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Bush threatens to veto surveillance bill

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Bush threatens to veto surveillance bill lacking telecom protections

By LARA JAKES JORDAN

WASHINGTON — President Bush threatened a veto Tuesday in the debate to update terrorist surveillance laws, assailing Democratic plans to deny protection from lawsuits for telecommunications providers that let the government spy on U.S. residents after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The threat came in a 12-page letter to Senate leaders from Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell. It was issued as lawmakers prepare to vote on legislation seeking to update a 1978 surveillance law without violating privacy rights.

“If the president is sent a bill that does not provide the U.S. intelligence agencies the tools they need to protect the nation, the president will veto the bill,” wrote Mukasey and McConnell.

The letter was sent to Senate leaders and the top Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the letter was premature since there still isn’t any legislation yet.

“It’s a little early to have a veto threat,” he said.

The existing surveillance law will expire Feb. 15. Bush has said he would resist extending it again.

After nearly two months of legislative wrangling, Reid announced the Senate would begin voting on amendments today. Debate began Tuesday evening.

The administration’s veto threat was aimed at amendments that would bar retroactive immunity to phone companies and other telecom providers that have given the government access to e-mails and phone calls linked to people in the United States.

“Private citizens who respond in good faith to a request for assistance by public officials should not be held liable for their actions,” Mukasey and McConnell wrote.

A bill already approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee “is not perfect,” Mukasey and McConnell wrote. But since it provides the legal shields, they said they would support it if the amendments are dropped.

The Senate could vote on the surveillance bill and amendments this week.

Some 40 civil lawsuits have been filed against telecommunications companies. They carry with them a threat of crippling financial penalties, which the White House says could bankrupt the companies.

Congress has struggled to strike a balance between catching terrorists and improperly spying on U.S. residents since last summer, when it sought to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That law requires the government to get approval from a secret court when it seeks to electronically eavesdrop on suspected terrorists or spies in the United States. The law does not apply to government wiretaps on people outside the country.

Over the years, however, foreign communications have been routed through technology based in the United States — raising the question of whether the government should have FISA court approval to listen in on those conversations. The bill being debated now seeks to resolve that issue.

Civil rights and privacy advocates say current law, which Congress approved in August in a hasty attempt to update the 1978 version, still allows the government to eavesdrop on Americans without court oversight. That law was set to expire Feb. 1 but was extended for two weeks as Congress works to hammer out a compromise.

The administration also rejected proposals to have the secret FISA court decide whether to give immunity to telecom firms, arguing that doing so could merely result in lengthy legal battles.

“It is for Congress, not the courts, to make the public policy decision whether to grant liability protection to telecommunication companies who are being sued simply because they are alleged to have assisted the government in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks,” Mukasey and McConnell wrote.

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Judge indicates he won’t allow ‘torture flights’ suit

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

By HOWARD MINTZ

SAN JOSE — Faced with the Bush administration’s argument that a lawsuit over alleged CIA torture flights could expose state secrets, a federal judge Tuesday appeared reluctant to allow the case to proceed against a San Jose-linked company accused of carrying out the trips on the government’s behalf.

U.S. District Judge James Ware said he would rule soon on the government’s attempt to block the lawsuit on national security grounds, but indicated that the state secret privilege could derail the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit against Jeppesen International Trip Planning, a San Jose-based subsidiary of Boeing.

The ACLU brought the case last year on behalf of five alleged victims of the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program, which civil rights lawyers say involves kidnapping terrorism suspects and secretly flying them to U.S.-run or foreign prisons for interrogation and torture.

The lawsuit alleges that Jeppesen knowingly participated in the CIA program for profit, and provided the flight planning and crew support for the flights. A former Jeppesen employee has submitted a declaration in the case saying that top Jeppesen officials openly discussed “torture flights” and their profitability.

The Bush administration intervened in the case several months ago, asserting that allowing the suit to proceed would reveal information that could jeopardize national security. The government has raised similar arguments in lawsuits against telecommunication companies accused of participating in domestic spying programs.

ACLU attorney Ben Wizner said after the hearing that it is crucial for the courts to address the legality of the CIA flight program.

“This is another attempt by the CIA to ensure that no judge, no place, at no time has a chance to rule on the legality of its interrogation and torture program,” he said.

Justice Department lawyers left the hearing without comment. But in court papers and in arguments before Ware, they warned the case “attempts to probe the most sensitive details of intelligence operations.”

The Bush administration has invoked the state secrets privilege with more regularity than past administrations, and it is difficult for federal judges to interfere when it is asserted. Ware, while conceding the privilege is strong, did express concern about preventing a case to proceed that involves civil liberties.

“It does seem to me that the duty I have is to walk the line between those interests,” the judge said during the hearing.

Ware’s ruling is expected to be appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which already is considering a similar issue in a lawsuit pending against AT&T over the government’s domestic surveillance program.

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Willie Nelson: Twin Towers Were Imploded on 9/11

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Willie Nelson appeared Monday, February 4, 2008, on the nationally-syndicated Alex Jones Show in a ground breaking interview where the country music legend said the twin towers were imploded on 9/11. “I saw those towers fall and I’ve seen an implosion in Las Vegas - there’s too much similarities between the two, and I saw a building fall that didn’t get hit by nothing,” added Nelson, referring to WTC Building 7, which collapsed in the late afternoon of September 11.

Nelson said he was not surprised by the recent revelations concerning the impartiality of the 9/11 Commission - namely Phillip Zelikow, who has close ties to the Bush Administration.

“How naive are we - what do they think we’ll go for?” asked Nelson, pointing out that his doubts began on the very day of 9/11 during an appearance on the Alex Jones Show.

The audio and full story can be found at: prisonplanet.com/articles/february2008/020408_towers_imploded.htm

Willie joins the ranks of many celebrities who have spoken out to question the official 9/11 story on the Alex Jones Show, including such notables as: Charlie Sheen (see: prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/200306charliesheen.htm), Ed Asner (see: prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/310306asnershares.htm) and rapper Paris.

Other celebrities who have questioned 9/11 include Ed Asner, Rosie O’Donnell, Martin Sheen, James Brolin, David Lynch former Dallas Cowboys lineman Mark Stepnoski, actor Mark Ruffalo and many others.

Alex Jones is syndicated over the GCN Radio Network and airs on over 80 AM and FM stations across the country. Jones has been called the father of the 9/11 Truth Movement and has produced several films on September 11th and orchestrated terrorism, including, TerrorStorm and End Game. Both of these films reached the top 10 on Amazon.com’s best-selling list for documentary films.

No celebrity endorsement claimed or implied.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1en0rUx_s0[/youtube]

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CIA admits using waterboarding for first time

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Human Rights Watch says CIA director’s remarks were ‘explicit admission of criminal activity’.By Jim Mannion

CIA director Michael Hayden for the first time admitted publicly Tuesday that the agency had used “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning, in interrogations of three top Al-Qaeda detainees nearly five years ago.

The technique, which critics say is tantamount to torture, was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a time when further catastrophic attacks on the United States were believed to be imminent, Hayden said.

“Let me make it very clear and to state so officially in front of this committee that waterboarding has been used on only three detainees,” he told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“It was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was used on Abu Zubaydah. And it was used on Nashiri.”

Mohammed has claimed to be the operational mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Abu Zubaydah is alleged to have been an aide to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. And al-Nashiri is alleged to have been the operational commander of the suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

All three were initially held and interrogated at secret CIA-run detention centers overseas before being transferred in 2006 to a military-run facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Hayden’s remarks were the first direct official admission that agency interrogators had used “waterboarding” in questioning “war on terror” detainees.

The admission came amid a long-running battle between the administration and members of Congress over so-called “enhanced” or coercive interrogation techniques used by the CIA.

Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey Tuesday, demanding a Justice Department investigation into whether the use of waterboarding violated the law.

Human Rights Watch said Hayden’s remarks were “an explicit admission of criminal activity.”

“General Hayden’s testimony gives the lie to all of the administration’s past protestions that the CIA has not employed torture,” said Joanne Mariner, a spokeswoman for the New York-based rights monitor.

“Waterboarding is torture, and torture is a crime.”

Mukasey told Congress last week that the CIA no longer uses “waterboarding” and that it was not “currently” an authorized interrogation technique.

But he refused to say whether waterboarding is torture.

“There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit waterboarding’s use. Other circumstances would present a far closer question.”

The New York Times disclosed in December that videotapes of interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Al-Nashiri were destroyed in 2005 on orders of a senior agency official.

In his testimony, Hayden suggested that the CIA no longer needed to use “waterboarding” in interrogations because circumstances had changed since the period following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“We used it against these three high-value detainees because of the circumstances of the time. Very critical to those circumstances was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent.

“In addition to that, my agency and our community writ large had limited knowledge about Al-Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed,” he said.

He said the technique had not been used in almost five years.

But Hayden defended the CIA’s use of coercive interrogation techniques as lawful and opposed moves by Congress to make the agency follow rules of interrogation set forth in the Army Field Manual.

He said “it would make no more sense to apply the Army Field Manual to CIA — the Army Field Manual on interrogations — than it would be to take the Army Field Manual on grooming and apply it to my agency, or the Army Field Manual on recruiting and apply it to my agency, or, for that matter, take the Army Field Manual on sexual orientation and apply it to my agency.”

Retired Admiral Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, likewise suggested that the circumstances determine whether waterboarding is lawful.

“If there was a reason to use such a technique, you would have to make a judgment on the circumstances and the situation regarding the specifics of the event,” he said.

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MP first probed by MI5 over 9/11

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

By NICK PARKER
THOMAS WHITAKER
and GRAEME WILSON

BUGGING scandal MP Sadiq Khan was first probed by security services over his association with a 9/11 terrorist, The Sun can reveal.

And it has emerged that Justice Secretary Jack Straw knew of concerns over the Muslim MP’s visits to another jailed terror suspect TWO MONTHS ago.

Security sources told yesterday how 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui asked lawyer Mr Khan to represent him after being accused of being the ‘20th hijacker’.

 

Concerns … Straw

The Labour whip was not allowed to see Moussaoui and was barred from seeing court papers in the run-up to the trial.

But the MP for Tooting, South London, acted as a consultant to the self-confessed al-Qaeda agent — jailed for life in 2006.

Human rights lawyer Mr Khan, 37, who says he loathes terror groups, was the only practising Muslim on Moussaoui’s team. It brought him to the attention of MI5 and MI6.

One security source said last night: “It is hardly surprising he came to the attention of security services in view of the people he was associated with.”

Extremists

 

Mr Khan later defended extremists and Brits held in Guantanamo Bay.

Last year it was revealed that five members of his family belonged to fundamental group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Mr Straw knew on December 14 of concerns over Mr Khan’s jail visits to another terror suspect.

His private office was told then that Press inquiries suggested Mr Khan’s meetings with Babar Ahmad, 33, at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes, Bucks, were being bugged.

 

Named … Kearney

Mr Straw told the Commons on Monday that the first he knew of the bugging allegations was on Saturday afternoon.

He insisted last night: “I was aware in December of inquiries from a newspaper concerning visits by Mr Khan to Babar Ahmad.

“But at no stage before last Saturday was I aware of any information that these inquiries concerned any covert recording or anything like that and I confirm what I told the House.”

Mr Straw is believed to have told officials that he thought someone was trying to “smear” Mr Khan.

Computer boffin Ahmad has been held since his arrest in August 2004 under anti-terror laws.

Tory MPs yesterday voiced fury that Mr Straw had not told the Commons the full story.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “We are told Jack Straw has been briefed by officials on Press inquiries relating to Sadiq Khan’s visits to HMP Woodhill yet, despite his officials knowing of the allegations of bugging, they still failed to brief him.

“If true, this is frankly extraordinary and raises enormous questions about the leadership of this department.”

Tories said the issue was raised with Mr Straw just three days after Mr Davis wrote to Gordon Brown, on December 11, warning him a Labour MP was being bugged.

Number 10 has said the letter was never received. Mr Straw’s officials insist they had been alerted on December 14 by the Press, not Mr Davis’s letter.

One senior insider said: “Jack knew there was some sort of story but he did not know the details. He should have been told about claims the visits were being recorded.”

Earlier, Mr Davis argued the eavesdropping breached the Wilson Doctrine, which says MPs should not be bugged. He added: “This is a serious issue. It makes the PM a liar, basically.”

Leader of the Commons Harriet Harman called on Mr Davis to apologise for that remark. Mr Straw has ordered an inquiry to be headed by Whitehall’s chief surveillance commissioner and former judge Sir Christopher Rose.

Ahmad is facing extradition to the US over claims he raised cash for the Taliban and Chechen terrorists.

The man behind the bugging has been named as retired cop Mark Kearney, 48. He worked at Woodhill jail as a police intelligence officer.

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Satellite Spotters Glimpse Secrets

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

When the government announced last month that a top-secret spy satellite would, in the next few months, come falling out of the sky, American officials said there was little risk to people because satellites fall out of orbit fairly frequently and much of the planet is covered by oceans.

But they said precious little about the satellite itself.

Such information came instead from Ted Molczan, a hobbyist who tracks satellites from his apartment balcony in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada, and fellow satellite spotters around the world. They have grudgingly become accustomed to being seen as “propeller-headed geeks” who “poke their finger in the eye” of the government’s satellite spymasters, said Molczan, taking no offense. “I have a sense of humor,” he said.

Molczan, a private energy conservation consultant, is the best known of the satellite spotters who, needing little more than a pair of binoculars, a stop watch and star charts, uncover some of the deepest of the government’s expensive secrets and share them on the Internet.

Thousands of people form the spotter community. Many look for historical relics of the early space age, working from publicly available orbital information. Others watch for phenomena like the distinctive flare of sunlight glinting off bright solar panels of some telephone satellites. Still others are drawn to the secretive world of spy satellites, with about a dozen hobbyists who do most of the observing, said Molczan.

In the case of the mysterious satellite that is about to plunge back to earth, Molczan had an early sense of which one it was, identifying it as USA-193, which gave out shortly after reaching space in December 2006. It is said to have been built by the Lockheed Martin Corporation and operated by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). 

Another hobbyist, John Locker, of Britain, posted photos of the satellite on a Web site, galaxypix.com .

John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private group in Alexandria, Virginia, that tracks military and space activities, said the hobbyists exemplified fundamental principles of openness and of the power of technology to change the game.

“It has been an important demystification of these things,” said Pike, “because I think there is a tendency on the part of these agencies just to try to pretend that they don’t exist, and that nothing can be known about them.”

The spotters are also pursuing a thoroughly unusual pastime, one that calls for long hours outside, freezing in the winter and sweating in the summer, straining to see a moving light in the sky and hoping that a slip of the finger on the stopwatch does not delete an entire night’s work. And for the adept, there is math. Lots of math.

“It’s somewhat time consuming and tedious,” said Molczan, acknowledging that the precise and methodical activities might seem, to the uninitiated, “a close approximation to work.”

When a new spy satellite is launched, the hobbyists will collaborate on sightings around the world to determine its orbit, and even guess at its function, sharing their information through the e-mail network SeeSat-L, which can be found via the Web site satobs.org . 

From his 23rd-floor balcony, or the roof of his 32-floor building, Molzcan will peer through his binoculars at a point in the sky he expects the satellite to cross, which he locates with star charts. When the moving dot appears, he determines its direction and the distance it travels across the patch of sky over time, which he can use to calculate its speed.

Molzcan declined a request to visit him in Toronto and to be photographed for this article, saying: “No offense intended, but this is beginning to sound like more of a human interest story than one about the substance of the hobby. My preference is for the latter. Also, I prefer not to have photos of myself published.”

Locker, who favors a telescope for his camera work, said that people like him and Molczan were not, as he put it, “nerdy buffs who lie on our backs and look into the sky and try to undermine governments.” Spotting, he said, is simply a hobby.

“There are people who look at train timetables and go watch trains,” he said. People are drawn to what interests them, he said, and “it’s what draws people to any hobby.”

While recent news coverage has focused on the current satellite’s threat to people when it falls from above, that threat is, statistically, very small. Even when the space shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas five years ago and rained debris over two states, no one on the ground was injured.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, noted that 328 satellites had come down in the past five years without injury to anyone. While Johndroe declined to divulge much about the current satellite aside from the fact that it carries no nuclear material, he said that the government would take responsibility in the remote chance of damage or injury.

The government’s relationship with the hobbyists is not a comfortable one. Spokesmen for the National Reconnaissance Office have stated that they would prefer the hobbyists not publish their information, and suggest that foreign countries try to hide their activities when they know an eye in the sky will be passing overhead.

The satellite spotters acknowledge that this may be so, though they doubt that such tactics are effective. Molczan said he believed that the hobbyists hurt no one but that “you can’t say with absolute certainty what effect you’re having.”

Pike said the officials who complained about the hobbyists “don’t like it, but they’ve got to lump it.” Despite the many clever ways that the spy agencies try to minimize the likelihood that their satellites will be spotted, he said, they will be. And that, he said, is a valuable warning: a world with so many eyes on the skies renders deep secrets shallow.

“If Ted can track all these satellites,” said Pike, “so can the Chinese.”

http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=15189

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US government misrepresent Human Rights Watch

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

US: Don’t Misrepresent Human Rights Watch to Justify Guantanamo Trials
Contrary to US Claims, Human Rights Watch Opposes Khadr Prosecution

 The US government fundamentally misrepresented Human Rights Watch’s position to justify its prosecution of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen facing charges for war crimes allegedly committed when he was just 15, Human Rights Watch said today.

Responding to Khadr’s argument that the military commissions do not have legal authority to prosecute child offenders, the US government in a court filing Monday invoked Human Rights Watch to support its claim that the military commissions should go forward. “Not only is this position wrong, it’s absurd,” said Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor at Human Rights Watch. “Human Rights Watch has called the military commissions fundamentally unfair from the start – and even more egregious that Khadr was a child when he allegedly committed the crimes.” In making the claim, the government cited a document that the US Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers – a coalition that includes Human Rights Watch – submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in November 2007. The government argued that because the submission did not explicitly condemn the use of military commissions to try Khadr, it amounted to implicit support. However, the submission cited Khadr’s case as an example of the United States’ failure to meet its obligations to rehabilitate and otherwise treat child soldiers in accordance with their age. “To read the campaign’s submission as implicitly supporting Khadr’s trial before military commissions indicates at best the government’s desperation, and at worst a disingenuous attempt to pervert Human Rights Watch’s well known position on this,” Baldwin said. “The document the government cites actually uses the Khadr case as an example of the United States’ failure to respect its obligatios on the treatment of child soldiers.” Human Rights Watch said that Khadr’s trial should either be dismissed or moved to civilian courts that take into account his status as a child at the time of his offense. Human Rights Watch also reiterated its call on Canada to intervene on behalf of one of its citizens and urge the United States to transfer Khadr to a fair process or repatriate him to Canada for rehabilitation.

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Data losses put UK at foot of privacy league

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

J. Mark Lytle

If you’re already concerned by the gradual erosion of our personal privacy in the 21st century, then the latest report from a pair of privacy watchdogs might make uncomfortable reading.

Privacy International from the UK and the Electronic Privacy Information Center in the US regularly assess how nations treat the rights of their citizens to live without government intervention. According to the 2007 report, both Britain and America are rock bottom “endemic surveillance societies.”

ID cards a risk

Not only does the UK have far more CCTV surveillance cameras than any other country, but it also has suffered a rash of electronic data leaks and placed its citizens even more at risk with plans for a national identity card.

Across the Atlantic, US residents continue to lose freedoms in the so-called ‘war on terror’ that has seen legalised spying introduced through warrantless phone taps and email snooping by the state.

Should you wish to continue an existence, whether online or off, that is free from fear of intrusion, then the report suggests Greece - the only country deemed to have adequate privacy-protection safeguards in place.

tech.co.uk

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Growing opposition to ID cards

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Poll shows growing opposition to ID cards over data fears

· 25% now strongly against their use, says ICM survey
· Majority concerned about sharing of personal details

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Wednesday February 6, 2008
The Guardian

The number of people strongly opposed to the introduction of a national identity card scheme has risen sharply, according to the results of an ICM poll to be published today.Those campaigning against ID cards said last night that the poll, with results showing that 25% of the public are deeply opposed to the idea, raises the prospect that the potential number of those likely to refuse to register for the card has risen. If the poll’s findings were reflected in the wider population, as many as 10 million people may be expected to refuse to comply.

The ICM survey also shows that a majority of the British people say they are “uncomfortable” with the idea that personal data provided to the government for one purpose should be shared between all Whitehall-run public services.

The poll, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, shows that British public opinion is deeply split over the introduction of identity cards, with 50% against the idea and 47% in favour.

Recent disputes over the further delays to have hit the project have strengthened opposition to the scheme, with those who think it is “a very bad” idea rising from 17% last September to 25% now. This compares with only 12% who think that pressing ahead with ID cards, which will cost around £93 per person when combined with a passport, is a “very good idea”.

In the aftermath of the government’s recent embarrassing losses of confidential personal data, public opinion appears to have turned sharply against the idea of sharing information within Whitehall and the creeping introduction of the “Big Brother” state.

A majority - 52% - say they feel uncomfortable with allowing “personal information that is provided to one government department to be shared between all government departments that provide public services”.

However, the poll does show that clear support exists among the public for setting up a central identity register and collecting personal travel details on everyone coming in and out of Britain. It also reveals some support for the creation of a separate database about every child, including details about their parents and carers.

Phil Booth, of the No2id campaign, said: “With a quarter of the country deeply opposed to ID cards, and a clear majority reluctant to have their personal information shared even for public services, the government needs to fundamentally rethink its database state.

“These figures suggest that millions will simply refuse to comply.”

He said the results showed that between 10 million and 15 million could refuse to register for the card.

The Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, said that public opinion was moving sharply away from the government’s ID card scheme as more people understood how intrusive it was going to be, and the more they saw that officials were unable to keep confidential and personal data secure.

Huhne said: “These polling figures are a body-blow to the government’s hopes of introducing ID cards and the associated personal database, as they suggest a large pool of people who may refuse to cooperate.”

Leaked Home Office documents suggested last month that the planned large-scale voluntary rollout of national identity cards for British nationals had been delayed by two years until beyond the next general election.

The first ID cards will be introduced in December this year for foreign nationals resident in the country. It will follow a pilot scheme to be run in London from April to test the technology. The prime minister, Gordon Brown, has confirmed that legislation will have to be introduced before it becomes compulsory for British nationals to register for the ID cards scheme.

· The ICM poll interviewed a represent-ative sample of 1,008 people between February 1 and 3, 2008

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Britain is becoming a police state

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

The pretence of oversight has been ripped aside by the Khan bugging affair: the security apparat has become a law unto itself

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday February 6, 2008
The Guardian

The machine is out of control. Personal surveillance in Britain is so extensive that no democratic oversight is remotely plausible. Some 800 organisations, including the police, the revenue, local and central government, demanded (and almost always got) 253,000 intrusions on citizen privacy in the last recorded year, 2006. This is way beyond that of any other country in the free world.

The Sadiq Khan affair has killed stone dead the thesis, beloved of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, that any accretion of power to the state is sustainable because ministers are in control. Whether this applies to phone tapping, bugging devices, ID cards, NHS records, childcare computer systems, video surveillance or detention without trial, it is simply a lie. Nobody can control this torrent of intrusion. Nobody can oversee a burst dam.

Khan, an MP and government whip, was allegedly targeted by the police for having been a “civil rights lawyer” and thus a nuisance, though the recording of his meetings with a constituent in prison was supposedly directed at the inmate. Either way, the bugging destroyed the “Wilson doctrine”, that MPs cannot be bugged. It appears that they can if ministers, or the police, so decide.

Security machismo claims that in the “age of terrorism”, real men bug everyone and everything. The former flying squad chief and BBC dial-a-quote, John O’Connor, implied this week that it would be negligent of the police not to bug anyone they - repeat they - thought a threat. The Blair thesis that “9/11 changes everything” has been a green light to every security consultant, surveillance salesman and Labour minister wanting to flex his - or her- muscles in the tabloids.

Years ago a lawyer gave me unassailable evidence that a call with a client had been tapped by the police and handed to the prosecution. Such tapping allegedly required a personal warrant from the home secretary who, when tackled on the subject, flatly denied it could have happened without his approval, which he would never give in such a case. I checked back with a police chief, who roared with laughter. “The home secretary is absolutely right. He must authorise all taps sent to him for authorisation. But not, of course, the rest.” Orwell’s cuttlefish were squirting ink.

The grim reality of the past week alone is that it has seen a substantial section of the British establishment allowing itself to believe that private dealings between lawyer and client, and between MP and constituent, should no longer be considered immune from state surveillance. A cardinal principle of a free democracy is thus coolly abandoned. It is not a victory for national security. It is a victory for terrorism.

The monitoring organisation Privacy International now gives Britain the worst record in Europe for such intrusion, indeed the worst among the so-called democratic world and on a par with “endemic surveillance societies”, such as Russia and Singapore. The Thames Valley policeman, Mark Kearney, who bugged Khan’s conversation in Woodhill prison, claims to have protested that it was “unethical” but was overruled and placed under “significant pressure” from the Metropolitan police. He has since had to leave the force. The saga reads like a script from the film about East German espionage, The Lives of Others.

Britain’s poor record is the result of government weakness towards the security apparat. Even among supposed liberals, the response is to demand not less surveillance but more oversight. David Davis, the Tory spokesman, said yesterday: “It’s got to be controlled; it’s got to be accountable.” Civil rights champion Liberty wants “simpler and stronger surveillance laws, with warrants issued by judges, not policemen nor politicians”.

People have been saying this for years. Britain has a Kafkaesque oversight bureaucracy ranking with the one it purports to oversee. Some six separate surveillance monitors trip over themselves. All operate in secret and appear to be one gigantic rubber stamp. The distinction drawn by the justice secretary, Jack Straw, between “intrusive” and “directed” bugging, illustrates the prevailing mumbo-jumbo. The chief surveillance monitor, Sir Christopher Rose, has been asked by Straw to investigate the Khan affair, which appears to be a failure by the chief surveillance monitor. Is this to be taken seriously?

When the council can bug you for fly-tipping, when prisons can record conversations with defence lawyers, when any potentially criminal act can justify electronic intrusion - and when ministers resort to the dictator’s excuse, “The innocent need not fear” - warning bells should sound.

There is no “balance” to be struck between civil liberty and national security. Civil liberty is absolute, security its handmaid. Measures are needed to protect the public, but a firm line needs to be drawn round them. The line must accept a degree of risk, or a police state is just around the corner.

A quarter of a million surveillances in Britain are beyond all power of politicians or overseers to check. It is state paranoia, justified only by that catch-all, the “war on terror”. In truth it is not countering terror, but promoting it. Mass surveillances one of the poisons that the terrorist seeks to inject into the veins of civil society.

It is clear the overseers have gone native. Even the “independent” security watchdog, Lord Carlile, has bought 42-day detention. More oversight will not cure surveillance but mask its spread. The extension from terrorism to benefit fraud, fly-tipping and trading standards demonstrates how the official mind flips to Stasi mode at the least excuse.

To claim that Britain is a police state insults those who are victims of real ones. But I have no doubt that feeble ministers are slithering down just this road, pushed by the security/industrial complex. It is not oversight that must be increased, but rather the categories and boundaries of surveillance that must be drastically curbed.

Of course there are people who want to explode bombs in Britain. Taxpayers spend a fortune trying to stop them. But how often must we remind ourselves that the bomber need not kill to achieve his end when we appease his yearning for the martyrdom of repression? The amount of surveillance in Britain is grotesque. It is a sign of the corruption of power, and nothing else.

Have Your Say: Britain is becoming a police state
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VIDEO: Bhutto said Omar Sheikh murdered bin Laden

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

AlJazeera

Sir David speaks to former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto about her controversial return to Pakistan, who she thinks is behind the deadly bombing of her convoy in Karachi last month, and whether she and Musharraf can forge a powersharing agreement 

Bhutto said Omar Sheikh murdered Osama bin Laden In 2006, Musharraf wrote a book in which he stated that Omar Sheikh, one of the primary financers of the 9/11 attacks, may have worked for British intelligence during the 1990s.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ[/youtube]

Have Your Say: VIDEO: Bhutto said Omar Sheikh murdered bin Laden
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.