Lame.
7:54PM June 21st 2011

@superbus We use Ryan's server, we also use Efnet, 2600, Rizon and AnonOps IRC
servers. That doesn't mean they're all part of our group.
7:53 PM June 21st 2011

Ryan Cleary is not part of LulzSec; we house one of our many legitimate chatrooms on his IRC server, but that's it. youtube.com/watch?v=Jf7iBS...
7:48PM June 21st 2011

Will the UK Police actually charge and prosecute Ryan Cleary, or will this become Yet Another Extradition to the USA saga, like that of Gary McKinnon ?

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.

Email & PGP Contact

Please feel free to email your views about this blog, or news about the issues it tries to comment on.

blog@spy[dot]org[dot]uk

Our PGP public encryption key is available for those correspondents who wish to send us news or information in confidence, and also for those of you who value your privacy, even if you have got nothing to hide.

We offer this verifiable GPG / PGP public key (the ID is available on several keyservers, twitter etc.) as one possible method to establish initial contact with whistleblowers and other confidential sources, if it suits their Threat Model or Risk Appetite, but will then try to establish other secure, anonymous communications channels e.g. encrypted Signal Messenger via burner devices,or face to face meetings, postal mail or dead drops etc. as appropriate.

Current PGP Key ID: 0x1DBD6A9F0FACAD30 which will expire on 29th August 2021.

pgp-now.gif
You can download a free copy of the PGP encryption software from www.pgpi.org
(available for most of the common computer operating systems, and also in various Open Source versions like GPG)

We look forward to the day when UK Government Legislation, Press Releases and Emails etc. are Digitally Signed so that we can be assured that they are not fakes. Trusting that the digitally signed content makes any sense, is another matter entirely.

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers and Political Dissidents

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

Liberty Human Rights campaigners

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