Europe’s summer culture crop
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30/07/2010 Summer is the season for cultural festivals. With a bumper harvest of cultural events out there, what better time of year to head off and sample the exceptional places and world-class artists that Europe has to offer? |
http://ec.europa.eu/news/culture/100730_en.htm
RIPA: Annual report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner to the Prime Minister and to Scottish Ministers for 2009-2010
As always, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner tends to reveal a little more than either the Interception of Communications Commissioner or the Intelligence Services Commissioner ever do in their Annual reports.
Unlike the other two RIPA Commissioners, Sir Christopher Rose does actually have something to report about RIPA Part II:
CHIS = Covert Human Intelligence Sources
i.e. spies , undercover agents, paid informers, unpaid informers etc.
CHIS
4.8 There were 5,320 CHIS recruited by law enforcement agencies during the year; 4,495 were cancelled (including some who were recruited during the previous year) ; and 3,767 were in place at the end of March 2010. The figures for the previous year which were 4,278, 4,202 and 3,722 indicate a slight increase in usage.
4.9 During the current reporting year other public authorities recruited 229 CHIS of whom 182 were cancelled during the year with 90 in place on 31 March 2010.
During the previous year 234 were recruited, 153 cancelled and 106 were in place at the end of the year. Again just over half of CHIS usage was by government departments. The light use of RIPA/RIP(S)A powers by local authorities is even more pronounced in relation to CHIS recruitment. 97% recruited five or fewer and 86% did not use CHIS.
There are some criticisms of CHIS management and tradecraft:
5.9 There are too many occasions when inspections reveal poor tradecraft in managing CHIS. Infrequent physical meetings and reliance on communication by text messages are rarely adequate. There have also been instances where law enforcement officers have pretended to be the CHIS when communicating with his associates online, without properly providing the CHIS with an alibi. It seems to me that this is an unsafe practice.
The protection of CHIS is one of the main reasons cited for the vast amount of secrecy and lack of freedom of information and transparency in the Police and Intelligence Agencies etc.
Such amateurism in the handling of CHIS should be punished by removal of those responsible from any positions of power or authority involving CHIS – they could literally get people killed through such incompetence.
Encryption Keys and RIPA Part III
At last a few details about RIPA Part III:
NTAC = National Technical; Assistance Centre, now run by GCHQ, politically controlled by the Foreign Secretary.
Section 49 – encryption
4.10 During the period reported on, NTAC granted 38 approvals. Of these, 22 had permission granted by a Circuit Judge, of which 17 have so far been served. Six were complied with and seven were not complied with, the remainder were still being processed. Of the seven that were not complied with, five people were charged with an offence, one was not charged and the other is still being processed. So far there has been one conviction with other cases still to be decided.
4.11 The conviction related to the possession of indecent images of children and this offence is the main reason why section 49 notices are served. Other offences include: insider dealing, illegal broadcasting, theft, evasion of excise duty and aggravated burglary. It is of note that only one notice was served in relation to terrorism offences.
These statistics further aggravate the injustice to someone who does not fall into any of these categories see the previous Spy Blog article: “JFL” provides some more details about his imprisonment for refusing to divulge his cryptographic keys under a RIPA Part III section 49 notice
4.12 These statistics are provided by NTAC which is able to be accurate regarding the number of approvals it has granted. But it is reliant on those processing notices to keep it informed regarding progress. It appears that there has been delay in serving some notices after approval has been granted (hence the difference between the number approved and the number served) . Notices, once approved, should be served without delay. If delays continue, I will require an explanation.
Sir Christopher does not seem to have delved into whether or not the de-crypted plaintext or the cryptographic keys were actually stored securely, ideally also using strong encryption or not, once they had been seized as evidence through the section 49 orders.
Unless and until the public is reassured about that, then there will be lots of non-cooperation from businesses which risk massive “collateral damage” to their core business systems, as a result of police investigations involving only part of their computer infrastructure, or a few employees or customers.
There is nothing specific about Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), but there is a section on CCTV:
Closed Circuit TeleVision – CCTV
CCTV
5.22 My Chief Inspector has met the Interim CCTV Regulator and, as a member of the Independent Advisors Group, he will represent me in the development of the National CCTV Strategy.
How things have changed. Previously the Surveillance Commissioners took no interest in overt or covert CCTV spy cameras.
5.23 I am pleased by the proliferation of protocols between local authorities and police forces. In particular, I am satisfied that there is a wider acceptance of the need for authorisations to be shown to those responsible for using cameras covertly. But I am concerned at the number of inspections reporting the ability of some police forces to control, remotely, cameras owned, solely by or in partnership with, a local council. Sometimes control can be taken without the knowledge of the council CCTV Control Room or the guarantee that an appropriate authorisation exists. Equally, there is no guarantee that the person remotely operating the camera is appropriately qualified to conduct such an operation. Protocols should clarify the procedures to be followed when control is taken by others outside the CCTV Control Room and ensure that suitable safeguards are in place to prevent misuse.
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/07/28/ripa-annual-report-of-the-chief-surveillance-commissioner-to-the-prime-minister-2009-2010.html
RIPA: Report of the Intelligence Services Commissioner for 2009 Commissioner
Report of the Intelligence Services Commissioner for 2009 (.pdf), by the Rt,Hon. Sir Peter Gibson
Just like all the previous Intelligence Services Commissioner reports, the lack of public detail makes a mockery of the whole RIPA oversight process - it takes 16 pages to say almost nothing at all.
Yet again, there has been no call for Sir Peter to oversee any RIPA Part III encryption key or plaintext orders. This appears to have been left to the Chief Surveillance Commissioner.
Part III of RIPA
34. As I have noted above, Part III of RIPA came into force on 1 October 2007. However, no notification of any directions to require disclosure in respect of protected electronic information has been given to me in 2009 and there has been no exercise or performance of powers and duties under Part III for me to review.
The Intelligence Services Commissioner has gone through the motions with the Identity Scheme Commissioner Sir Joseph Pilling, bearing in mind the scrapping of the scheme which is still in progress.
11. On 16 November 2009 the Identity Minister, Meg Hillier, signed the Commencement Order allowing the Identity and Passport Service to begin issuing identity cards to members of the public living or working in Greater Manchester with effect from 30 November 2009 though it should be noted that identity cards were also made available to Home Office/Identity and Passport Service civil servants as well as airside workers in Manchester and London City Airport for a few weeks beforehand. On 10 December 2009 I had a useful meeting with Sir Joseph Pilling, the Identity Commissioner, in which we discussed our respective areas of responsibility under the ICA. I informed him that I did not envisage that I would need to obtain information about the acquisition, storage and use of data in the National Identity Register by organisations other than the intelligence services. At the time of writing this Report I am not aware of any acquisition, storage and use made by the intelligence services pursuant to the ICA of information recorded in the National Identity Register and in view of the intended repeal of the ICA it is unlikely that there will be any such acquisition, storage or use
Obliviously he has a good professional working contacts with the Intelligence agencies, but does that automatically taint him as the chairman of the Inquiry looking into allegations of complicity in torture of foreign terrorist suspects by MI5 or MI6 etc, appointed by PM David Cameron ?
He is already looking at:
Guidance on detention and interviewing of detainees by intelligence officers and military personnel
39. On 18 March 2009 the Prime Minister made a statement to Parliament about the detention and interviewing of detainees by intelligence officers and military personnel and announced my agreement to his request that the Intelligence Services Commissioner should monitor compliance by the intelligence agencies with the consolidated guidance on the standards to be followed during the detention and interviewing of detainees. My role in monitoring compliance will not commence until the consolidated guidance has been published. Such publication has not yet occurred,
The Report contains exactly the same words as the Interception of Communications Commissioner regarding the Investigatory Tribunal. A public agency broke the law, but will not be published for doing so. Why can they not at least be named and shamed in public ? There cannot be any “national security” grounds for not doing so.
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/07/28/ripa-report-of-the-intelligence-services-commissioner-for-2009-commissioner.html
RIPA: Interception of Communications Commissioner Annual Report for 2009
Another year, another brief Annual Report by a RIPA Commissioner
Interception of Communications Commissioner Annual Report for 2009 (.pdf) , the right hon. Sir Paul Kennedy.
As with all the previous RIPA reports, the statistics about the number of Interception warrants or about the number of Communications Data requests are deliberately not broken down into any meaningful level of detail and should be ignored, although there will no doubt be plenty of media articles which are based on the headline figures.
How many people do these figures represent ? One criminal suspect could have many mobile phones, one interception warrant could be used to capture millions or billions of email messages.
There should be a breakdown of Communications Data requests since not all Public Authorities are allowed to request the full set of subscriber details, “friendship tree” call or email patterns and location data. Revealing such figures would not prejudice ongoing investigations.
As before, there are a trivial number of minor reported procedural and form filling Errors by the Police and Intelligence agencies (Interception and Communications Data) and , to a lesser extent the hundreds of other Public Authorities who have Communications Data powers, mostly due to keyboard typing errors.
Fewer of these Errors are now even being reported, in order to reduce bureaucracy:
3.11 Accordingly I agreed to a change in the error reporting system whereby public authorities now only report errors which have resulted in them obtaining the wrong communications data and where this has resulted in intrusion upon the privacy of an innocent third party. Other errors are simply recorded.
[...]
As before, we challenge the claim that the public are in any way “reassured” by this RIPA Commissioner (or any of the other RIPA Commissioners):
2.2
[...]
The Agencies always make available to me the personnel and documents that I have asked to see. They welcome my oversight, as ensuring that they are acting lawfully, proportionately and appropriately, and they seek my advice whenever it is deemed appropriate. It is a reassurance to the general public that their activities are overseen by an independent person who has held high judicial office
National Technical Assistance Centre snooping infrastructure down for 3 days
The National Technical Assistance Centre was formerly under the Home Office / MI5 now it is under the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and GCHQ.
Amongst other things they operate the “black box” legally authorised snooping under RIPA infrastructure which taps into major telephone and internet company infrastructure (not the same as GCHQ’s main interception infrastructure)
2.27 Three errors attributable to the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC) were reported during the period of this report, one of which I now explain. NTAC reported a technical fault within their infrastructure that resulted in the prevention of delivery of intercept related information to the intercepting agencies for three days. A project to prevent this type of error occurring has been initiated and is expected to deliver improvements in the system in 2010.
How much public money is now being spent on NTAC and its “black boxes” ?
No Interception of Communications Commissioner involvement with Encryption, again ?
Yet again, on RIPA Part III, whilst the boilerplate text explaining the legal section of the Act is copied from previous reports, there is no mention of the Interception of Communications Commissioner having been advised of any Section 49 Notices demanding access to cryptographic de-cryption keys or to the plaintext information which has been protected by encryption.
Were all the cases in the past year really dealt with by the Other RIPA Commissioners ?
There is no mention of any reports or inspections by the Inspectors or by the ICC himself into how well or how badly the Code of Practice is being adhered to regarding electronic information protected by encryption.
Mobile phones in Prisons
It is interesting to see that the ICC and his inspectors seem to have finally taken our suggestion regarding illegal Mobile Phones in Prisons, made in previous years, that whilst they are inspecting the procedures for Interception and Communications Data analysis in Prisons, something which technically they have no power to do under the RIPA, but which they have been asked to do by successive Home Secretaries.
4.12 The inspections have also revealed that an alarming number of Category B local prisons appear to have a very limited capacity to monitor prisoners who pose a real threat to good order and security and this is a cause for concern. The smuggling of drugs and illicit mobile telephones are serious problems for most prisons, irrespective of their security status, and if a serious incident were to occur, which could have been prevented through the gathering of intercept intelligence, then prison managers and staff could find themselves in an indefensible position. Regrettably on occasions my Inspectors still have to emphasise this point in a number their reports.
4.13 The Category B local prisons, which were inspected during the reporting period, were asked to provide details of the numbers of illicit mobile telephones and associated equipment that had been seized in a six month period. Statistics from 25 prisons were collated and these revealed that 1,456 mobile telephones and 797 SIM cards were seized. Under the Offender Management Act 2007 and Prison Order 1100 dated 26 March, 2008 it is now a criminal offence to convey a mobile telephone or a component part of this equipment into a prison without the authorisation of the Governor and 11 of the prisons were making use of this legislation. However, the availability of such a large number of illicit telephones in the prison system is a serious cause for concern because prisoners can also use them to access the Internet.
4.14 Following the publication of the Blakey report in 2008 the Chief Operating Officer issued the Mobile Phones Good Practice Guide which was designed to help prisons minimise the number of mobile phones entering prisons and disrupt the number of mobile telephones that they were unable to find. Intelligence from the Pin-phones does help to prevent and detect attempts to smuggle them into the prison and this was part of the strategy. Clearly quite a number of the establishments are unable to implement the strategy fully because the resources and equipment are weighted far too heavily in favour of the offence related monitoring and this is a continuing problem. It is crucially important that prisoners are prevented from using mobile telephones to conduct criminal or illicit activity inside and outside the prison. Better use of the Interception Risk Assessments will eventually reduce the amount of offence related monitoring which needs to be conducted and this will in turn increase the capability to conduct more intelligence-led monitoring.
No mention of the Wilson Doctrine
There is no mention of the Wilson Doctrine in this year’s public report, except for the background reference to current Prisons policy:
4.2
[...]
Communications which are subject to legal privilege are protected and there are also special arrangements in place for dealing with confidential matters, such as contact with the Samaritans and a prisoner’s constituency MP
See the previous Spy Blog article: When will Prime Minister David Cameron re-affirm and extend the Wilson Doctrine on the protection from snooping on constituents’ communications with their elected representatives ?
Still no progress on the use of Intercept Evidence in Court proceedings
2.10 Both the Advisory Group of Privy Counsellors and the government believe
that the potential gains from intercept as evidence justify further work in order to
establish whether the problems identified are capable of being resolved. The issues
involved are complex and difficult. I hope to be able to report on the progress
made on the planned further work in my 2010 Annual Report.
There are couple of positive bits of this report:
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/07/28/ripa-interception-of-communications-commissioner-annual-report-for-2009.html
Landmines still kill in Europe: Time for an absolute bannbsp;nbsp; There have been more than 3 000 casualties caused by landmines in Europe in the last ten years. Anti-personnel landmines continue to kill or maim indiscriminately long after wars have finished. They are therefore banned under international law. However this prohibition has not been effectively implemented and some Council…http://www.neurope.eu/articles/102091.php
Making Europe attractive to top talent
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26/07/2010 The European Research Council has now funded over 1000 innovative ideas. A further €661m is still available for early-career researchers. |
http://ec.europa.eu/news/science/100726_en.htm
EU’s message to Iran: Return to the tableA package of restrictive measures against Iranian sectors, such as trade, financial services, energy and transport, and certain individuals and companies (visa ban and freezing of assets) was adopted on 26 July by the Foreign Affairs Council. At the same time the Council called on Iran to agree…
Accession negotiations with Iceland get goingThe negotiations on Iceland´s accession to the European Union will start at the Intergovernmental Conference on 27 July 2010, decided the General Affairs Council at its meeting on 26 July. The Council adopted the general EU position, including the negotiating framework.Iceland will not have a…
Restoring confidence in European banksOn 23 July, the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) released its report on the results of the stress test assessing the resilience of the EU banking system to possible adverse economic development until the end of 2011. It is comforting to know that 84 from the sample of 91 banks…
The Sahel food crisis: Do we have to wait for deaths?United Nations agencies have united to issue a joint appeal for more funding to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Africa:
A major food crisis in West Africarsquo;s Sahel region is currently threatening the lives of some 10 million people including hundreds of thousands of children and aid workers need international support…http://www.neurope.eu/articles/102086.php
Letter of rights for criminal suspects
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22/07/2010 Commission introduces legislation requiring EU countries to inform suspects of their rights in writing on arrest. The proposal follows recent legislation entitling suspects to translation and interpretation services. |
http://ec.europa.eu/news/justice/100722_en.htm
EU road safety plan for next 10 years
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20/07/2010 The EU renews its target to cut annual death rate by half. |
http://ec.europa.eu/news/transport/100720_en.htm
Germany pumps Euros into waterThe Albanian Minister of Finance Ridvan Bode and the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany Bernd Borchardt recently signed an agreement to finance the second phase of the Water Supply in Rural Areas Project AENews reported. The agreement amounts to €1.5 million. The aim of this project is the…http://www.neurope.eu/articles/102047.php
The European Parliament investing in Palestine?Mr Salaam Fayyad Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority visited the European Parliaments budget committee to ask for financial support tonbsp; continue. So far the EU has provided euro;5 billion according to the PM.
The was part of a tour of the EU institutions earlier he had been to the European…http://www.neurope.eu/articles/101977.php
European justice at a clickAn Italian travelling in Germany needs a lawyer. A French entrepreneur wants to search the Hungarian land register. An Estonian judge has a question about the Spanish court system. At the moment, it may take weeks to get the information. The European e-Justice Portal that was launched on…
Estonia set to switch to euro on 1 January
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15/07/2010 Baltic country wins final approval from finance ministers after getting the go-ahead from parliament, the central bank and other EU institutions. |
http://ec.europa.eu/news/economy/100715_en.htm
Daniel Houghton pleads guilty to Official Secrets Act charges only
The Guardian reports:
Former MI6 worker pleads guilty over official secrets
Daniel Houghton, who faces prison, was arrested in Scotland Yard sting at central London hotel in 2009
* Haroon Siddique and agencies
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 July 2010 12.26 BSTA former British spy
Working for MI6 / SIS the Secret Intelligence Service does not automatically make you into a “spy“. Perhaps Daniel Houghton’s computer skills were used as a technician or website developer etc., rather than as an Intelligence Officer, who might analyse or control or participate in foreign spying missions with Covert Human Intelligence Sources or “secret agents” or informers or “intelligence assets” etc.
who tried to sell top secret files to foreign agents admitted two offences under the Official Secrets act today.
He did become a wannabe or failed spy, once he attempted to sell British secrets to what he thought was a foreign intelligence agency
Daniel Houghton, who worked for MI6 between September 2007 and last May, was arrested in a Scotland Yard sting at a central London hotel in March after offering to sell documents to Dutch intelligence agents for £2m.
Was the name of this “central London hotel” really not mentioned during any of the Court proceedings ?
Which one was it ? Any notoriety will soon become history and will bring in tourists.
The information consisted of MI5 files he had accessed while working for MI6
Why did an MI6 employee have access to MI5 files ?
What happened to “air gaps” or “data minimisation” etc ?
and a list of his former colleagues with their home addresses and mobile phone numbers.
Not just a copy of an internal email / office / job title directory then, but home addresses and mobile phone numbers. .
This really could have put their lives at risk of harassment or even physical danger.
Did the “Dutch intelligence agents” get their hands on some or all of this sensitive data ? Can they really be trusted ?
At the very least all the mobile phones listed should have been changed.
They should not just have changed the numbers or SIM cards, but also the mobile phone handsets as well, since the handsets supposedly unique International Mobile Equipment Identifiers can be so easily cross referenced with any Call Data Records made by the MI5 and MI6 people using the old phone numbers.
Appearing at the royal courts of justice,
Presumably that should read the “Royal Courts of Justice”.
25-year-old Houghton denied a count of theft but admitted two charges of unlawful disclosure of material relating to security or intelligence contrary to the Official Secrets act.
The MI5 documents concerned specialist techniques developed by spies for gathering intelligence.
MI5 cannot claim exclusive copyright on such techniques, which they may have borrowed or stolen from someone else in the first place.
Houghton burned many of the files onto DVDs and CDs on his office computer before taking them home.
The former MI6 agent, who holds British and Dutch nationality,
One of the hated former Labour government’s “nazi” style powers could be used by the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition Home Secretary Theresa May, to deprive Daniel Houghton of his British citizenship and right of entry to or abode in the UK, just as she has done in the case of the Russian spy Anna Chapman,
Provided that the Netherlands government does not revoke his citizenship first, the British government would not be making him stateless, by depriving him of his British citizenship, which they are not allowed to do.
Immigration and Nationality Act 2006 section 56 Deprivation of citizenship
(2) The Secretary of State may by order deprive a person of a citizenship status if the Secretary of State is satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good.”
approached the Netherlands intelligence security and intelligence service offering to sell information in August 2009.
Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst(AIVD) (General Intelligence and Security Service)
N.B. an SSL/TLS encrypted website only ! When will MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ move to this ? (hint: it actually makes tracking visitors a bit easier) .
A meeting was arranged for 18 February 2010 but, unknown to Houghton, the Dutch had tipped off MI5. Houghton was secretly videoed and bugged as he used a memory card and laptop computer to show his wares to the Dutch agents.
The former spy said he would throw in two lists containing details of MI6 employees he had worked with.
One contained more than 300 names, while the second had the home addresses and mobile phone numbers of 39 agents.
300 names does sound like an internal email distribution list.
39 names are probably his former work mates and friends who he was willing to betray.
How long before mischief making fake disinformation claiming to be these alleged lists of names of MI5 or MI6 employees, gets published by WikiLleaks.org or cryptome.org or by various conspiracy theory websites ?
After Houghton’s initial offer to sell the information for £2m, the price was negotiated down to £900,000 and, in a subsequent phone call, a meeting was set for the handover two weeks later. During negotiations, he revealed he had a second memory card, containing further information, hidden at his mother’s home in Devon. This card has never been found.
Why did he put his mother and family at risk in this way ?
Many people would have tortured and killed them all for far less than £900,000, in order to get hold of that memory card.
There has been no mention of encrypted files in any of the reports on this case – why did Daniel Houghton not bother to use anything like PGP or TrueCrypt ?
Why did he not arrange to use a Dead Letter Drop or even a courier service ?
What about electronic funds transfers to foreign bank accounts in tax havens ?
On 1 March, Houghton handed over two memory cards and a computer hard drive after displaying the contents on a laptop.
As he left the London hotel carrying the suitcase, he was arrested by plain clothes officers from Scotland Yard’s specialist operations wing after a brief struggle.
Why exactly did the idiot agree to any meetings in London ?
When Houghton handed over the information to supposed Dutch spies, he claimed he had given them “everything”.
But officers from Scotland Yard’s specialist operations unit found hard copies of classified paperwork, some marked top secret or secret, while searching his shared rented flat in Hoxton, east London.
Another wannabe spy or whistleblower who had paper copies of secret or top secret documents at home !
Why did he not digitally photograph or scan them and then strongly encrypt the files and then destroy the paper copies ?
They also discovered a Sony memory card containing about 7,000 files, some of them deleted, thought to be copies of a list of MI6 agents and the files he tried to sell.
Deleted files can be recovered, especially from flash memory devices which do not always erase data very well due to
a) their local Wastebaskets (actually hidden under some Apple operating system versions !)
b) Many flash memory cards have WIndows FAT filing systems on them, for which there are plenty of “recover deleted photo images” programs available.
c) Their Wear Leveling algorithms which spread used flash memory locations relatively evenly, because at some point flash memory cells become permanently burned into a logical one or zero state, unlike magnetic recording media.
See the section on CD-ROMs and DVDs and USB flash memory media our Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers – Technical Hints and Tips for protecting the anonymity of sources for Whistleblowers, Investigative Journalists, Campaign Activists and Political Bloggers etc.
Maybe the “etc.” should include “wannabe spies” – although we suspect that such people will never bother to read it.
Some of the documents held by him have yet to be traced, and security service officials have warned that unauthorised disclosure of the material could have a significant impact on operations to protect Britain.
Houghton is also said to hold potentially valuable experience of security techniques in his memory.
So what ? Most readers of Spy Blog probably know much more dangerous stuff than the incompetent Daniel Houghton !
Is The Guardian advocating the abuse of some sort of Orwellian Labour party style “thought crime” offence like the catch all Terrorism Act 2000 section 58 Collection of information ?
Piers Arnold, prosecuting, told the judge, Mr Justice Bean, that the pleas entered today were acceptable to the prosecution.
He asked for the theft matter to be adjourned until after Houghton had been sentenced “with the prosecution’s intention to offer no evidence in respect of that charge”.
Presumably they had little or no evidence of actual physical theft of memory device or hard disks etc.
Unless the hard copies of the secret or top secret documents were originals rather than photocopies or computer printouts, then proving an offence under the Theft Act 1968 section 1 would have been difficult.
Surely the Government’s lawyers must have known that they cannot use the Theft Act 1968 section 1 for “intellectual property” or “trade secrets” or even “national security secrets” since its wording demands the permanent deprivation of something physical.
Houghton claimed his actions were “directed by voices” and the defence has submitted psychiatric reports in mitigation.
This BBC report claims, however, that
Police sources said Houghton appeared to have been motivated by greed.
One senior source said he was living a “champagne lifestyle on ginger beer wages”.
The prosecution is to obtain its own independent report ahead of sentencing at the Old Bailey on 3 September, although Bean warned that custody was “inevitable”.
The Official Secrets Act 1989 section 10 Penalties lists a maximum penalty of up to 2 years in prison and / or a fine for each,of the two Section 1 offences that Houghton has plead guilty to. Technically he could be sentenced to 4 years in prison, if the sentences were made to run consecutively.
We suspect that he will not spend that long in prison – remember that it costs the taxpayer about £35,000 a year on average to keep someone in prison, probably more, if Houghton is put into a maximum security Category A prison.
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/07/14/daniel-houghton-pleads-guilty-to-official-secrets-act-charges-only.html
GM crops – individual governments to have responsibility
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14/07/2010 EU countries would decide for themselves whether to allow authorised genetically modified crops to be grown at home. |
http://ec.europa.eu/news/agriculture/100714_en.htm
Europeans still face barriers to working abroad
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13/07/2010 Survey shows one in two Europeans willing to pull up stakes if they can’t find work at home |
http://ec.europa.eu/news/employment/100713_en.htm
Estonia will adopt the euro in 2011The EU Finance Ministers, meeting within the Ecofin Council on 13 July, gave their final go‑ahead for Estonia to change over to the European currency on 1 January 2011. The Council also set the conversion rate against the euro at 15,6466 Estonian kroonid.
Estonia thus becomes the seventeenth…
Improving the dairy chainCreating more balanced contractual links between milk producers and dairies, increasing farmers’ bargaining power and developing tools to reduce market volatility were some of the key issues discussed by the Agriculture Council on 12 July as it looked for further ways to stabilise the milk…
EU to help with investigation stabilization in KyrgyzstanSTRASBOURG – Interim leader Rosa Otunbayeva who was sworn in as president of Kyrgyzstan on 3 July has already asked the EU for help for an international inquiry into the source of conflict and international police contingent to train and reinforce local police European Commissioner for International Cooperation Humanitarian Assistance…http://www.neurope.eu/articles/101906.php
Pensions to rise higher than inflationThe Albanian government approved on Wednesday the decision to raise pensions and salaries in the tiny western Balkan country. According to the plan the pensions will grow by 6% in the city and 10% in the countryside. About 520 000 Albanian citizens will benefit from the increase. The increase of…http://www.neurope.eu/articles/101862.php
When will PM David Cameron appoint the new Intelligence & Security Committee with enhanced resources ?
The British public deserves to know and trust that the powerful, secretive intelligence agencies like GCHQ the Government Communications Head Quarters, MI5 the Security Service and SIS/MI6 the Secret Intelligence Service are operating properly and cost effectively, especially given:
With the dire state of public finances, there must be financial cuts in the budgets of some or all of these secret agencies. How are we the public meant to know if these financial cuts are justified or not ?
That is the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, which is appointed by the Prime Minister.
However, like so much else, the last Labour Government left this in a shambles, with strong hints of political interference from Downing Street and / or the Cabinet Office, according to the outgoing (Labour) chairman of the Committee Kim Howells.
For no good reason that we can see, currently there is no Intelligence and Security Committee in operation at all.
When will Prime Minister David Cameron appoint a new Committee ?
Will it be given the extra investigative manpower and budgetary resources it needs to work independently of the Cabinet Office etc. ?
At the very least they need forensic accountancy and IT project management resources to be able to understand the technical complexity and impact of potential budget cuts on GCHQ, MI6, MI5 etc.
By the time the National Audit Office or perhaps the Commons Public Accounts Committee get a sniff of such secret projects, there could have been millions or billions of pounds of public money wasted.
Alternatively, if the wrong budgets or projects are cut, delayed or cancelled, then we could needlessly find ourselves in another bloody war or terrorist outrage, because of inappropriate penny pinching.
The remit of this new Intelligence and Security Committee should be expanded beyond the roles of just the three main intelligence agencies.
They should also cover units or agencies which use the same technology and techniques as the main intelligence agencies do. e.g. the various UK Special Forces units like the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), or the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) or the Police units like the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU) or the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command.
It should also look the role of sub-contracted intelligence agency functions either to so called “friendly” foreign intelligence agencies like the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who, it appears, may have been allowed to breach British sovereignty by recruiting and running intelligence assets within UK Muslim communities
They must also investigate the shadowy and unaccountable world of Private Military Contractor / Mercenary companies, operating with UK Military and Intelligence agencies overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan etc. but, it appears, also being used within the United Kingdom.
As with the publication of the RIPA Commissioners’ Annual Reports, it is not acceptable to delay the appointment of this Committee until September or October, they should already have been hard at work now.
Spy Blog would be interested to see in the(pseudonymous) comments or via email (PGP encrypted if you like) , your nominations for who you would trust to sit on this cross party committee of MPs and Peers., bearing in mind that most of the experienced former members of the ISC have now retired.
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/07/04/when-will-pm-david-cameron-appoint-the-intelligence-security-committee-with-enha.html
When will Prime Minister David Cameron publish last year’s RIPA Commissioners’ reports ?
It looks as if the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government, like its Labour predecessor, needs to be reminded of its Statutory Duty, clearly stated in the text of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 – Part IV Scrutiny etc. of investigatory powers and of the functions of the intelligence services
Where is the Interception of Communications Commissioner Annual Report for 2009 ?
Section 58 Co-operation with and reports by s. 57 Commissioner.
(4) As soon as practicable after the end of each calendar year, the Interception of Communications Commissioner shall make a report to the Prime Minister with respect to the carrying out of that Commissioner’s functions.
(5) The Interception of Communications Commissioner may also, at any time, make any such other report to the Prime Minister on any matter relating to the carrying out of the Commissioner’s functions as the Commissioner thinks fit.
(6) The Prime Minister shall lay before each House of Parliament a copy of every annual report made by the Interception of Communications Commissioner under subsection (4), together with a statement as to whether any matter has been excluded from that copy in pursuance of subsection (7).
Where is the Intelligence Services Commissioner Annual Report for 2009 ?
Section 60 Co-operation with and reports by s. 59 Commissioner.
(2) As soon as practicable after the end of each calendar year, the Intelligence Services Commissioner shall make a report to the Prime Minister with respect to the carrying out of that Commissioner’s functions.
(3) The Intelligence Services Commissioner may also, at any time, make any such other report to the Prime Minister on any matter relating to the carrying out of the Commissioner’s functions as the Commissioner thinks fit.
(4) The Prime Minister shall lay before each House of Parliament a copy of every annual report made by the Intelligence Services Commissioner under subsection (2), together with a statement as to whether any matter has been excluded from that copy in pursuance of subsection (5).
Where is the Chief Surveillance Commissioner’s Annual Report for 2009 ?
The Chief Surveillance Commissioner publishes a combined report under Police act 1997 Part III Section 107 Supplementary provisions relating to Commissioners. and under RIPA Part II Surveillance and covert human intelligence sources and RIPA 2000 (Scotland) section 22 Co-operation with and reports by Commissioner
In the past, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner has managed to publish his annual report before the other two RIPA Commissioners.
There are less than two weeks available for the Prime Minister David Cameron to lay these reports before Parliament, before the Summer Recess.
It would be as intolerable as it has been under Tony Blair or Gordon Brown for the clear Statutory Duty to report As soon as practicable after the end of each calendar year, is weaseled into a 9 or 10 or 12 month delay in publication of Annual reports.
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/07/04/when-will-prime-minister-david-cameron-publish-last-years-ripa-commissioners-rep.html
When will Prime Minister David Cameron re-affirm and extend the Wilson Doctrine on the protection from snooping on constituents’ communications with their elected representatives ?
Parliament adjourns for a long summer break in less than 2 weeks. just over 3 weeks, from 27th July until 6th September 2010.
By that time, we are promised, the Identity Cards Act 2006 will have been repealed, all well and good. We will celebrate properly when the National Identity Register data is securely destroyed.
However, there are several things of interest to Spy Blog readers, which this Conservative / Liberal democrat coalition government has not yet done as they should have.
By convention, since 1966, each Prime Minister has re-affirmed the Wilson Doctrine, regarding the supposed ban on telephone and other interception of communications of Members of Parliament, especially with their constituents.
Sometimes they have hinted at slight changes in policy, in their short, bland, detail avoiding statements, which need heavy analysis by Downing Street kremlinologists.
Prime Minister David Cameron has not yet made any such statement.
If he does not want to appear just like his hated predecessor, then he will announce next week, a wider application of the Wilson Doctrine, as we wrote back in 2008:
The Wilson Doctrine should not be abolished, it should be clarified and extended
The Wilson Doctrine should be extended to cover not just Members of the House of Commons, and the Peers of the House of Lords, but also to the other equally democratically elected Parliaments and Assemblies, to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly, to the UK Members of the European Parliament, and probably to all foreign Members of the European Parliament as well.
In principle, the Constituency Communications of elected Local Authority Councillors should also be protected by the Wilson Doctrine.
The Wilson Doctrine is not about rights and privileges of elected politicians, it is about protecting the privacy of their communications with their constituents, who may very well be complaining or whistleblowing about the very Government departments and agencies and other tentacles of the State, who try to snoop on such communications.
Back in 1966, when the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced his policy, there were no direct dial international phone calls , let alone fax machines, mobile phones or internet email or WiFi communications etc.
The Wilson Doctrine should be extended to cover not just the interception of communications i..e. listening to phone calls or reading emails etc., but to the collection or analysis of Communications Traffic Data – who called or emailed who, when and where from etc.
It should also apply to all of the postal mail, public internet connections, private computer networks, email accounts, computers, fax machines and mobile phones etc. used by the elected representative or his office staff, provided that these are used for communications to and from the elected representatives constituents.
Given the scandal over the electronic bugging of an MP and his constituent in prison, who has not been charged with any crime in the UK, the Wilson Doctrine should also be made to cover face to face meetings with constituents. It should ban directed and intrusive surveillance of such face to face meetings and it should also ban the use of Confidential Human Intelligence Source informers to infiltrate an MP or other elected representatives offices.
Obviously where there are actual national security or serious crime investigations in progress, the Wilson Doctrine allows these to proceed, but this should be strictly limited and should require a formal warrant, not any kind of self authorisation by the investigating agency.
There must be no repeat of the appalling mess which the former Speaker of the House of Commons created over the police raid without a warrant of MPs offices.
The Wilson Doctrine should be made to apply not just to the three main UK intelligence agencies GCHQ, MI5 and SIS/MI6, but to any Police or Military units with the legal or technical capability e.g. Military Special Forces units, Association of Chief Police Officers units like NETCU and to any “quid pro quo” arrangements with Foreign Governments or agencies and also to any private sector companies or other non–governmental organisations as well.
If you cannot trust that your written or electronic communications or face to face meetings with your MP etc. is not being snooped on by state bureaucrats or private sector snoopers, then there is no elected democracy in the UK any more.
If the Government really means to restore public trust in the tainted institution of Parliament, then they should re-affirm and extend the Wilson Doctrine, something which will not even cost them any public money to do.
It is a measure of how inept the hated Labour party is in Opposition, that they have not bothered to table any Parliamentary Questions about the Wilson Doctrine, not even simply in order to put the current Government under political pressure, like a proper Opposition should.
Is it because the few Labour MPs who cared about democratic accountability of the powerful organs of the state, have retired or have not been re-elected, leaving behind only the creepy control freaks and apparatchiks ?
The Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs who used to care about these issues are now on the Government side, but they should not let that stop them from raising Questions fundamental issues of liberty and democracy either.
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/07/04/when-will-prime-minister-david-cameron-re-affirm-and-extend-the-wilson-doctrine.html
Alastair Campbell gives a masterclassAlastair Campbell who was British Prime Minister Tony Blairs right hand man arrived at the European Communications Summit in Brussels to give a masterclass in the art of getting your message across.
In his address he accused the media of being focused on the negative and said that there had been…http://www.neurope.eu/articles/101781.php
Drafting budgets togetherThe European Commission is bringing the Member States of its Union closer together once again as it introduces measures far stricter than ever before in a move that effectively coordinates the budgets of the EU.
A Communication approved by the European Commission on 29 June enhances principles presented on 12 May…http://www.neurope.eu/articles/101773.php
Russian "illegal" spy in the USA "traveled on a fraudulent British passport, prepared for her by the SVR"
One detail in the ongoing “illegal” Russian spy scandal in the USA, seems to involve the abuse of a British Passport.
BBC copy of the District Court Indictment against 9 illegal spy suspects (.pdf) i.e. Christopher R. Metsos, Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Michael Zottoli, Patricia Mills, Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez.
48. Similarly, TRACEY LEE ANN FOLEY, has traveled on a fraudulent British passport, prepared for her by the SVR. One of the Boston Conspirators’ Internet Messages provided FOLEY with instructions with respect to her then-upcoming trip to Moscow.
Itinerary to M. [Moscow] for D.; Paris – Wien (by train), Mar 18 in Wien exch[ange] doc’s for British pass[port] – [Moscow] (Mar 19, flight OS 601). Very important: 1. Sign your passport on page 32. Train yourself to be able to reproduce your signature when it’s necessary.
[...]
Will the Home Office and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office investigate this alleged abuse of the British Passport system by Yet Another Foreign Intelligence Agency ?
It is still unclear whether or not an Israeli diplomat was actually expelled, following the abuse of British passports in the Dubai assassination affair
See the previous Spy Blog article and comments: Has the Israeli diplomat / intelligence officer been expelled from London yet ?
Note that this Internet Message , presumably hidden through stenography and / or encryption, appears, given the abbreviations, to have been written in English rather than Russian.
N.B. the current British Passports no longer force you to sign page 32, your signature on the specified box on application / renewal form, which your are warned to to exceed the boundaries of, is digitised.
An approximately half scale image version of your signature is reproduced on the main Passport laminated page
How this is meant to be of any use it for comparison with your “usual signature” ? Many people will had had to modify their “usual signature” to fit within the cramped, “one size fits all” box on the application form. To then reduce this in size by a factor of two as it appears on the front of the laminated main passport page, completely devalues this as a “security” feature.
Why could they not put a full sized signature image on the back of the laminated page, which, apart from the embedded chip and antenna, is devoid of any important information, except for “Official Observations”, which for most people will be utterly blank. ?
N.B. the previous version of the UK Passport , without this embedded chip and antenna, had an identical “Official Observations” page, but it was not laminated, only the previous main details page was laminated. Therefore they cannot now actually write any new “Official Observations” or “Endorsements”, e.g. limits on the right to work or reside in the UK etc. without replacing the entire Passport !
This laminated page has a stupid embedded contactless chip and antenna loop, which act as a a “let’s blab the nationality and / or unique passport number to anybody with cheap unlicensed band radio frequency equipment” device, even before any encrypted data is sent between the chip and the passport reader equipment.
It has already been demonstrated that this can be done at ranges of several tens of metres, way beyond the few centimetres that the Passport and Passport reader equipment require. It therefore puts British travellers at risk of covert surveillance and tracking, as they pass by unseen detection equipment, operated by anbody with access to some cheap electronics..
They are therefore at potential risk from terrorist bombs which are detonated only once enough British passports are detected within range.
Spy Blog recommends, that just as with Oyster Travel Cards in London, you use aluminium metal foil etc. to line your Passport cover, so as to prevent this chip being sneakily detected or read, except when you are actually presenting it at passport control.
Doing so, will, of course, show up your radio frequency shielded passport as a “suspicious” object on intrusive “see under your clothes” Passive or Active Millimetre Wave radar or TeraHertz or Backscatter X-Ray scanners.
See Spy Blog: Foiling the Oyster card
<a href="http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2004/02/16/foiling-the-oyster-card.html" target="_sbfto" title="Spy Blog – Foiling the Oyster Card – new window"
If you are delayed or falsely accused or searched unnecessarily as a result of taking the simple radio shielding precaution, in order to reduce the extra personal danger risk which the Government bureaucracy has inflicted on you, then please let us know and we will name and shame the bureaucrats and politicians responsible.
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/07/03/russian-illegal-spy-in-the-usa-traveled-on-a-fraudulent-british-passport-prepare.html
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