war of bullshit

Surveillance technology out of control, says Lord Ashdown

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/18/surveillance-technology-out-of-control-ashdown

Image of GCHQ donught building

The technology used by Britain’s spy agencies to conduct mass surveillance is “out of control”, raising fears about the erosion of civil liberties at a time of diminished trust in the intelligence services, according to the former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown.

The peer said it was time for a high-level inquiry to address fundamental questions about privacy in the 21st century, and railed against “lazy politicians” who frighten people into thinking “al-Qaida is about to jump out from behind every bush and therefore it is legitimate to forget about civil liberties”. “Well it isn’t,” he added.

Ashdown talks frequently to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and is chair of the the Liberal Democrats‘ general election team. Though he said he was speaking for himself, his views are understood to be shared by other senior members of the Liberal Democrats in government, who are also keen for some kind of broad inquiry into the subject.

This idea is also supported by Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ. He told the Guardian he was in favour of an inquiry and thought it would be wrong to “dismiss the idea of a royal commission out of hand”. It was important to balance the need for the agencies to have powerful capabilities, and the necessity of ensuring they did not use them in a way parliament had not intended, Omand added.

Ashdown is the latest senior politician to demand a review of the powers of Britain’s intelligence agencies – GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – and the laws and oversight which underpin their activities.

In an interview with the Guardian, Ashdown said surveillance should only be conducted against specific targets when there was evidence against them. Dragnet surveillance was unacceptable, he added.

Ashdown made clear revelations in the Guardian about GCHQ and its American counterpart, the National Security Agency, had raised important issues that “could not be ignored or swept aside in a barrage of insults”.

He also criticised the Labour party, which was in power when the agencies began testing and building many of their most powerful surveillance capabilities. Labour’s former home secretary Jack Straw was responsible for introducing the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act 2000 (Ripa), which made the programmes legal.

“Ripa was a disgraceful piece of legislation,” Ashdown said. “Nobody put any thought into it. Labour just took the words they were given by the intelligence agencies. I don’t blame the intelligence agencies.

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Pantsdown continues in the article to discuss witnessing the steaming open of envelopes by spooks. In line with the full disclosure policy of this blog I can reveal that nowadays they use endescopes to read letters. The tell-tale sign is a small rip to the seal of the envelope at one end.

[19/11/13  The tell-tell sign of the use of an endescope will usually be on the right-hand side of the envelope’s seal and occasionally on the left-hand side. Why is that?

Continue ReadingSurveillance technology out of control, says Lord Ashdown

No more evasion and prevarication – Britain’s elite must be held to account

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/17/chilcot-inquiry-tony-blair-bush

The blocking of the Chilcot report underlines how the powerful shield their activities from the public

Henry Porter

Traitor Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George 'Dubya' Bush
Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George ‘Dubya’ Bush

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It is the greatest scandal of British public life in a generation, yet Blair and his allies, such as Jack Straw and Alastair Campbell, have never been properly held to account. More than a decade after we went to war, Sir John Chilcot’s report is stalled because Sir Jeremy Heywood, the current cabinet secretary, who was at Blair’s side as principle private secretary during the run-up to the invasion, is blocking crucial evidence to the inquiry.

It is an unbelievable state of affairs. As the former foreign secretary Lord Owen pointed out last week, you couldn’t have a more dubious arrangement. A man who was integral to the government that took us to war is now sitting on evidence of 200 relevant cabinet level discussions, 25 notes written by Blair to George Bush and records of 130 phone conversations between Blair, Bush and Gordon Brown. Heywood claims that he’s bound by the decision taken by his predecessor, Lord O’Donnell, to protect the confidentiality of Blair and Bush’s discussions. In effect, Heywood is claiming that he has no discretion and therefore his past as senior official in Blair’s Number 10 at the time has no relevance.

What is so dismal about this situation, quite apart from the naked self-interest that it represents, is that it underlines that while the British public is expected to put up with ever-increasing levels of intrusion by surveillance, in the name of transparency and security, those in power create for themselves an impregnable bunker where honour, accountability and public opinion count for nothing. They conceal their actions and shield themselves from entirely legitimate requests from an inquiry set up by the prime minister himself.

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But in all this, there is a much bigger theme, which is seen in another sputtering inquiry into the behaviour of Blair-era politicians and officials – the Gibson inquiry into allegations that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects after 9/11 and that officials in the then foreign secretary Jack Straw’s office were aware. The inquiry’s investigations ended nearly two years ago and the report has been sat on by Number 10 for the past 14 months. After the NGOs and torture victims boycotted Sir Peter Gibson’s inquiry, because it lacked credibility, it probably won’t have the damning impact it should have when it is finally published this week.

As a result, Number 10 may get away without following up with examination of cases such as those of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who was rendered with his wife for torture to Gaddafi’s Libya in an operation involving Sir Mark Allen of MI6 during Jack Straw’s time at the Foreign Office.

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Continue ReadingNo more evasion and prevarication – Britain’s elite must be held to account

Tory speeches back on internet archive

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[Related to an earlier post about the Conservative Party disallowing access to historical material on its website.]

 The Conservatives have allowed access via an internet archive to a decade of speeches, after criticism over their removal from the party’s website.

The purge erased records of speeches and press releases from 2000 until May 2010, and a file on Conservatives.com instructed sites such as the Internet Archive and Google, which store copies of webpages for posterity, to remove the deleted pages from their databases.

Those instructions have now been amended, and 1,158 saved versions of Conservatives.com dating back to 1999 are available to view on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

The purge was first reported in Computer Weekly, which noted that among the lost speeches were several where senior party members promised to use the internet to make politicians more accountable.

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Apathy? Alienation? How ‘disengaged’ four in ten voters reject ALL parties

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/apathy-alienation-how-disengaged-four-in-ten-voters-reject-all-parties-8940389.html

Four in 10 people are “alienated” from  Britain’s political parties and say they will not consider voting for any of them, according to new research.

Young adults are even more “disengaged”  from the party system, with 46 per cent of under-30s saying “none of the above” when presented with a list of the parties. Although the polling does not mean people are apathetic about politics,  the anti-sleaze watchdog which commissioned it believes the findings pose worrying questions about the future of democracy in Britain.

Surprisingly, the survey suggests public scepticism is not confined to the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats but extends  to the smaller parties likely to win “protest votes”. People were  given the option of choosing the three main parties; the UK Independence Party, the Green Party, the British National Party, Respect, another un-named party; no party or saying “don’t know.”  The survey of 1,900 people was carried out by TNS-BRMB for the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Lord (Paul) Bew, the crossbench peer who chairs the committee, told The Independent today: “One particular cause for concern from the research is the number of people, especially young people, who feel disconnected from the political system and political parties.”

He said the growth in the size of this group over the last 10 years represents a real challenge to politicians, parties, local organisations and community groups to provide the public with a sufficiently attractive and relevant set of options to choose from. However, Lord Bew added: ” Public perception is not static – it can improve in response to events in the public sphere. That requires public office holders to be seen to be demonstrating the seven principle of public life – selflessness, accountability, objectivity, integrity, honesty and leadership.” [7?]

In its summary of the findings, the committee, said that for the 40 per cent “disconnected” or “alienated” from party politics “hold sceptical or deeply sceptical perceptions of standards and do not trust those in public life.” It warned that  “an entrenched political disenchantment…appears to have acquired a growing foothold in the British public” and recommended further research into whether this “harbours the potential for rejection of the system of representative democracy and for democratic norms.”

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[It’s clearly actual not potential. Politicos seem scared of revo but can’t bring themselves to admit it or that they’re at fault.]

12.50 This rejection of demockracy seems reasonable on reflection: their experience has shown them that democracy is a sham.

Involvement in Neo-Con invasions against the clearly stated wishes of the population, the expenses scandal, politicians lying to achieve power e.g. the NHS, student fees and the Education Support Allowance, VAT, etc. We have a government that has viciously attacked the NHS without a mandate, etc.

It would be unreasonable to expect support for so-called representative democracy.

1pm There is widespread support for nationalisation of national infrastructure e.g. trains and energy, while this is simply not on  the agenda of Neo-Liberal politicians of the indistinguishable Neo-Liberal parties. People are denied the opportunity to vote for a party that expresses their views and values.

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingApathy? Alienation? How ‘disengaged’ four in ten voters reject ALL parties

Torture inquiry ‘finds UK intelligence officers knew of mistreatment’

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http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/nov/14/torture-inquiry-gibson-report-intelligence-detainees

Gibson report, published next week, is said to call for further investigation of how far British ministers were responsible

Image of Guantanamo Bay

An official investigation into the extent of the UK’s involvement in rendition and torture after 9/11 is reported to have concluded that British intelligence officers were aware that detainees were being mistreated in prisons across the globe.

The Gibson inquiry report recommends that further inquiries now be made to establish how far ministers were responsible, according to the Times.

The inquiry headed by Sir Peter Gibson, a former appeal court judge, was shelved before any witnesses gave evidence, amid a behind-the-scenes dispute over the control of information that was to be made public, and after police launched their own investigations.

However, Gibson completed an interim report based on an examination of documentary evidence, and a version is to be published next week, almost 18 months after it was sent to the prime minister.

Following the disclosures of the mass digital surveillance operations being mounted by the UK and the US, it appears likely that the contents of the Gibson report will add to the pressure for more effective democratic oversight of the UK’s intelligence agencies.

Gibson has concluded that there is evidence that British intelligence officers were aware that detainees were being mistreated at US-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, and at prisons in Pakistan, according to the Times.

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Continue ReadingTorture inquiry ‘finds UK intelligence officers knew of mistreatment’