This was a Labour government approved and funded plan to literally create CCTV Camera and Automatic Number Plate Recognition enforced apartheid ghettos in two districts of Birmingham.

Such mass surveillance schemes attack or destroy the fundamental human rights to freedom of travel and freedom of association, of millions of innocent people. Such schemes are a victory for our enemies, who aim to destroy our free society and help to create domestic extremists or terrorists.

The full text of the actual Review: Project Champion Review (.pdf)

N.B. this was not a full inquiry, with powers to punish the guilty or incompetent bureaucrats, however the Report is reasonably hard hitting in its conclusions.

This Review benefited from the expertise of one of our favourite Cross-Bench Peers, the Intelligence and Security Committee.

The blame for this scandal should not be heaped entirely on the West Midlands Police.

• Who will cross examine the roles played by the West Midlands Police Authority and Birmingham Council ?

• Since the £3 million was approved from central government public anti-terrorism funds, who will identify and cross examine the bureaucrats and politicians responsible for this evil Orwellian mass surveillance scheme ?

• Who will investigate the Home Office (especially the Office for security and Counter-Terrorism) , ACPO (TAM), the Security Service MI5 and the "Prevent" strand of the CONTEST counter-terrorism strategy ?

  
  To Prevent

  This is a long term and vital element of CONTEST, focusing on building relationships with all members of the community and enhancing links with key organisations.

  Our 'Prevent' work will provide not only reassurance to vulnerable groups but also potentially impact upon the underlying causes of terrorism and diminish support for terrorists.
  
  

If the appalling NuLabour cheerleader Hazel Blears is allowed to serve on the Intelligence and Security Committee. then they cannot be trusted to investigate this scandal properly. Hazel Blears was the Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government when this Project Champion was proposed implemented. She was politically responsible for at least part of the PREVENT strand of CONTEST - so there would be an obvious conflict of interest whenever.the ISC looks into this policy area.

She cannot be trusted to keep classified documents secret, so her presence on the ISC will mean that they will not be given full access to documents and witnesses - see the previous Spy Blog article: Proposed Intelligence and Security Committee appointments - do *not* let Hazel Blears anywhere near the ISC !

We would also like to know

• Are there other secret mass surveillance projects using overt and covert CCTV and ANPR technology in other British cities ?

• Are there there Mobile Phone based "security cordons" using the same sort of combination of Cellular transmitter ID and / or antenna triangulation and web based geographical mapping and tracking used for Electronic Tags worn by criminals or by people subjected to Control Orders , to snoop on the locations and movements and meeting patterns of thousands or millions of innocent people in the Alum Rock and Washwood Heath areas of Birmingham or in London or Manchester or Leeds / Bradford etc. ?

• Are there any other non-Mobile Phone call technologies e.g. BlueTooth and / or WiFi or contactless Passport or Oyster travel card etc. unlicensed Industrial Scientific Medical band radio snooping and surveillance schemes in these areas, which have supposedly been installed for anti-terrorism purposes, but which have mutated , through lack of transparent public scrutiny, into secret mass surveillance schemes, which are open to abuse by authorised insiders or by external agencies ?

• Have any of these technologies been used to target and stigmatise or harass members of ethnic or religious minorities or otherwise peaceful political opponents of the Labour government, as has already happened with the national ANPR database and the Police National Computer ?

• Will the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government actually investigate what the creepy Labour control freaks specifically authorised, or turned a blind eye to, in terms of such mass surveillance schemes and will they undo the damage which has been done to our freedoms and liberties ?

If you know about any other such current or future mass surveillance schemes, please contact us pseudo-anonymously via the blog comments or email, PGP encrypted if possible, taking the usual precautions - see our http://ht4w.co.uk - 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.

The Threat to National Security

Address at the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals by the Director General of the Security Service, Jonathan Evans.

16 September 2010

[...]

10. It is interesting to note in this context that in the last ten years what might be called a "zero tolerance" attitude to terrorist risk in Great Britain has become more widespread. While it has always been the case that the authorities have made every effort to prevent terrorist attacks, it used to be accepted as part of everyday life that sometimes the terrorists would get lucky and there would be an attack. In recent years we appear increasingly to have imported from the American media the assumption that terrorism is 100% preventable and any incident that is not prevented is seen as a culpable government failure. This is a nonsensical way to consider terrorist risk and only plays into the hands of the terrorists themselves. Risk can be managed and reduced but it cannot realistically be abolished and if we delude ourselves that it can we are setting ourselves up for a nasty disappointment.

We agree with this, except that it is unfair to simply blame this risk aversion / "no stone unturned" / Cover My Bureaucratic Backside nonsense on the "American media". The morally weak, unscrupulous and incompetent Labour party control freaks, who were in positions of power in Government, are at least as much to blame.

They were always willing to Be Seen To Be Doing Something about terrorist threats, even though they were helping to make matters worse.

11. In the investigations that we are pursuing day to day, sometimes our ability to uncover and disrupt a threat goes right down to the wire, as was the case with the airline liquid bomb plot in 2006. The plotters were only days away from mounting an attack. Sometimes it is possible or necessary to step in much earlier, though in such cases it can be hard to get enough evidence to bring criminal charges. But I would rather face criticism when there is no prosecution (often accompanied by conspiracy theories about what was supposedly going on) than see a plot come to fruition because we had not acted soon enough. Operation Pathway, the disruption of an Al Qaida cell in North West England 18 months ago, is a good example of a necessarily early intervention where criminal charges could not eventually be sustained. The case has subsequently been reviewed by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and Mr Justice Mitting concluded that the case involved a genuine threat from individuals tasked by Al Qaida. Whilst we are committed to prosecutions wherever possible it is a sad fact that for all sorts of good reasons terrorist threats can still exist which the English criminal justice system cannot reach. The government cannot absolve itself of the responsibility to protect its citizens just because the criminal law cannot, in the particular circumstances, serve the purpose.

"The government cannot absolve itself of the responsibility to protect its citizens just because the criminal law cannot, in the particular circumstances, serve the purpose."

No ! This is an argument for extra- judicial punishments and for the harassment of people who should be treated as "innocent until proven guilty, on actual evidence" regardless.

Where has this stupid idea been imported from ?

This weasel worded paragraph tries to imply that all of the people who were arrested under Operation Pathway pose a terrorist threat, which is obviously untrue.

There is also no mention of the "collateral damage" caused by the hurried arrests themselves, where at least two completely innocent people were forced to the ground at gunpoint, in public, putting their lives and those of the passing public at risk unnecessarily, before they were released without being arrested, and without any public apology or compensation.

Remember that despite intensive forensic searches, no weapons, explosive or terrorist money etc. was ever found in Operation Pathway.

Surely the benefit of doubt must be given to terrorist suspects, where it is not possible to catch them red handed and they should simply be be let go and kept under surveillance ?

This is an acceptable risk, as per the argument outlined in paragraph 10, because otherwise there is far too much "collateral damage" to innocent people and the terrorist s will have won a victory by conning the Government and intelligence agencies into destroying our freedoms and liberties, which is precisely what the terrorists want to achieve.

There is no evidence that the widely condemned house arrest and other restrictions without any trial or evidence, through the "Control Orders" scheme works at all.

Jonathan Evans appears to be arguing for its continuation, and possible extension to people who have been released after having served their time in prison for terrorist related offences.

Finally MI5 appears to be moving into the 21st century.

21. I would like to conclude with a brief reference to the espionage threat. Events over the summer in the United States underlined the continuing level of covert intelligence activity that takes place internationally. Espionage did not start with the Cold War and it did not end with it either. Both traditional and cyber espionage continue to pose a threat to British interests, with the commercial sector very much in the front line along with more traditional diplomatic and defence interests. Using cyberspace, especially the Internet, as a vector for espionage has lowered the barriers to entry and has also made attribution of attacks more difficult, reducing the political risks of spying. And cyber espionage can be facilitated by, and facilitate, traditional human spying. So the overall likelihood of any particular entity being the subject of state espionage has probably never been higher, though paradoxically many of the vulnerabilities exploited both in cyber espionage and traditional espionage are relatively straightforward to plug if you are aware of them. Cyber security is a priority for the government both in respect of national security and economic harm. Ensuring that well informed advice is available to those who need it, including through the use of private sector partners is, and will remain, vital.

"though paradoxically many of the vulnerabilities exploited both in cyber espionage and traditional espionage are relatively straightforward to plug if you are aware of them"

Another argument for not letting Hazel Blears anywhere near the Intelligence and Security Committee - see the previous Spy Blog article:

Proposed Intelligence and Security Committee appointments - do *not* let Hazel Blears anywhere near the ISC !

Unfortunately, MI5 itself has a history of "cyber security" blunders with their public website, their public alert email system and with the activities of the likes of Daniel Houghton, all of which were "relatively straightforward to plug if you are aware of them".

Conservative Minister Damian Green speaking for the Conservative / Liberal Democrat Coalition Government, described the cross party NO2ID Campaign as "one of the most successful pressure groups in history.", one which Spy Blog has been associated with since before its formal inception.

Our authoritarian opponents spent tens of millions of pounds of tax payers money, where we only had a few thousand pounds of donations and tens of thousands of hours of genuine, committed, grassroots activist time.

Active Opposition to the authoritarian Labour ID Card / National Identity Register should have been a natural Conservative party reaction, as it was, to their credit, with the Liberal Democrats.Opposition to such a centralised, authoritarian scheme, should have also come naturally to the Labour party, but, to their shame, they sacrificed any principles they may once have had, for the lure of "the ends justify the means" political power, just like any other creepy proto--totalitarian bunch of fanatics..

To their credit, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minster Nick Clegg have now, finally, after 4 months of dithering, started to deliver on their pre-election promises to repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006.

Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 15 September 2010, c961 - new window">Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 15 September 2010, c961

[...]

but I also pay tribute to the No2ID campaign, which can chalk itself up as one of the most successful pressure groups in history. It was formed less than 10 years ago, and within a decade of its formation it has achieved its principal aim."

[...]

HC Deb, 15 September 2010, c967

[...]

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

The Repeal of Identity Cards Act 2006, via the Identity Documents Bill 2010, may have achieved its Third and final reading in the House of Commons, assuming that the House of Lords do not send it back, but Rt. Hon. Damian Green MP is mistaken if he thinks that the work of the NO2ID Campaign "Stop the Database State" is over.

Even the multiply disgraced, creepy, incompetent, authoritarian architect of this ill advised scheme, David Blunkett seem to be as close as any Labour politician ever comes, to admitting his past mistakes.

However, we will not open a bottle of champagne, until the Identity Cards Act 2006 is firmly repealed, and, a couple of months later, the execrable, prototype centralised national biometric database is utterly destroyed.

Unfortunately, Whitehall appears to have succeeded in retaining the core of the biometric database system, for use or abuse against "foreigners" - the bureaucratic control freaks were treating British Citizens as foreigners in their own country and they may attempt to do so again in the future.

Why was NO2ID "dis-invited" from giving evidence to the Commons Committee on this Bill ? We have heard that this was due to the incompetent former Labour Minister in charge of ID Card, Meg Hillier.

The Price of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance.

Spy Blog and NO2ID will remain vigilant against actual or potential Government abuses of our fundamental rights to freedom, liberty and privacy, of which there are many.

We will also highlight the privacy abuses being proposed or perpetrated by the Private Sector and by Foreign Governments e.g. in the USA, the European Union etc.

It is more important than ever that you join or financially support the cross party NO2ID Campaign

Over 4 months later the new Intelligence and Security Committee is taking shape, with the appalling prospect of the incompetent and untrustworthy "New Labour android" Hazel Blears being given an important role as a member.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former Conservative Foreign Secretary (therefore formerly in charge of MI6 the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ) was appointed as the chair by Prime Minister David Cameron back in July.

13 Sep 2010 : Column 710

Business without Debate
Business of the House

[...]

INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY

Resolved,

That Hazel Blears, Sir Menzies Campbell, Mr Mark Field, Paul Goggins, Mr George Howarth, Dr Julian Lewis and Sir Malcolm Rifkind be recommended to the Prime Minister for appointment to the Intelligence and Security Committee under section 10 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994.- (Angela Watkinson , on behalf of the Committee of Selection. )

The peculiar Intelligence and Committee, which is neither a Select Committee nor a Joint Committee of Parliament, is not yet complete, as the (token) member or members from the House of Lords have not yet been appointed. It is very unusual that there is not more of a Conservative / Liberal Democrat Coalition majority on this Committee.

For the first time, Parliament is meant to have a slightly bigger role in appointing members to the ISC, rather than simply leaving it up to the Prime Minister and his inner circle of advisors and cronies, as before.

It would be interesting if David Cameron actually rejected some or all of these recommendations. He should certainly reject Hazel Blears.!

• Hazel Blears (Labour) - was the Home Office Minister of State (Crime Reduction, Policing & Community Safety) and then Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety). She also led the "community snooping" initiatives when Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government. She helped to force the notorious Identity Cards Act 2006 into law.

  Her record as one of the architects of the Labour Big Brother / Big Nanny / Surveillance / Database State makes her appointment to the Intelligence and Security Committee particularly unwelcome as she simply cannot be trusted to protect ordinary, innocent, law abiding members of the public, from such creepy control freakery.

  She featured heavily as one of the worst offenders in the "MPs' expenses" scandals: e.g. this Daily Mail report: MPs' EXPENSES: Blears writes £13,332 cheque to Inland Revenue for Capital Gains Tax avoided on 'second home'

  If she is appointed, nobody should believe that Britain's secretive intelligence agencies will not continue to hide secrets from scrutiny by the Intelligence and Security Committee. If Hazel Blears is appointed, one could sympathise with them for doing so, since she is provably untrustworthy with state secrets.

  Hazel Blears has not once, but at least twice broken the Official Secrets Act, 1989 section 8 Safeguarding of information, through sheer incompetence and negligence.
  
  See the previous Spy Blog article

  Hazel Blears - stolen laptop, no encryption, breach of Restricted and Confidential rules - which email accounts were used ?

  and for example, the Daily Telegraph report :

  Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, has blundered by displaying secret papers relating to MPs expenses as she walked along Downing Street.

  In both cases she clearly failed "to take such care to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of the document or article as a person in his" (or her) "position may reasonably be expected to take."

  Either of these breaches in elementary data security regarding classified, Protectively Marked documents, could have resulted in dismissal and perhaps criminal prosecution, with a penalty of up to 2 years in prison and/or an unlimited fine, if a Civil Servant or private sector government contractor had been guilty of them.

  Once public confidence is gone, in the ability of a politician to be trusted or to keep national security secrets, it can never be rebuilt. For this reason alone Prime Minister David Cameron should reject Hazel Blears as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, or else he will be giving a public signal of its uselessness.

  We do not want Hazel Blears to be allowed to serve on the Intelligence and Security Committee, or in any other position of power or influence whatsoever.

• Paul Goggins (Labour) - was a junior Home Office Minister with experience of Prisons and who was also exiled to Northern Ireland as a junior Minister and then as Minister of State where he must have had frequent contact with the intelligence agencies. Whether this makes him "house trained" or an effective inquisitor, alert to all their tricks, remains to be seen.

• George Howarth (Labour) - like Paul Goggins was also a junior Home Office and then a junior Northern Ireland minister. He has previously served on the Intelligence and Security Committee from 2005 to 2010 i.e. he is the most experienced potential ISC member so far mentioned.

• Dr. Julian Lewis (Conservative) - he seems to have an interest in military matters, but he also has a record of helping to deny transparency and accountability of MPs, which makes him untrustworthy in our view, to represent the public in the secret scrutiny of secret agencies.

  
  He was one of the prime movers behind the the scandalous attempt by the House of Commons to further neuter the Freedom of Information Act which was touted as protecting the freedoms of Constituents, but actually had the effect of trying to hide "second homes" and other expenses scandals from the public. He was also behind the pompous amendment to the Political Parties and Elections Act, which removed the requirement for General Election candidates to disclose their home addresses on nomination and ballot papers. Given how many candidates claim to be "local", why should they not have to prove it, by giving their home addresses ?

• Mark Field (Conservative) - who ? He seems to be a lawyer in a safe Conservative seat - how and why was he recommended to be appointed to the ISC ?

• Sir Menzies Campbell (Liberal Democrat) - former Liberal Democrat Leader - we did not think that it was appropriate for him to stoop to being a member of the ISC. He has "an interest" in Foreign Affairs and has served on the Intelligence and Security Committee for the fag end of Gordon Brown's awful Labour government. He is reported as being friendly with Gordon Brown, who is his Parliamentary constituency neighbour.

We await with interest ,further recommendations or appointments to the Intelligence and Security Committee. There is no good reason why the Prime Minister should only appoint a token one or two members from the House of Lords, as has been the custom in recent years. Almost any Peer of the Realm, woulds be an improvement on the despicable former MP George Ffoulkes, who consistently took the most totalitarian NuLabour line possible. To be fair to Lord Ffoulkes of Cumnock, as a "double dipping" Westminster and Scottish parliamentarian, he does actually ask a lot of Written Questions of the Executive(s) - some of them pointless and partisan, but he does put his lazier colleagues to shame.

We hope in vain, for the appointment of say, the Earl of Errol, who is actually computer literate and who is therefore, unlike all the other members of the ISC (mostly liberal arts graduate lawyers) actually capable of scrutinising the utility and cost effectiveness of the vast array of intrusive IT databases and surveillance projects and secret IT infrastructures, which the intelligence agencies spend or waste so much of our precious public money on.

We also demand to know whether the outgoing Chair of the ISC's (Dr. Kim Howells, Labour) criticisms of the meddling and conflict of interest by Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister's office under Gordon Brown, have lead to any actual independence of this new Intelligence and Security Committee, or not e.g. is their email still provided (and therefore legally snooped on) by the Cabinet Office ?

Have a look at WikiSpooks for a partial roundup of the lurid tabloid press and media coverage and some of the conspiracy theories regarding this as yet unexplained death.

The release from prison of convicted former MI6 / SIS computer technician and incompetent wannabe spy Daniel Houghton, after only being held on remand for 184 days is a scandal, especially when compared with the earlier case of Corporal Daniel James, who is serving 10 years in prison:

	Daniel James	Daniel Houghton
Criminal Charges	Convicted under the Official Secrets Act 1911 section 1 - communicating information that was "calculated to be or might be or is intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy" According to the blog of Michael Smith, who is trying to challenge his own conviction under the Official Secrets Act, for passing on secrets to the KGB during the Cold War Statement from officer M. Head of the intelligence at ISAF/NATO in Afghanistan in 2006. (M at B79) 'The references contained in the text of the emails do not in themselves provide any great cause for concern in terms of the information they impart. They appear to be comments that may have been overheard and possibly misunderstood by the author who appears to have a rather exaggerated sense of his/her importance. I know of no damage to NATO - ISAF or UK operations that would be caused solely on account of the content of these emails. "Job is black" could possibly be a reference to Special Forces operation but doubt it. Alamara has been at some time a UK military base (it was in the south). It is not in the north Iran/Iraq border.' Given a sentence of 10 years in prison Two charges involving alleged CDROM and USB memory stick documents the jury did not come to a verdict on.	"Between September 1, 2007 and May 31, 2009, within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, you stole property, namely a number of electronic files containing techniques for intelligence collection, belonging to the British Security Service, contrary to section 1(1) Theft Act 1968." [No evidence offered by the prosecution] "On March 1, 2010, within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, being a person who has been a member of the security and intelligence services, without lawful authority you disclosed articles relating to security or intelligence, namely a number of electronic files containing techniques for intelligence collection, which were in your possession by virtue of your position as a former member of the British Secret Intelligence Service, contrary to section 1(1) Official Secrets Act 1989" Plead guilty - sentenced to only 12 months in prison, but freed immediately !
Nationality	Born in Iran, naturalised British citizen	Born in the Netherlands, dual Netherlands and UK citizenship
special skills and access	Pashtun language translator attached to senior British Army General in Afghanistan	former MI6 Secret Intelligence Service technical computer employee with a "top marks" degree in Computer Interactive Systems
Communications Data Traffic security	None - bland, unencrypted public emails to the Military Attache at the Iranian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan - it would be a major scandal if these were not being routinely intercepted	no email reported Used his own mobile (?) phone to contact the Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) in the Netherlands, using his own name
Smuggling of documents from secure buildings	USB memory CDROM - found in his baggage (when on his way back to a tour of duty from the UK to Afghanistan) and shared military quarters	USB memory and  camera flash memory devices Portable hard disk
Money	no	£2 million asked for, £900,000 in cash handed over to him during the "sting" arrest
Use of Encryption	no	astonishingly for a former employee of an intelligence agency with a computing degree - none !
Dead Letter Drops		None. Handed over USB memory devices, CD, portable hard disk etc. in a London hotel room. Told his "sting" contacts that he had left a USB device at his mother's address in Deorset Subsequent searches also found a USB device at his own home.
Clandestine face to face meetings with handlers	none - neither in Afghanistan nor back in the United Kingdom	Meetings in Holland with AVD and in London hotel in the "sting" arrest
Prison sentence	Currently serving 10 years in prison	Held for 184 days on Remand, already released from prison immediately after being sentenced to only 12 months in prison
Potential risk to UK national security	Minimal	Substantial - "The judge told Houghton: 'You were employed by the security services and attempted to sell secret material for very large sums of money. 'In particular you attempted to sell staff lists which would have disclosed the identity and homes and whereabouts of agents whose identity must be protected almost at all costs. 'If the material had found its way into the hands of a hostile power it would have done enormous damage and put lives at risk."
Actual damage to UK security	None	Slight - the Netherlands intelligence service must now be privy to some or all of the MI5 / MI6 staff list details etc.
A success for UK Counter Intelligence and Security procedures ?	No - the tip off / accusation appear to have come from the United States	No - the UK authorities knew nothing about it until the Dutch tipped them off.

]]> http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/09/12/why-is-there-such-a-sentencing-disparity-between-offical-secrets-act-spying-case.html http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/09/12/why-is-there-such-a-sentencing-disparity-between-offical-secrets-act-spying-case.html Wannabe Spies Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:11:13 +0000 The Mail on Sunday has a peculiar article about Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, which seems to contradict itself, even as published.

Why should we believe a story based on quotes from an anonymous "senior security source" ?

MI5 'vetoed Security Minister over links to Ukrainian oligarchs'

By Christopher Leake and Mark Hollingsworth
Last updated at 1:48 AM on 15th August 2010

Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones - the Shadow Security Minister when the Tories were in Opposition - was widely expected to take over the newly created role of National Security Adviser to David Cameron with overall responsibility for British intelligence policy at home and abroad.

Widely expected by whom, exactly ? Not by us.

But the pivotal security post was awarded instead to Whitehall mandarin Sir Peter Ricketts.

The Baroness, 70, was appointed Minister of State at the Home Office in charge of security and counter-terrorism - a more junior position, which restricts her responsibilities to domestic intelligence issues.

As Minister of State at the Home Office in charge of security and counter-terrorism, she has the power to sign or reject warrants by MI5 the Security Service, if the Secretary of State is unavailable. She also sits as a permanent member of the new National Security Council , with access to the same top level intelligence summaries and reports as the Prime Minister and Sir Peter Ricketts etc.

In what way are "domestic intelligence issues" less important than foreign ones ?

Here are some quotes (not whistleblower documentary evidence of any sort) from an anonymous" security source":

A senior security source revealed that the Baroness's appointment was blocked after MI5 produced a report about her links to two controversial Russian oligarchs.

Is this the same source as in the next few paragraphs, or a different one ?

According to a source, MI5 sent the Prime Minister's aides a confidential briefing about her connections to two billionaires with alleged links to organised crime and a Russian mafia leader.

The source said: 'The job of National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister needed a high-security vetting clearance because it involved knowing and handling sensitive state secrets.

The role of Minister of State at the Home Office in charge of security and counter-terrorism also involves "knowing and handling sensitive state secrets." . Unlike the National Security Adviser role, the holder of this Ministerial position also has executive power and can sign Orders for new or amended secondary legislation and can approve or reject warrants and certificates and notices etc. under intelligence, terrorism, serious crime and immigration laws, in lieu of the Secretary of State the Home Secretary.

'As a result, Cameron's private office at No 10 asked MI5 for any relevant information that was needed for the PM to make this appointment.

'MI5 sent a summary of the intelligence on Neville-Jones's financial assoc­iations with the two oligarchs. Based on that submission and on a separate briefing by his political advisers, Cameron decided not to appoint her.'

Mr Cameron then appointed Sir Peter, a former Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, who has been credited with persuading the Prime Minister to remove British troops from Afghanistan by 2015.

Will that target date really be achieved ?

Earlier this month it was reported that Sir Peter had agreed to carry out the role for 12 months only before returning to the diplomatic service.

A source said: 'Pauline was absolutely furious that she did not get the top job. She threatened to resign, but took up the ministerial post once she realised that was the most she was going to get. She is still very bitter and prickly about being snubbed in this way.'

Insiders have pointed out that the Baroness's role is less wide-ranging than that of her predecessor Lord West, Gordon Brown's former security adviser. Although only a Home Office Under Secretary, he enjoyed a brief that spanned the globe.

As a Home Office Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Lord West had less executive power than Baroness Neville-Jones does as a Home Office Minister of State.

The two men at the centre of the controversy surrounding the Baroness are Ukrainian oligarch Dimitry Firtash and Russian tycoon Mikhail Chernoy.

Is it really acceptable, in the out of touch fantasy world of Whitehall and the Westminster village of politicians and mainstream media journalists, to think that alleged links to foreign billionaires who may or may not have links with organised crime gangs, somehow disqualifies someone from one sensitive advisory post involving national security, but that such allegations are ok for a Ministerial job also involving national security ?

If there was any substance to these allegations, then Baroness Neville-Jones could not be trusted to hold either post, something which is clearly nonsense.

Two years ago, the Baroness revealed in the House of Lords Register of Members' Interests that her office received £20,000 a year from British businessman Robert Shetler-Jones, who oversees the assets of Mr Firtash.

Why were these questions not raised two years ago then ?

Mr Shetler-Jones made the donations to the Baroness plus a further estimated £80,000 to the Conservative Party as a private individual and through his UK-registered company Scythian Ltd. The fact that it was a British-based company made the payments legal under political funding rules

[...]

The Baroness said yesterday that she received the money from the Conservative Party.

But Mr Shetler-Jones said last night that he made donations to the people who managed the Baroness's office 'over and above what I gave to the Conservative Party'. He has since stopped supporting the Baroness financially.

The Baroness used the money to pay the salaries of her adviser Mark Phillips, a research associate for the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, and a part-time secretary.

Is that two salaries out of £20,000 a year or is Mark Phillips acting as both advisor and part time secretary ?

According to the RUSI staff biography of Mark Philips:

Prior to joining RUSI, Mark was Chief of Staff to Baroness Neville-Jones during her time as Shadow Security Minister and National Security Adviser to the Leader of the Opposition and, after the 2010 general election, Security Minister. In this capacity he managed all security legislation in Parliament, was speechwriter to Baroness Neville-Jones, and had a central role in developing the Conservative Party's national security policies and post-election implementation plan. His remit covered all aspects of national security, including the National Security Strategy, Strategic Defence and Security Review, machinery of government, intelligence, counter terrorism, resilience, Olympic security, stabilisation and conflict prevention, procurement and the role of industry in defence and security. Mark co-authored the Conservative Party's National Security Green Paper, A Resilient Nation (January 2010).

Given that this Green Paper acknowledged the obvious national security risks to the UK of over-reliance on Russian gas supplies and pipelines, there does not appear to be anything which favours Ukrainian gas billionaires there.

Mr Shetler-Jones, a property developer who speaks fluent Russian, is chief executive of Group DF - the holding company for the multi-billion-pound assets of Mr Firtash

[...]

Mr Firtash became a billionaire through a lucrative gas trading company RosUkrEnergo (RUE), which until two years ago had a monopoly over supplies from Russia into Ukraine and onwards to EU customers such as Poland and Hungary.

RUE has been the subject of an investigation by the US Department of Justice over its alleged links to Semyon Mogilevich, 64, a Ukrainian-born billionaire who is said to control RUE and is one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

So there is no proven link between Shetler-Jones, Dimitry Firtash and "the Russian mafia" at all.

Has Dimitry Firtash been banned from the UK or had any of his assets seized by the Serious Organised Crime Agency ? No.

The second oligarch with whom the Baroness has been linked is Mikhail Chernoy, a 58-year-old Uzbekistan-born Israeli indust­rialist, who made billions from the Russian aluminium industry.

He is the main financial sponsor of the Intelligence Summit, a Washington-based Right-wing anti-terrorist think-tank, whose executive council has included the Baroness.

Chernoy has been banned from entering the US because of alleg­ations of money laundering, illegal business deals and claims of connections to the Russian mafia.

The billionaire has denied any wrongdoing or any ties to organised crime and has been cleared in several countries, including Switzerland, of links to the mafia.

Has Mikhail Chernoy been banned from the UK or had any of his assets seized by the Serious Organised Crime Agency ? No.

Speaking at her £2 million Chelsea townhouse in West London yesterday, the Baroness said: 'It was clear a very long way back that David Cameron wanted an official in that position [of National Security Adviser].

'There was not at any stage a commitment on David's part that I should have that position. It was not a position I ever discussed with him or sought. It was always my understanding that should the party win the Election I would have the position I now have.'

The Baroness denied having ever met Dimitry Firtash, Mikhail Cherney or Robert Shetler-Jones.

So, no holidays with or fawning over, foreign billionaires or rich British contributors to party funds, like so many Labour politicians then ?

She said the donations to her office had been 'properly registered' by the Conservative Party and then allocated to her.

Last night neither the Home Office not the security services were prepared to comment officially on the Baroness's appointment.

But senior Home Office officials repeated the Baroness's claim that the National Security Adviser post had always been designed to go to an official.

So, is this anonymous security source lying or exaggerating ? If so then why ?

The intelligence services are forbidden by law from interfering in UK politics, although there are no criminal sanctions against any of their employees from doing so, especially anonymously, with or without the blessing of their colleagues.

The MI5 Security Service website section on Myths and Misunderstandings claims that:

5. MI5 monitors the private lives of Ministers and other public figures

We are sometimes alleged to be responsible for monitoring the private lives of people because they have a high public profile, including members of the Royal Family, Government Ministers and Members of Parliament. This is not the case. We only investigate individuals whose activities fall within our statutory remit under the Security Service Act 1989.

6. We "vet" every government employee

Our role in the vetting of candidates for employment in sensitive government posts is based solely on checks against our records. Decisions on employing staff are the responsibility of the Department concerned and we do not investigate or interview candidates on their behalf.

The Security Service Act 1989 stipulates that we may only disclose information for use in deciding whether someone should be employed in sensitive work if we do so in accordance with arrangements approved by the Home Secretary. If, when we check, we find that we have a significant and relevant security record on an applicant, we may provide a summary assessment of the security information. However, the mere existence of a Security Service record does not necessarily mean that an assessment will be made. There is no "blacklist".

These comprehensive reviews seem to give a good outline of a couple of books about a couple of the world's premier intelligence agencies, which deserve close study:

• The Yorkshire Ranter on GCHQ Review: Part 1, The World's Most Classified Blog and Other Stories
  • Amazon: GCHQ by Richard Aldrich (hardback).

• Public Intelligence Blog - Robert Steele on Review: The Shadow Factory-The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
  • Amazon: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford (paperback).

Spy Blog could be tempted to review

Securing the State by Sir David Omand GCB, the former éminence grise of the Cabinet Office Intelligence bureaucrac and obe of the architechts of Protint - 'protected information' data mining of personal sensitive data by intelligence agencies.

Annual report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner to the Prime Minister and to Scottish Ministers for 2009-2010 (.pdf)

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.

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.

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:

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 BST

A 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.

• The rise in actual real terrorist bomb attacks and killings in Northern Ireland

• The recent Court cases revealing complicity in "extraordinary rendition" by the US intelligence agencies and the tacit complicity of UK intelligence in the use of torture.

• Chinese internet espionage stories

• Personnel vetting and IT security failures highlighted by the trial of alleged wannabe spy, the ex-MI6 employee Daniel Houghton

• Major IT project failures and cost overruns e.g. the SCOPE project, the lack of backup disaster recovery data centres for the intelligence agencies.

• Still no viable plan for the use of electronic intercept as evidence in Court.

• Frightening and expensive plans for mass surveillance and data trawling against millions of innocent people.

• The ongoing threat from self radicalised Muslims, racists, animal rights or environmental extremists etc.

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.

See:Intelligence and Security Committee Report 2009-2010 - interference by the Cabinet Office, MI5 DIGINT, Northern Ireland terrorism, new Cyber Defence bureaucracy but CESG financially bankrupt ?

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.

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.

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.

See "Wilson Doctrine" - Prime Minister Harold Wilson answers Oral Questions in the House of Commons 17th November 1966 - transcript

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.

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

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.