Spooks muscle in

The result of the toner cartridge bomb plot, as with all such individual acts of terrorism, will be to further strengthen, rather than weaken, the anti-democratic arm of the state to use against its own citizens.

Whatever the true nature of the plot, said to originate from an Al Qaeda cell in Yemen, its exposure will be useful for MI5 chief, Jonathan Evans. Evans wants anti-terror legislation introduced by New Labour – 28-day detention without charge and “control orders” in particular - to remain on the statute books.

Before last May’s election, both Conservatives and LibDems attacked New Labour for this open breach of civil liberties. Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg was particularly outspoken, condemning the “control order regime” and calling for its abolition. Now that Cameron is in office, the spooks have told him they need these laws and apparently he says that if Clegg objects, the coalition is “heading for a fucking car crash".

Cameron yesterday chaired an emergency meeting of COBRA, the committee that takes over in the face of major terrorist or health threats. In parliament he spoke of the need to “cut out the terrorist cancer that lurks in the Arabian Peninsula”.

Evans, along with his fellow spooks in the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism based in the Home Office, are lobbying the government hard to keep the laws on the books so that they can do what they want with terror suspects.

The intelligence agencies are already virtually the only area of government spending not facing cuts – in fact MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have been awarded an extra £65m on top of their existing £2.4 billion budget to run their 5,700-or so agents, much to the chagrin of Defence chiefs. Counter-terrorism and spying on the population is a greater priority than the armed services, apparently.

The reality is that however much they spend, countries across Europe, and the US, are still vulnerable to terror attacks. The toner cartridge bomb exercise demonstrates that it is relatively simple to construct such devices. As long as there are individuals prepared to risk their lives – and terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda to fund and organise global networks – this cat and mouse war will continue.

Hyping their ability to prevent further attacks through big-power co-operation and more cash for spooks, is just whistling in the dark. Innocent civilians in cities like New York, London, Madrid, Mumbai and Nairobi will be the ones to suffer. And the threat is not only in the west – yesterday 52 worshippers lost their lives in yet another Baghdad bombing.

Governments who continue to fight disastrous and hopeless wars like that in Afghanistan, supposedly to root out terrorism, will never succeed in protecting their citizens from terrorist attacks. Quite the opposite.

But will they listen to the advice of former Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev who said last week that victory in Afghanistan was impossible and that the same militants terrorising Afghanistan and Pakistan today were trained by the US? Of course not.

Fighting the so called “war on terror” and protecting populations from terror attacks – real or imaginary, actual or contrived - is one of few important roles that today’s political leaders can lay claim to – as they set about deconstructing the welfare state.

And the spooks lobby will continue to enjoy government support as long as that is the case, not only for the so-called “war on terror” but also to rapidly resurrect the role they played so enthusiastically in the 1980s, of targeting trade unionists and others fighting the actions of the government. For example trade unionists like the firefighters. many of whose personal details including home addresses, were this week mysteriously leaked to the Sunday Mail.


Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

America's 'enemies within' number millions

“Imagine being among several hundred million people who wake up each day having to prove they are not a ‘terrorist’ by whatever arbitrary means the government has decided to both define the terms of such a crime.”

No, we’re not talking about a modern version of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, where it’s impossible to prove the main character’s innocence because the nature of the charges or the procedure are never made clear. This is how one free internet software facilitator, David Alexander Sugar of GNU Telephony, describes the US government’s latest efforts to snoop on Internet users.

US intelligence agencies feel increasingly frustrated in their snooping efforts by the mushrooming of new communication technologies, which operate on a peer-to-peer basis. This allows individuals to communicate directly with each other rather than through “official” Internet routes.

So the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Justice Department, the National Security Agency and the White House now want greater powers to intercept their citizens’ conversations and messaging. Charlie Savage of the New York Times reports that the US state is seeking new laws to force providers to build in “back doors” for state surveillance.

FBI counsel Valerie Caproni has told Savage that security officials want laws that would “require communications, including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Websites like Facebook and software that allows direct ‘peer to peer’ messaging like Skype – to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order.”

Therefore they are demanding that:
• Communications services that encrypt messages must be able to unscramble them
• Non-US providers must have domestic offices that can perform tapping
• Software developers that allow “peer to peer” communication must redesign their services to allow the state to listen in.

The threat of greater snooping is arousing a storm of opposition. James X. Dempsey, vice president of US Internet policy group, the Centre for Democracy and Technology, warns that “the proposal had ‘huge implications’ and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralised design. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”

Of course, it’s not the first time that the US state has introduced legislation to help it snoop on its citizens. The Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act was passed in 1994 to help its spooks make the transition from the fixed line copper wire phone system to digital networks and mobile phones. The FBI spent millions of dollars on its “Going Dark” programme in 2008-10 to allow it to intercept such communications.

In ancient Greek mythology, there was a poisonous serpent-like water beast called the Hydra, which had nine heads. If one of them was cut off, the Hydra grew another nine. Killing the Hydra was one of Hercules twelve tasks. Today’s communication revolutions present a million-headed hydra which state agencies are desperately seeking to control.

There can be no doubt that state forces internationally have a Herculean task in their efforts to spy on the multi-platform communications of the Internet age. But that does not mean we should treat the threat of new legislation, either in the United States or here in the UK lightly.

Renewed pressure on Internet providers and servers to give the state access to their customers is a sure sign of undemocratic surveillance states in crisis who consider their own citizens as the enemy within.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

What the 'defence of the realm' really means

Last night’s screening by ITV of Inside MI5: The Real Spooks, could easily be dismissed on the grounds that: “Well, the secret intelligence agencies are hardly likely to tell the truth about themselves.” But in taking this approach you could throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Ever since “5”, as insiders call it, decided to allow historian Christopher Andrew to view its archives and to publish his book The Defence of the Realm: the authorised history of MI5, a few chinks of light have appeared which give glimpses – as in a mirror darkly - of how those paid to spy on us go about their tasks.

Sir Stephen Lander, MI5 director between 1996 and 2002, admitted that the security service has grown considerably since its formation, employing 3,800 people. Of course, MI5 is only one part of the spider-like network of secret agencies which cost the taxpayer around £1.6 billion per year. Lander was quick to dismiss the wildly successful TV series Spooks for portraying MI5 as six people and a chief.

There was a convenient focus on the distant past. But evidently the agencies are still haunted by the Cambridge group of spies which ran rings around British intelligence during World War II and the Cold War. Probably the worst fallout from this episode was that Blunt, Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Cairncross served their Soviet masters from conviction and not for personal gain.

Lander claimed that he wanted to correct “a lot of unjust criticism” that MI5 had suffered. He and Andrew were insistent that accusations it had plotted against former Prime Minister Harold Wilson were untrue and painted Wilson as obsessively paranoid. Clearly the agency was shaken by the large body of evidence which has demonstrated that the Wilson Labour government was seriously destabilised by the intelligence agencies. Former MI5 officer, Peter Wright, whose book Spycatcher was banned by the Thatcher government, also came in for a lot of flack for writing about the plot against Wilson.

But when it came to MI5’s role in the execution of Provisional IRA members Danny McCann, Sean Savage and Mairéad Farrell in 1988 it was crystal clear that three unarmed people had been shot in cold blood with no warning. This shocking incident came to light through Death on the Rock, despite the Thatcher governments furious attempts to prevent it from being broadcast.

MI5 involvement in the following, more recent events, didn’t rate a mention:

• surveillance of National Union of Mineworkers’ leader Arthur Scargill during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike (though the smearing of union leader Jack Jones as a Soviet agent featured prominently)

• the 1984 case of MI5 officer Michael Bettany, who was convicted of acting as an agent for the Soviet Union. Bettany was sentenced to 23 years in jail of which he served 15

• the 1996 case of MI5 officer David Shayler, who accused MI6 of being involved in an assassination plot against Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi and spent time in prison after being charged under the Official Secrets Act

• the operation of agents inside legal left-wing political organisations, the anti-war movement and ecological campaigns.

These issues remain too close and too sensitive for comfort. But far from ignoring the strange spectacle of these agencies becoming “transparent” we should keep on peering inside the weird world that they inhabit. Because as surely as night follows day, the “defence of the realm” amounts to the protection of the capitalist political and economic system by whatever means deemed necessary. As the economic, financial and ecological crises come together in a way that threatens the stability of capitalism, you can be sure that MI5 agents are hard at work on “solutions” that don’t have our wellbeing top of the agenda.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary