tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/mi5-7835/articlesMI5 – The Conversation2024-01-04T15:44:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2204572024-01-04T15:44:32Z2024-01-04T15:44:32ZSpycatcher scandal: newly released documents from the Thatcher era reveal the changing nature of government secrecy<p>I grew up in Tasmania in the 1980s. The capital city, Hobart, had a bit of a “living at the edge of the world” feeling in those days. It seemed about as far away from anywhere as you could get. So, I remember the thrill when the first hints of the “Spycatcher” scandal hit. A British spy had “secretly” been living only a few miles away in the sleepy town of Cygnet. To a child, it all felt impossibly adventurous.</p>
<p>The British National Archives has now released a <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/latest-cabinet-office-files-released/">slew of Cabinet Office papers</a> dealing with the extraordinary series of events surrounding this man and his attempts to publish Spycatcher, a memoir that promised to spill secrets on double agents and assassination plots. Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, was so concerned about the book’s contents that the UK government launched multiple legal attempts to have it barred from publication. The most famous of these cases unfolded in Australia, where Thatcher had dispatched her top civil servant to fight the former MI5 operative Peter Wright in court.</p>
<p>The documents lay bare how fearful she was about the book. In communications between government officials, we see the intensity of briefings and updates flowing into Number 10 as the court case unfolded in Australia in late 1986. The government was determined to stand by the principle that security information must remain confidential. </p>
<p>The prime minister followed the exchanges closely, as revealed by her <a href="https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2023-12/prem19-1952.pdf">handwritten comments across documents</a>. These ranged from brief scribbles like “Bad news” (on an update relating to potential revelation of sensitive documents in court), to noting that “the consequences of publication would be enormous” and commenting in frustration that “surely Wright himself is in breach of the Official Secrets Act?”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567825/original/file-20240104-17-2k1i9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An archived government document discussing the Spycatcher scandal, including a margin note from Margaret Thatcher about the 'enormous consequences' of the book being released." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567825/original/file-20240104-17-2k1i9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567825/original/file-20240104-17-2k1i9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567825/original/file-20240104-17-2k1i9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567825/original/file-20240104-17-2k1i9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567825/original/file-20240104-17-2k1i9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567825/original/file-20240104-17-2k1i9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567825/original/file-20240104-17-2k1i9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Thatcher’s margin notes reveal her concerns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2023-12/prem19-1952.pdf">National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The cast of characters in this saga is in itself rather breathtaking. It begins, of course, with the elusive Wright – in my mind’s eye in the 1980s, I had expected him to be a dapper figure in a pinstriped suit. The picture that hit the press at the time instead revealed an old man in a rather incongruous broad-brimmed hat, who did not exude the requisite level of mystery.</p>
<p>Thatcher herself also looms large, as does Robert Armstrong – the head of the civil service she sent across the globe to Sydney like a gun-for-hire, in an extraordinary attempt to prevent the book’s publication. In court, Armstrong would face none other than the up-and-coming Australian barrister <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/14/malcolm-turnbull-spycatcher-lawyer-prime-minister">Malcolm Turnbull</a>, appearing for Wright’s publishers.</p>
<p>Turnbull would go on to be Australia’s prime minister 30 years later, but not before eliciting from Armstrong in court his infamous description of having been <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/jlsocty16&id=217&men_tab=srchresults">“economical with the truth”</a> in a letter he had written that was relevant to the case.</p>
<p>What the papers released by the National Archives provide is something rather more than just a good story, however. They provide a rare window into how the British government worked in the 1980s. They offer a marker against which to measure what has changed and what has remained the same in the conventions and traditions that underpin the nation’s political system.</p>
<h2>That was then …</h2>
<p>In the 1980s, aspects of British government could remain shrouded in mystery without expectation of public scrutiny. Even the names of the leaders of MI5 were a closely guarded secret, never mind the workings of their organisation. It was simply not the done thing to discuss issues of national security in public. </p>
<p>The institutional settings of Whitehall and Westminster were built for “governing in private”. Advice was offered and arguments made behind closed doors and away from the public gaze. This applied not just to the security agencies but the civil service in general.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5803/ldselect/ldconst/258/25804.htm">British constitutional theory</a>, the civil service was an indivisible part of the executive government. It was not an independent creature of the parliament, or indeed the wider public. The job of civil servants was to serve ministers in non-partisan ways, based on deep reserves of mutual trust between the political and administrative leaders of government. Armstrong could be sent to the Antipodes knowing that he carried with him the total trust of the prime minister, and vice versa.</p>
<p>His goal, of course, was to stop Wright’s memoir from ever seeing the light of day. In the 1980s, it was still possible for government to believe it might be able to control the spread of information. In a pre-internet age, it still made sense to try very hard to prevent the publication of a book, knowing that its contents could potentially be stopped or contained. Such ideas seem dreamily quixotic in our modern digital age.</p>
<h2>This is now …</h2>
<p>Today, the luxury of being able to govern in private, to carefully consider actions with a degree of secrecy, has given way to far greater scrutiny. Modern expectations of transparency mean that governments are now governing in public, whether they like it or not. Where once the heads of MI5 had their identities protected, we now find them striding the public stage. Stella Rimington, the director general of MI5 in the mid 1990s, published her own <a href="https://shop.nationalarchives.gov.uk/products/open-secret">autobiography</a> in 2001. Her successors give regular public speeches and updates discussing perspectives on national security in ways that would have been unthinkable in the 1980s.</p>
<p>In theory, the status of the wider civil service has not changed – it remains an indivisible part of the executive government. But the bonds of trust have begun to fray. Few of Armstrong’s successors in the civil service could claim the complete trust of a prime minister. And amid the blame games of modern government, ministers and officials can now find themselves in public disagreement, teasing apart the threads of indivisibility that previously kept them in a mutual embrace.</p>
<p>But perhaps the most dramatic change is to the information environment. The relative futility of trying to prevent information from entering the public domain is self-evident. Information – both true and false – flies into the public domain like water through a colander.</p>
<p>A modern government rarely makes the mistake of drawing attention to a set of memoirs by going to great, public lengths to try and stop their publication. Wright died a millionaire. His book was a bestseller. The irony is that he had the British government to thank for boosting his sales. Their attempt to quash what turned out to be a rather innocuous book turned it into an international cause celebre.</p>
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<img alt="A government document outlining concerns about the implication of allowing Spycatcher to be published." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567829/original/file-20240104-17-allyg3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567829/original/file-20240104-17-allyg3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567829/original/file-20240104-17-allyg3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567829/original/file-20240104-17-allyg3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567829/original/file-20240104-17-allyg3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567829/original/file-20240104-17-allyg3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567829/original/file-20240104-17-allyg3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Scandal generates book sales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2023-12/prem19-1952.pdf">National Archives</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The Spycatcher saga is a reminder that the nature of British government has changed. It shines a light on the extent to which something seen as an extraordinary public scandal in the 1980s would be seen as far less remarkable today. Modern governments are far more used to the norms of governing in public – for good or ill – in our more transparent age.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis C Grube received funding from the Australian Research Council in 2013 (grant number DE130101131) for a previous project on the public face of government.</span></em></p>Cabinet Office papers expose Thatcher’s anxiety over the famous book, and the difference between governing in the 1980s and the modern information age.Dennis C Grube, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2123482023-10-26T19:03:21Z2023-10-26T19:03:21ZFriday essay: the secret lives of Ian Fleming and John Le Carré – the spymasters shaped by a lack of parental love<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555978/original/file-20231026-29-w5gl2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5982%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Le Carré in a scene from The Pigeon Tunnel</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Apple TV+</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2022, writer Suleika Dawson published an intimate, refreshingly candid <a href="https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-secret-heart-john-le-carre-an-intimate-memoir-suleika-dawson?variant=39815110131790">first-hand account</a> of her passionate extramarital affair with David Cornwell – who worked as an intelligence agent for MI5 and MI6 in the 1950s and early 1960s, and wrote spy novels using the pseudonym John le Carré.</p>
<p>Dawson and Cornwell first crossed paths in September 1982. Dawson, who had recently graduated with a degree in English Literature and Language from the University of Oxford, had a job abridging novels for an audiobook firm in London. </p>
<p>Cornwell, whom Dawson correctly describes as “the premier fabulist of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-cold-war-a-historian-explains-how-rivals-us-and-soviet-union-competed-off-the-battlefield-192238">Cold War</a>”, was booked in at her firm’s recording studio to read the abridged version of his ninth novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/smileys-people-9780241330913">Smiley’s People</a>, published in 1979. (An award-winning <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083480/">television adaptation</a> starring Alec Guinness appeared in 1982.) </p>
<p>Cornwell had been an internationally bestselling author since his third novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold-9780241330920">The Spy Who Came in from the Cold</a>, was published in 1963. He had stopped working as an intelligence officer to become a full-time writer a year later, after his diplomatic cover in West Germany (where he was stationed when the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-100812">Berlin Wall</a> was erected) <a href="https://spyscape.com/article/john-le-carre-thinker-writer-cold-war-spy">was blown</a> by MI6 double agent Kim Philby – or so he always claimed. </p>
<p>A fictional version of Philby would be hunted by George Smiley, Le Carré’s most iconic fictional spy, in his 1974 novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-9780241658987">Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy</a>.</p>
<p>There was, Dawson remembers, “an extraordinary bond between us, which we both felt from that first lunch – which David, whose life had been a constant search for love, perhaps felt even more forcefully than I did”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Alec Guinness as George Smiley in the 1982 adaptation of Smiley’s People.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Images</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>‘Messy private life’ off-limits</h2>
<p>Cornwell’s “constant search for love” is highly relevant to Adam Sisman’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Adam-Sisman-Secret-Life-of-John-le-Carre-9781800818231">The Secret Life of John le Carré</a> (2023), a biographical addendum of sorts to his 2015 book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/217665/john-le-carre-the-biography-by-adam-sisman/9780307361516">John le Carré: The Biography</a>. </p>
<p>Although Cornwell was initially enthusiastic about Sisman’s biography and agreed to work with him on it, he was wary when it came to inquiries about his “own messy private life”. It was – as Sisman soon came to discover – strictly off-limits. </p>
<p>This is something the famed documentarian Errol Morris would come up against in <a href="https://tv.apple.com/au/movie/the-pigeon-tunnel/umc.cmc.633pbtki99m7e8lc9ybbyab3">The Pigeon Tunnel</a> (2023). His recent documentary adaptation of Le Carré’s 2016 memoir, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/294602/the-pigeon-tunnel-by-carre-john-le/9780241396377">The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life</a>, concentrates on Cornwell’s relationship with his conman father, and on his career in British intelligence and as a novelist, but is notably thin on details when it comes to certain aspects of his private life. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9gWnuhjwNrw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Errol Morris’s documentary The Pigeon Tunnel concentrates on Cornwell/Le Carré’s relationship with his conman father and on his career.</span></figcaption>
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<p>At one particularly telling juncture late in the film, Morris asks Cornwell about the theme of “betrayal” that runs through his life and career. Cornwell’s response is worth quoting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well, I feel you got the last drop out of the sponge on that subject. But I’ll answer any question you wish me to answer as truthfully as I can. […] I’m not going to talk about my sex life - anymore, I trust, than you would. It seems to be an intensely private matter. My love life has been a very difficult passage, as you would imagine, but it has resolved itself wonderfully. And that’s enough on that subject.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a fleeting, yet significant moment in the film – reminiscent of the situation in which Sisman found himself while working on his 2015 biography. Relations between biographer and subject became increasingly strained, with Cornwell threatening to scupper the venture altogether.</p>
<p>Sisman turned to Cornwell’s eldest son, Simon, who recommended the biographer should keep a “secret annexe” of material that could be published in some form after David and his wife Jane had passed away.</p>
<p>“Now that [Cornwell] has died,” Sisman writes in his preface to The Secret Life of John Le Carré, “it is important to add this coda to the biography that he encouraged, semi-authorised, and then tried to sabotage.” </p>
<p>He writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is not a substitute for or a condensation of my 2015 biography, but a supplement containing material that I felt obliged to omit then, as well as information that has emerged since.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The new book affords him the opportunity to paint as complete as possible a biographical portrait of Cornwell, who was born in 1931 and died in 2020, while hoping to dispel “some of the myths about David’s past” – certain of which came from Cornwell himself. </p>
<p>Sisman demonstrates, for example, that it is highly unlikely Philby blew Cornwell’s cover when he <a href="https://theconversation.com/back-in-the-ussr-my-life-as-a-spy-in-the-archives-26303">defected to the Soviet Union</a> in 1963.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/john-le-carre-authentic-spy-fiction-that-wrote-the-wrongs-of-post-war-british-intelligence-152055">John Le Carré: authentic spy fiction that wrote the wrongs of post-war British intelligence</a>
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<h2>Ian Fleming and his looming family influence</h2>
<p>Nicholas Shakespeare, who writes novels when not penning <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/355675/bruce-chatwin-by-shakespeare-nicholas/9780099289975">celebrated biographies</a>, says something similar in the prologue to <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/ian-fleming-9781787302426">Ian Fleming: The Complete Man</a>, his 800-page account of the author who created the most world’s famous fictional spy, James Bond.</p>
<p>Shakespeare thinks there “ample and legitimate reasons to go right back to the beginning; to turn the soil of [Fleming’s] personal history and revisit his legacy from a contemporary perspective”.</p>
<p>Drawing on published and unpublished materials, Shakespeare aims to correct a few assumptions about Fleming’s life – especially when it comes to his career with the Naval Intelligence Division during the second world war.</p>
<p>A child of extraordinary wealth and privilege, Fleming was born in 1908 and died in 1964. Of Scottish descent, he grew up in England and was educated at Eton - where Cornwell once taught - and Sandhurst Royal Military College.</p>
<p>His merchant banker father, Valentine Fleming, was, in Shakespeare’s account, “a paragon of whom no one spoke ill”.</p>
<p>Ian Fleming barely knew his father, a well-loved war hero who was killed in action during the first world war, and whose obituary was written by none other than Winston Churchill (which Ian framed and kept above his bed as a child).</p>
<p>“Like Churchill’s framed obituary,” Shakespeare contends, “the phantom of his dead father loomed over Ian for the remainder of his life.”</p>
<p>Shakespeare reasons the untimely death of Valentine Fleming played a decisive role in the genesis of James Bond. Specifically, he speculates that one of the reasons why Ian – who never saw front-line combat – created 007 was an unconscious desire to “join his father at the front”.</p>
<p>Ian Fleming’s relationship with his older brother, Peter, is similarly noteworthy. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fleming_(writer)">Peter Fleming</a> was an adventurer, journalist and author. Shakespeare asserts that Ian spent his whole life trying to keep up with his much-admired brother.</p>
<p>In 1951, Peter published a bestselling spy novel, The Sixth Column, which he dedicated to his brother. It appeared mere months before the first James Bond novel, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3758.Casino_Royale">Casino Royale</a>.</p>
<p>Ian had long harboured literary ambitions. Upon reading The Sixth Column, Shakespeare says, “Ian knew he could do better.”</p>
<p>Shakespeare quotes Ian Fleming’s American editor – Al Hart – in support. Ian, who worked as a stockbroker and a journalist (with Reuters and The Sunday Times) before finding belated fame as a novelist, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>wrote because he got tired of being Peter Fleming’s younger brother. He was determined that Peter Fleming should be known as Ian Fleming’s elder brother. And by God, he is.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Shakespeare, where Ian’s relationship with his brother can be characterised as competitive, his relationship with his mother – Eve – should be understood in terms of control and domination. </p>
<p>Eve Sainte Croix Fleming comes in for sustained criticism in the new biography. Shakespeare, who has very little positive to say here, describes her as “imperious, melodramatic, entitled, and a narcissist who dealt acidly with dissent”. </p>
<p>In Shakespeare’s retelling, Eve’s parenting left a lot to be desired, and had a detrimental effect on Ian’s development. </p>
<p>He suggests Fleming’s fraught bond with his mother came to shape the character and problematic behavioural patterns of James Bond – especially in relation to women. (Like 007, Fleming was an incorrigible womaniser.)</p>
<h2>Infidelities ‘a necessary drug’ for Le Carré</h2>
<p>Familial relationships played an equally significant role in Cornwell’s development. He was always upfront about this. </p>
<p>He spoke and wrote extensively about the effect his father Ronnie – a notorious conman and convicted felon – had on his childhood, and how this vexed relationship shaped his behaviour in adult life. </p>
<p>Ronnie’s presence is most clearly felt in Le Carré’s transparently semi-autobiographical 1986 novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-perfect-spy-9780241322482">A Perfect Spy</a>, whose protagonist, a British intelligence officer and double agent, has a charismatic conman father. Philip Roth thought it the “best English novel since the war”.</p>
<p>Cornwell’s relationship with Ronnie is explored at length in The Pigeon Tunnel: both the memoir and Morris’s documentary adaptation.</p>
<p>“People loved Ronnie to the end of his days, even people he robbed,” Cornwell told Morris. “When he was on stage, beguiling people, he absolutely believed in what he was saying. These spasms of immense charm and persuasiveness were his moments of feeling real.”</p>
<p>His father wanted him to have a “posh education” and sent him to schools where he learned “the manners and attitudes of a class to which I did not belong”. (Set in a fictional private school, Le Carré’s 1962 novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/180369/a-murder-of-quality-by-carre-john-le/9780241330883">A Murder of Quality</a>, gives us a sense of Cornwell’s feelings about the British ruling class.) This sense of not belonging, of performing a role, also contributed to him being “a little spy” from “a very early age”.</p>
<p>Cornwell’s relationship with his mother, Olive, was just as complex. Unable to cope with Ronnie’s compulsive swindling and dangerous lifestyle, David’s mother walked out on the family when he was five years old. He met her again when he was 21. “She was impenetrable emotionally,” he told Errol Morris. “I never heard her express a serious feeling.”</p>
<p>Sisman mentions Olive at the start of The Secret Life, when discussing Cornwell’s many extramarital affairs:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why did David pursue these women with such intensity and what does it say about him? When compelled to confront this issue, he told me that the restless, self-destructive search for love was part of his nature. In his mind this went back to his childhood, to his unrequited love for his mother, who abandoned her children at an early age.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the film version of The Pigeon Tunnel, Cornwell reflects on the night his mother disappeared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Did she come into the room where we slept and take a last look at us? […] I imagine that she did.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sisman sets out to answer his own questions. He maintains that Cornwell’s infidelities are key to a proper – or complete – appreciation of his writing. Not only do they help us understand what Cornwell wrote, but they help to explain, in Sisman’s words, “how, why and when he wrote”. </p>
<p>Sisman quotes from his private correspondence with Cornwell when making this claim: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My infidelities produced in my life a duality & that became almost a necessary drug for my writing, a dangerous edge of some kind […] They are not therefore a “dark part” of my life, separate from the “high literary calling”, so to speak, but, alas, integral to it, & inseparable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dawson would agree with this assessment - appreciating as she does “how entirely fractal David’s life was, how each part was a smaller replica of the whole. The perfect multifaceted reflection of the perfect spy.” </p>
<p>“It’s terribly difficult to recruit for the secret service,” says Cornwell in the film, The Pigeon Tunnel. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’re looking for somebody who’s a bit bad. But at the same time loyal. There’s a type they were looking for in my day. And I fitted perfectly.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/john-le-carre-mi6-and-the-fact-and-fiction-of-british-secret-intelligence-124522">John le Carré, MI6 and the fact and fiction of British secret intelligence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The ‘truth’ about Ian Fleming’s war work</h2>
<p>Nicholas Shakespeare touches on the topic of infidelity at various points in his book on Fleming. He also grants that Fleming’s notoriety as “a prickly, self-centred bounder” with a penchant for sexual sadism is well deserved, and tough to shake.</p>
<p>Shakespeare openly acknowledges he had initial reservations about Fleming’s character and his “undeniable shortcomings”. Selfish, cruel, snobbish – these are a few of terms that tend to get thrown around when talking about Fleming. Some of the others, like the four-letter word <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lucian-freud-1120">Lucien Freud</a> used to describe Fleming, cannot be printed here.</p>
<p>Despite this, Shakespeare thinks Fleming “an unfailingly intriguing character” who is ripe for reappraisal. Working with unpublished letters and diaries, previously uninterviewed witnesses, and a series of declassified files, Shakespeare sets out to cast “Fleming and his life in a new light that leads to new conclusions about the man”.</p>
<p>Shakespeare comes to new conclusions about Fleming’s conduct during the second world war. Fleming’s war record has long been a bone of contention. In part, this is due to the fact he worked in a department that dealt with confidential matters of national security, counterintelligence and espionage.</p>
<p>Some people, as Shakespeare acknowledges, believe Fleming was nothing more than a glorified office worker, “too wedded to his comforts and smart uniform to risk going into action himself”.</p>
<p>These critics tend to “wonder with something of a sneer whether he could have done anything really useful in the war”. Cornwell, for example, had precious little time for Fleming, whom he considered a self-aggrandising fantasist. </p>
<p>Cornwell was also deeply suspicious of James Bond – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-bond-idUKTRE67G24U20100817">he considered Fleming’s famous creation</a> “neo-fascistic and totally materialist” and less a spy than “some kind of international gangster with, as it is said, a licence to kill”.</p>
<p>Shakespeare believes otherwise: since Fleming “was never allowed to write the truth about his war work, facts about his life are hard to see clearly through the aura cast by the success of James Bond”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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</figure>
<p>Accordingly, Shakespeare – who is unwavering in his conviction that “a clear and reliable picture of [Fleming’s] duties and the depth and range of his knowledge and responsibilities does exist” – strives in his biography to set the historical record straight. </p>
<p>Shakespeare finds Fleming “made a noteworthy contribution to the second world war - and not only in organising covert operations in Nazi-occupied North Europe and North Africa that helped to shorten the conflict”. Fleming also worked to bring the United States into the conflict, and worked to set up and coordinate the wartime intelligence organisation that eventually turned into the CIA. </p>
<p>Shakespeare brings his discussion of Fleming’s war record to a close with the assertion: “Ian never lived at such an intense level again. He would spend the rest of his life in peacetime, trying to recapture moments of time like these.” The way he did this was, as Shakespeare puts it, “by writing the books which have become the reason we are still reading about him today”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wilderness-of-mirrors-70-years-since-the-first-james-bond-book-spy-stories-are-still-blurring-fact-and-fiction-201373">'The wilderness of mirrors': 70 years since the first James Bond book, spy stories are still blurring fact and fiction</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Bond: ‘a post-war British fantasy’</h2>
<p>Contrary to received wisdom, the 12 action-packed spy novels Fleming wrote after the war were, in Shakespeare’s reckoning, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>grounded in reality and a truth that Ian could not reveal but had intensely experienced. He wrote what he knew. By converting his lived experience into fiction, and updating it, he released the burden of that knowledge.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>The Bond books also served specific ideological purposes. Historical context is important here. As Shakespeare puts it, Fleming’s fictions were intended “as a post-war British fantasy, as a balm for a demoralised imperial power on its uppers”. </p>
<p>The writer and columnist Ben Macintyre makes a similar point in his <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/for-your-eyes-only-9781408830642/">official history</a> of 007. “To the readers of the 1950s,” Macintyre writes, “Bond was a promise of glamour and plenty amid postwar austerity, the thrill of sexual licence in a buttoned-up society.”</p>
<p>We see evidence of this in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3758.Casino_Royale">Casino Royale</a> (1953), the first Bond book. Here’s a description of Bond’s breakfast (his favourite meal of the day):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bond liked to make a good breakfast. After a cold shower, he sat at the writing-table in front of the window. He looked out at the beautiful day and consumed half a pint of iced orange juice, three scrambled eggs and bacon and a double portion of coffee without sugar. He lit his first cigarette, a Balkan and Turkish mixture made for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street, and watched the small waves lick the long seashore and the fishing fleet from Dieppe string out towards the June heat-haze followed by a paper-chase of herring-gulls.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fleming’s novels, which tend to be set in suitably sun-drenched locations, are full of descriptions like this. Self-consciously excessive and extravagant (the line about Bond’s custom-made cigarettes is a particularly nice touch here), they gesture in the direction of a lifestyle that would have been out of reach to all bar the extremely wealthy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-james-bond-a-misogynist-he-doesnt-have-to-be-connery-moore-or-even-craigs-vision-forever-169619">Is James Bond a misogynist? He doesn't have to be Connery, Moore or even Craig's vision forever</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Smiley: deliberately ‘breathtakingly ordinary’</h2>
<p>I want now to take that description and contrast it with two passages from Le Carré. The first comes from <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold-9780241330920">The Spy Who Came In From The Cold</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His flat was small and squalid, done in brown paint with photographs of Clovelly. It looked directly on to the grey backs of three stone warehouses, the windows of which were drawn, for aesthetic reasons, in creosote.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Where Fleming is expansive and sun-dappled, Le Carré is claustrophobic and drab.</p>
<p>The second passage is taken from Le Carré’s first novel, 1961’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/182715/call-for-the-dead-by-carre-john-le/9780241639214">Call for the Dead</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the first physical description of Le Carré’s famous spymaster, the aforementioned George Smiley. The polar opposite of Bond in almost every conceivable way, Smiley is – as Le Carré insists on the very first page of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/call-for-the-dead-9780241639214">Call for the Dead</a> – “breathtakingly ordinary.” There is certainly nothing glamorous about him - and that is Le Carré’s point.</p>
<p>Similarly, while Bond’s MI6 is constantly saving the world from the outlandish machinations of egotistic supervillains, Smiley’s British intelligence service is vulnerable to leaks – and the threats it battles are deeply embedded in political systems and real-world conflicts. It is also – and this is something Le Carré says time and time again in his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/180842-george-smiley">Smiley novels</a> – an outdated relic of Britain’s imperial era.</p>
<h2>‘Childhood is the credit balance of the writer’</h2>
<p>Shakespeare acknowledges that readers </p>
<blockquote>
<p>tend to think of John Le Carré before George Smiley. With Fleming, it is the reverse, as if Bond’s unstoppable waves of popularity have lapped back over the author, submerging him.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By examining the lives of Fleming and Cornwell, and touching on some of the stark differences between their iconic literary creations, Shakespeare and Sisman provide us with a compelling framework to reevaluate the profound impact of these two authors – on the realm of spy fiction, literary history and their enduring influence on Western popular culture. </p>
<p>As we have seen, both works also speak to the role childhood experience and trauma can have on the development of character.</p>
<p>Talking to Errol Morris, Cornwell quotes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene">Graham Greene</a>: “Childhood is the credit balance of the writer.” He says, “It’s not a lament, it’s just a self-examination.” Later, he describes his writing process as a journey of self-discovery, “every time”. He reflects:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have never submitted to analysis. I feel if I knew any secrets about myself I’d deprive myself of writing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reading these excellent new biographies, it strikes me that Cornwell’s personal and professional secrets are safe with Sisman, as are Fleming’s with Shakespeare.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>John le Carré and Ian Fleming, the world’s most famous spy novelists, share experience in UK intelligence and difficult childhoods. But their heroes, George Smiley and James Bond, are very different.Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1666882021-08-24T14:08:48Z2021-08-24T14:08:48ZHow ordinary people are convinced to become spies<p>A new film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8368512/">The Courier</a>, tells the story of the salesman, Grenville Wynne, caught up in the murky world of espionage during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This follows recent news that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/12/briton-accused-spying-russia-kept-himself-to-himself-david-smith">David Smith</a>, a 57-year-old and apparently normal security guard at the British embassy in Berlin, has allegedly been spying for Russia. So why do seemingly ordinary people become spies?</p>
<p>In 1988 the KGB defector, Stanislav Levchenko, described an American mnemonic, Mice, which stands for “money”, “ideology”, “coercion/compromise” and “ego”. Susceptibility to these factors, he claimed, was a target’s key weakness that could be exploited.</p>
<h2>Money</h2>
<p>Officials in debt are ripe targets for recruiters. For instance, in 1935, <a href="https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11050136">Captain John Herbert King</a>, a cypher clerk for the British Foreign Office, had a problem. He was estranged from his wife, harboured expensive tastes, had a son and mistress to maintain, and only took home a small salary – and no pension. As such, he proved a ripe target for recruitment by Soviet intelligence. He was approached by Henri Pieck, a Soviet spy, who pretended to be a businessman and high-society flyer. Pieck convinced the cypher clerk that, if he wished to support his family, money was required.</p>
<p>King agreed to supply Foreign Office secrets, which he was led to believe would be used to provide Pieck and a Dutch bank a stock market advantage. King was promised a share of these profits amounting to £100 a month. The arrangement came to an end in 1937, when his handler was recalled to Moscow during Stalin’s purges. King was arrested in 1939 and sentenced to ten years in prison.</p>
<h2>Ideology</h2>
<p>Some people are willing to risk life and limb for their beliefs. One such individual was <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m_0qDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage">Donald Maclean,</a> who attended the University of Cambridge. Maclean already had left-wing views which grew into an ideological belief in the justness of the Soviet’s communist cause. </p>
<p>In his final year, in 1934, he was recruited by the NKVD (a Soviet secret police agency, a forerunner of the KGB) and instructed to give up on his political activism and enter the British establishment. He soon sat the civil service exams and joined the Foreign Office, where he acted as one of the most damaging spies of his generation.</p>
<p>Maclean was not alone, he was a member of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/spies_cambridge.shtml">Cambridge Ring of Five</a>, which included Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. Each of whom was recruited into Soviet service during or shortly after their time at Cambridge. As a result of their orthodox, respectable Cambridge educations, each was able to enter the most sensitive areas of the British state, not least the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Office, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ (GC and CS at the time). In 1951, with the net closing in, Maclean and Burgess escaped to Moscow.</p>
<h2>Coercion or compromise</h2>
<p>In 1946, John Vassall took a job as the assistant to the naval attaché in Britain’s Moscow embassy. He was, however, harbouring a secret. Vassall was a gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain. Those convicted of homosexuality faced custodial sentences. </p>
<p>The KGB discovered <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Great_Parliamentary_Scandals/8u7obxZ7MawC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=vassall&pg=PA147&printsec=frontcover">Vassall’s secret</a> and orchestrated several compromising photographs to use as blackmail. Shortly after, in 1956, Vassall was transferred back to London and into naval intelligence.</p>
<p>From there he could provide a steady stream of secret information, including technical secrets regarding radar and weapons. This arrangement, for which Vassall was well remunerated, lasted until 1962 when Vassall was arrested following the defection of the KGB officer, Anatoli Golitsyn. In 1962, following a massive scandal that rocked the <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1963/may/07/vassall-case-tribunals-report">Macmillan government</a>, Vassall was sentenced to 18 years in prison and was released in 1972.</p>
<h2>Ego</h2>
<p>For some, espionage is an opportunity to secretly manipulate people around them and to prove their superiority. An FBI agent and Soviet spy from 1976 to 2001, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Spy_Next_Door/5Z41AQAAQBAJ?hl">Robert Hanssen</a> clearly fit that category. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="portrait photo of Robert Hanssen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417589/original/file-20210824-17-1h0mh48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417589/original/file-20210824-17-1h0mh48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417589/original/file-20210824-17-1h0mh48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417589/original/file-20210824-17-1h0mh48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417589/original/file-20210824-17-1h0mh48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417589/original/file-20210824-17-1h0mh48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417589/original/file-20210824-17-1h0mh48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Hanssen was a double-agent for the US and Russia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen#/media/File:Robert_Hanssen.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hanssen seemingly enjoyed an ordinary life as a happily-married suburbanite yet lived a double life as a spy – complete with an affair with an exotic dancer whom he lavished with expensive gifts. He also secretly filmed his sex life with his wife and invited others, without telling her, to watch.</p>
<p>Money was an initial motive, Hanssen received $1.43 million (£1 million) in cash and diamonds from his handlers. However, he was an attention-seeker who felt snubbed by an FBI which, in his estimation, failed to recognise his abilities. His two-decade career as a double agent, which included revealing the identities of at least nine US assets in the Soviet Union, was an opportunity for excitement and to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/07/10/with-hanssen-a-few-clues-but-no-solution-to-the-mystery/12880c86-e624-4d44-a3f2-1a84de758504/">demonstrate</a> his superiority over his colleagues in the FBI.</p>
<p>Hanssen is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences and his espionage has <a href="https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/websterreport.html">described by the US Department of Justice</a> as “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history”.</p>
<p>While we might imagine James Bond or Jason Bourne when we think of espionage, real spies are ordinary people – albeit often with unusual problems and psychologies. Though a crude tool, Mice provides us with some insight into what motivates such dangerous and extraordinary behaviour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>American intelligence has recognised there are four reasons why a ‘normal’ person might be convinced to spy.Chris Smith, Lecturer in History, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1648932021-07-27T15:24:13Z2021-07-27T15:24:13ZOfficial Secrets Act: UK government has a long history of suppressing journalism to hide its misdeeds<p>The UK government recently put out for consultation <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/legislation-to-counter-state-threats">proposals for toughening the Official Secrets Act</a>, ostensibly to deter foreign spies. </p>
<p>Many lawyers, lawmakers and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9821595/ALAN-RUSBRIDGER-beggars-belief-government-wants-laws-make-journalists-criminals.html">journalists</a> have argued that laws concerning official data and secrets are <a href="https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/reforms-to-uks-antiquated-spying-laws-published-by-law-commission/">in need of updating</a> to fit a world where espionage and leaks are largely conducted through new technology. But a <a href="https://theconversation.com/official-secrets-act-home-secretarys-planned-reform-will-make-criminals-out-of-journalists-164890">close reading</a> of the new proposals suggests the agenda is as much to deter journalists, whistleblowers and sources from embarrassing government and intelligence agencies.</p>
<p>The words “journalist” and “journalism” appear nowhere in the main text, and “press” only on two occasions, yet the proposals implicitly conflate probing journalism with spying by hostile states. They recommend (some 38 times) prosecuting those who make “unauthorised disclosures”, which would include government sources speaking to journalists, and increasing prison penalties from two years to up to 14 years.</p>
<p>The Home Office, led by Home Secretary Priti Patel, has dismissed the recommendations of the <a href="https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/reforms-to-uks-antiquated-spying-laws-published-by-law-commission/">independent Law Commission</a>, which are supported by <a href="http://www.newsmediauk.org/Latest/nma-official-secrets-act-reform-could-criminalise-public-interest-journalism">journalism and legal organisations</a>, that any reform should include a legal defence for those deemed to be acting in the public interest. This would give some protection to journalists and their sources.</p>
<p>I am an investigative journalist with more than 40 years of experience reporting on national security, and my <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-spies-spin-and-the-fourth-estate.html">recently published book</a>, Spies, Spin and the Fourth Estate, covers the relationship between journalism and national security. </p>
<p>While it is quite right that foreign spies should be prosecuted, this legislation seems more designed to prevent government embarrassment. There is a wealth of historical evidence that demonstrates the UK government and intelligence services’ ingrained tendency to suppress journalism in an effort to cover up its wrongdoing. Indeed many illegal operations have been exposed only by the collaboration of whistleblowers and journalists. </p>
<h2>Government secrecy</h2>
<p>There has been an Official Secrets Act since 1889, aimed at spies and corrupted civil servants. Lobbied persistently by Vernon Kell of the new Secret Service Bureau (later divided into MI5 and MI6), the UK parliament passed a new, catch-all Official Secrets Act in 1911. It was passed in one day with minimal debate.</p>
<p>Even then, journalists were concerned about the additional powers the act imposed compared with the previous version. The Newspaper Proprietors’ Association at the time <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-spies-spin-and-the-fourth-estate.html">protested the bill’s</a> “far reaching liabilities … upon the public and the Press”, saying its wide scope “affects anyone and everyone”.</p>
<p>As feared, the legislation was used as much as a tool against journalists and whistleblowers as against foreign spies. </p>
<p>The Scottish journalist and writer Compton Mackenzie had served as an intelligence officer in the eastern Mediterranean. His 1932 memoir Greek Memories contained a number of classified – though insignificant – details, including wartime Foreign Office telegrams and disclosing that the first chief of MI6 was known as “C.”</p>
<p>Mackenzie was charged for communicating to unauthorised persons “information which he had obtained while holding office under His Majesty”. It was thought that, at least in part, the prosecution was instigated to intimidate former prime minister David Lloyd George who was proposing to publish a warts-and-all memoir. </p>
<p>Mackenzie took a plea bargain, but ultimately got his revenge by writing the satirical novel Water on the Brain, which lampooned the SIS disguised under the name MQ9 (E), “The Directorate of Extraordinary Intelligence”.</p>
<p>Mackenzie’s case was just one of a continuing series of prosecutions over the years.</p>
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<p>An even tougher act came in 1989, in reaction to the government’s embarrassment over a series of well-publicised intelligence scandals in the 1980s, including the trial of Falklands war whistleblower <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/06/clive-ponting-obituary">Clive Ponting</a>, the revelation that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/august/mi5-vetting">MI5 vetted</a> BBC staff, and the publication of the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/13/newsid_2532000/2532583.stm">Spycatcher memoir</a> by former MI5 agent Peter Wright.</p>
<p>The 1989 act has been used inappropriately. Take the 2018 case of two investigative journalists who were <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/psni-apologises-to-journalists-trevor-birney-and-barry-mccaffrey-1.4306218">arrested in Belfast for the suspected theft</a> of a confidential report, which contained information about a 1994 loyalist massacre in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland, and the failed police investigation into the murders.</p>
<p>The journalists were accused of handling stolen goods, unlawful disclosure of information under the Official Secrets Act and the unlawful obtainment of personal data – what journalists would call a leak – a vital tool in serving the public interest. Police questioned them for 14 hours, and raided their homes and offices in the early hours of the morning – in one case, in front of children. </p>
<p>After a judicial review, Belfast’s high court <a href="https://www.nuj.org.uk/resource/nuj-welcomes-final-settlement-for-no-stone-unturned-journalists.html">quashed the search warrants</a>, finding that the journalists acted in “nothing other than a perfectly appropriate way in doing what the NUJ required of them, which was to protect their sources”. </p>
<h2>Toughening the law again</h2>
<p>Now, the government wants to toughen the law again for the digital age. But the real target is journalists and their sources. Why? Just look at the embarrassment caused by more recent intelligence malfeasance.</p>
<p>Journalists revealed MI6’s collusion with the CIA’s rendition and torture programme in the mid-2000s, which government officials had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/28/what-did-jack-straw-know-about-the-uks-role-in-torture-and-rendition">previously denied</a>.</p>
<p>The Guardian’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/20/days-believing-spy-chiefs-over">2013 publication</a> of a massive archive of secret intelligence documents leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the capability of western nations to maintain a level of surveillance unsuspected by even the most informed observers. </p>
<p>In my view, to allow such a draconian new law as proposed by the Home Office, there would have to be a very robust and independent structure of oversight in place, which currently does not exist. </p>
<p>Taking the examples above, formal accountability bodies had failed to identify both the rendition and torture scandal and GCHQ’s illegal move towards mass surveillance. Parliament’s main intelligence accountability mechanism, the Intelligence Security Committee (ISC), has been, for much of its 25 years, something of a cheerleader for intelligence rather than a guardian of public interest.</p>
<p>Only the short period under Dominic Grieve’s chairmanship from 2015-19 revealed a committee prepared to act robustly – and then it was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/28/criticism-mounts-over-uk-post-9-11-role-in-torture-and-rendition">restricted by government</a>. The committee released a highly critical report on rendition and torture demolishing government denials of involvement, but not until <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/28/uk-role-torture-kidnap-terror-suspects-after-911-revealed">13 years after the events described</a>. </p>
<p>There has been no apology or explanation from the state about the examples above and many other cases. For journalists to accept the new proposals would be a huge leap of faith that the government would use such legislation proportionally and sensibly. </p>
<p>The new legislation would tip the delicate contract between personal freedom and national security towards a more authoritarian stance with a decided chilling effect on journalistic inquiry. There has never been a more important time for rigorous fourth-estate monitoring of the intelligence complex, and many of the proposals in this consultation would be a further deterrent to robust investigative journalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164893/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lashmar is a member of the Labour Party and the National Union of Journalists.</span></em></p>Proposals to toughen the Official Secrets Act are the latest in a long history of efforts designed to prevent government embarrassment.Paul Lashmar, Reader in Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1245222019-10-04T12:50:44Z2019-10-04T12:50:44ZJohn le Carré, MI6 and the fact and fiction of British secret intelligence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295584/original/file-20191004-118217-14k881m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C994%2C661&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aleksandr Grechanyuk via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sir Richard Dearlove, a former chief of the Secret Intelligence Service – SIS or MI6 – recently <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-spy-chief-throws-the-book-at-john-le-carre-and-stella-rimington-ggbf7mjhq">launched a critical broadside at John le Carré,</a> accusing the acclaimed author of award winning spy fiction of producing “corrosive” novels that “are exclusively about betrayal”. </p>
<p>The blurring of intelligence fiction and intelligence fact has long been a double-edged sword for the real world of British intelligence , particularly in terms of its impact upon recruitment. Sir Colin McColl, chief of SIS from 1989 to 1994, once described the most well-known fictional secret agent, James Bond, as <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/the_spies_who/">“the best recruiting sergeant in the world”</a>. But it’s likely that the image of the martini-drinking, fast car driving Bond was attracting the wrong type of applicant. More recently, SIS has made efforts to distance itself from the fictional secret agent. In October 2016, the current chief of SIS, Sir Alex Younger, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/726125/James-Bond-MI6-secret-services-recruitment">explained</a> that James Bond: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>wouldn’t get through our recruitment process … whilst we share his qualities of patriotism, energy and tenacity, an intelligence officer in the real MI6 has a high degree of emotional intelligence, values teamwork and always has respect for the law… unlike Mr Bond.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bond’s “severe chronic alcohol problem”, as <a href="https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/a25553934/james-bond-alcohol-problem-study-cocktails/">recently diagnosed</a> by the Medical Journal of Australia, probably wouldn’t help his case, either.</p>
<h2>Real-life spooks</h2>
<p>MI6’s sister agency, the Security Service (MI5) has also had reason to be somewhat ambivalent about the impact of intelligence fiction upon real-life recruitment. An unpublished draft of the official history of the D Notice system, now available at the National Archives, reveals the impact of the launch of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/aug/11/bbc-spooks-axed">BBC drama Spooks</a>.</p>
<p>While the service was “relaxed about the series” (its officers “very much hoping that Armani suits, plush offices and fast cars as shown in the series would somehow become a feature of their considerably less glamorous work”), the hope that recruiting “would benefit” was met with mixed results. An entry in the archive tells us that “applications did temporarily increase, but those from women dropped, possibly because of the unrealistic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/may/21/broadcasting">level of violence</a>”. </p>
<h2>Betrayal</h2>
<p>It is curious to hear a former chief of SIS play down the reality that the intelligence business is, ultimately, based upon betrayal. Betrayal sits at the heart of human intelligence gathering.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295590/original/file-20191004-118244-1d41rgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295590/original/file-20191004-118244-1d41rgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295590/original/file-20191004-118244-1d41rgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295590/original/file-20191004-118244-1d41rgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295590/original/file-20191004-118244-1d41rgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295590/original/file-20191004-118244-1d41rgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295590/original/file-20191004-118244-1d41rgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A far cry from the ‘Circus’: MI6 headquarters in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">I Wei Huang via Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>As the MI6 website explains: “Agents are at the heart of what MI6 does. Usually foreign nationals, they voluntarily work with us to provide secret intelligence that helps to keep the UK - and often the rest of the world – safe and secure.” Without such willingness from nationals of countries other than the UK to betray their own countries by passing information to MI6, the role to be played by such a human intelligence organisation as SIS would surely be much diminished?</p>
<p>Perhaps some fiction that explores the world of British intelligence does go too far. Yet the snippets of factual information that do enter the public domain, through unofficial disclosures, do not always make for comfortable reading. See, for example, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-government-apology-libya-torture-mi6-gaddafi-prison-abdel-hakim-belhaj-fatima-boudchar-a8344746.html">revelations</a> about the involvement of MI6 in the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife, Fatima Boudchar, to a prison in Muammar Gadaffi’s Libya, where Belhaj was interrogated and tortured. This ultimately led to an unreserved apology from then UK prime minister, Theresa May, and a pay-out of £500,000 in compensation to Boudchar.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/britain-mi6-and-the-belhaj-case-the-outstanding-questions-96438">Britain, MI6 and the Belhaj case: the outstanding questions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>What is the solution to the public being misled by intelligence fiction? Nature, we are told, abhors a vacuum. Would we be so drawn to intelligence fiction if we had a little more intelligence fact to read instead, thereby allowing the public to draw its own conclusions about the distance that exists between the two?</p>
<p>If Sir Richard is unhappy with the representation of SIS and its work as found in fiction, then perhaps he might lobby his former organisation to consider the steps it could take to redress the balance through greater public exposure of its real history? The <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/MI6-History-Intelligence-Service-1909-1949/dp/1408810050/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Keith+Jeffery&qid=1570185611&sr=8-2">Authorised History</a> of the organisation, written by the late Keith Jeffery and released almost a decade ago, was only allowed to take the story of MI6 up to 1949. Could a little more light, at least, now be shed on what happened next? </p>
<p>In the meantime, with le Carré’s latest novel, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/10/john-le-carre-agent-running-in-the-field">Agent Running in the Field</a> about to hit the bookshops, the writer is delighted, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/john-le-carre-hits-back-at-attack-by-ex-mi6-chief-hq2d6jv7d">writing in The Times</a>: “I’m not my own publicity manager but if I were I would have paid good money to Sir Richard Dearlove to take the stage at Cliveden Literary Festival and loose off a full-frontal on me and my work less than a month before my new novel hits the stands.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124522/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher J. Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The former boss of British intelligence has lashed out at spy novelist John le Carré. The novelist is rather pleased.Christopher J. Murphy, Senior Lecturer in Intelligence Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1176392019-06-12T11:18:42Z2019-06-12T11:18:42ZSetting precedents for privacy: the UK legal challenges bringing surveillance into the open<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279129/original/file-20190612-32347-1djysy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/photos/camera-spy-pigeon-surveillance-712122/">Pixabay</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>MI5 has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/11/mi5-in-court-accused-of-extraordinary-and-persistent-illegality">pulled up in court</a> over storing mass data obtained by surveillance and hacking in a systematic invasion of privacy <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48597111">described</a> as “undoubtedly unlawful” by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner. The disclosures about Britain’s security agency came to light in mid June during an ongoing case in the high court brought by the campaign group Liberty, which is challenging the architecture of the UK’s surveillance regime. </p>
<p>The revelations come in the wake of other recent high-profile cases regarding privacy and surveillance that campaigners hope could set precedents for the legal and technical powers of government and law enforcement.</p>
<p>In a major victory in May, the charity Privacy International <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/2898/faq-privacy-international-uk-supreme-court-judgment">won a five-year battle</a> against the secrecy of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which oversees surveillance activities by the security services and other agencies. The tribunal was previously able to make decisions behind closed doors. This meant that limited information was made available to people making claims of misconduct or victimisation by the security services. The UK supreme court <a href="https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2018-0004-judgment.pdf">ruled</a> that the tribunal should no longer be exempt from review in UK courts, making its decisions open to public scrutiny. </p>
<p>This ruling makes sure no UK government can ignore the rule of law and the role of the courts. It should also make it more difficult for mass surveillance to be signed off without proper oversight. The case sets a precedent of enforcing better built-in protections for the public from blanket privacy invasions by their own government. It also helps people object to specific cases of discrimination and harm caused by surveillance, including making it easier to bring cases, such as the MI5 data storage failures, into the public eye.</p>
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<h2>Facial recognition challenge</h2>
<p>The other case now making its way through the courts, also brought by Liberty, concerns facial recognition technologies. Liberty supported a man called Ed Bridges who brought a case against South Wales Police. His claim is that the way the police are testing facial recognition in public places causes harm and goes against privacy rights. This links to a recent example of police forcing passersby to enter facial recognition trials, and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-48228677/could-facial-recognition-cut-crime">harassing or fining anyone who refused</a>. </p>
<p>The outcome of the facial recognition case, expected later in 2019, will set a precedent for how new surveillance technologies are tested and introduced. During the trial, the police said that facial recognition <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/22/facial-recognition-prevents-crime-police-tell-uk-privacy-case">“potentially has great utility”</a>. Evidence, however, shows an overwhelming rate of false positives – including 2,000 people <a href="https://theconversation.com/police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-must-be-governed-by-stronger-legislation-111325">wrongly identified as criminals at a football match</a>. There are also continued concerns over racial bias that are yet to be addressed.</p>
<p>These cases come against a backdrop of increased surveillance powers. The main enabler of this is the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/contents/enacted">Investigatory Powers Act 2016</a>, which formalised existing capabilities of the security services such as phone tapping or collecting bulk communications data. The government tried to spin the act as legislation designed to make organisations such as GCHQ more accountable. But it also made surveillance powers available to other agencies including various police and defence departments, health services, the tax office and many other government departments.</p>
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<p>Even if we expect the security services to spy on us, we are less likely to approve of, say, the Health and Safety Executive invading our privacy by accessing our internet records without a warrant. And even if we allow brief invasions of privacy to combat security threats, there still needs to be clear regulation and oversight.</p>
<h2>Pushing for accountability</h2>
<p>But while privacy advocacy groups are making some progress in increasing the accountability of surveillance by UK law enforcement, as the facial recognition case shows, the issues are far from resolved. It will be an ongoing process to preserve privacy and make sure that people know when it is breached. The legal precedents set by these court cases will be crucial, as they could pave the way for more challenges in the future. </p>
<p>Similar debates surrounding the accountability of surveillance are raging in the US. San Francisco has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/facial-recognition-ban-san-francisco.html">blocked facial recognition</a> and the US Congress is also <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facial-recognition-regulation/">addressing the unchecked use of the technology</a>. Even Microsoft has now deleted the largest database of faces <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7d3e0d6a-87a0-11e9-a028-86cea8523dc2">used for training facial recognition</a> systems. But the fact that the faces had already been used by companies in the US, China and elsewhere shows the risk of delaying action. </p>
<p>These debates highlight the importance of collective efforts to assert respect for privacy and other rights as a core part of public life. We are on the cusp of a positive shift in power towards open public debate and accountability about data and the way it is used against us.</p>
<p>Further transparency could help to counter the risks of combining existing surveillance systems – for example, if mass facial recognition and large scale phone tapping were used together unchecked, we could easily find ourselves in a total surveillance state. The current momentum could set positive precedents that could be built upon to protect privacy and prevent surveillance without accountability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117639/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Garfield Benjamin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Campaigners in the UK are pushing to protect privacy and make the security services more accountable.Garfield Benjamin, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Media Arts and Technology, Solent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/964382018-05-11T13:38:11Z2018-05-11T13:38:11ZBritain, MI6 and the Belhaj case: the outstanding questions<p>Attorney General Jeremy Wright has issued <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/government-apology-for-gaddafi-torture-victims-allegedly-betrayed-by-british-spies-11366002">a statement apologising</a> for the UK’s role in the illegal rendition of Libyan dissident <a href="https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-rulings-open-door-to-future-war-on-terror-litigation-in-britain-71396">Abdel Hakim Belhaj</a> and his wife, Fatima Boudchar, in 2004.</p>
<p>The attorney general, watched by Boudchar and her son from the Houses of Commons public gallery, read out a letter from UK Prime Minister Theresa May in which she apologised unreservedly for the “harrowing experiences” suffered. </p>
<p>Belhaj had been part of the anti-Gaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14786753">fled to Afghanistan in the 1990s</a>, leaving shortly after the US-led invasion in 2001. </p>
<p>He was eventually tracked down by the CIA to Kuala Kumpur, following a tip-off from Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) and picked up while en route to the UK before being transferred to a CIA “black site”. Both he and his wife were rendered to Libya, where Belhaj was tortured and sentenced to death. He was only released by the Gaddafi regime in 2010 under a “de-radicalisation” initiative. Boudchar was four-and-a-half months pregnant when she was abducted and released shortly before giving birth. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44066091">Secret documents</a> found in the ruins of the Libyan capital Tripoli in 2011 gave evidence of SIS’s involvement in the rendition, leading to legal action being taken against the British government, former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw and SIS’s Mark Allen.</p>
<p>The prime minister’s statement read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is clear that you were both subjected to appalling treatment and that you suffered greatly … The UK government believes your accounts. Neither of you should have been treated in this way. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The attorney general revealed that Boudchar received £500,000 in compensation. Belhaj has so far not received (and not asked for) a financial settlement. This “full and final” statement included no “admission of liability”. But in a statement, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-government-apology-libya-torture-mi6-gaddafi-prison-abdel-hakim-belhaj-fatima-boudchar-a8344746.html">Belhaj said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I welcome and accept the prime minister’s apology, and I extend to her and the attorney general my thanks and sincere goodwill. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Previously, Belhaj said that he would settle the case if he received a token payment of £1 as long as he received an apology from the British government. </p>
<p>The human rights group Reprieve called the statement “<a href="https://reprieve.org.uk/update/breaking-prime-minister-apologises-for-uk-role-in-abduction-torture-and-rendition-of-abdul-hakim-belhaj-and-fatima-boudchar/">unprecedented</a>” and a “victory for everyone who opposes injustice, secret detention, and torture”, while <a href="https://twitter.com/LeighDay_Law/status/994557825446809601">Sapna Malik</a> from solicitors Leigh Day, who represented Belhaj and Boudchar, said the “candid apology from the government helps restore the humanity and dignity so brutally denied to my clients during their ordeal and is warmly welcomed”.</p>
<p>The British government will hope that this is the end of a long-running dispute over its role in Belhaj and Boudchar’s rendition which surfaced in 2011. The documents found in Tripoli showed that, in March 2004, SIS’s then director of counter-terrorism, Mark Allen, wrote to the head of Libya’s national intelligence agency, Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya, congratulating him on Belhaj’s arrival, saying: “This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years”. <a href="https://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/pdf/PDF%20176%20%5BBelhadj%20Letter%20of%20Claim%20against%20Sir%20Mark%20Allen,%2026%20Jan%202012%5D.pdf">Allen continued</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The intelligence on Abu Abd Allah (Belhaj’s alias) was British. I know I did not pay for the air cargo. But I feel I have the right to deal with you direct on this and am very grateful for the help you are giving us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The statement marks the end of a long legal battle against the British government, Mark Allen and Jack Straw. Straw continues to deny wrongdoing. </p>
<p>This is not the first time that the UK government has paid out to victims of rendition. In 2012, <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/libya-rendition-claim-uk-2m-payout">the UK government offered £2m</a> to the family of another Libyan dissident, Sami al-Saadi, after he was forced to board a plane in Hong Kong and fly to Tripoli with his wife and four children. </p>
<p>The British government also paid out to former detainees at the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/guantanamo-inmates-set-to-receive-payouts-of-up-to-1631m-2135132.html">US Guantanamo Bay facility</a> in Cuba, including Binyam Mohamed, who had been mistreated while being held in Pakistan. Britain’s Security Service (MI5) was “complicit” in his torture, the Court of Appeal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2010/feb/26/binyam-mohamed-torture">ruled in 2010</a>. </p>
<h2>Unanswered questions</h2>
<p>There remain significant questions about the UK’s role in supporting rendition and complicity in torture. In July 2010, the then UK prime minister, David Cameron, announced a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/jul/06/cameron-torture-inquiry">short and sharp</a>” official inquiry into claims of abuse under retired appeal judge, Sir Peter Gibson. The inquiry was subsequently shelved after UK police announced an investigation into claims of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/12/libya-rendition-torture-abduction-mi6">ill-treatment by Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi</a>. </p>
<p>The legal case was also subsequently dropped due to “<a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/former-mi6-chiefs-role-torture-belhaj-set-be-revealed-2005298389">insufficient evidence</a>” despite a large amount of material being passed to the Crown Prosecution Service. </p>
<p>An interim report of Gibson’s “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/report-of-the-detainee-inquiry">Detainee Inquiry</a>”, based on a mass of material examined (around 20,000 documents), was published in 2013. Shortly afterwards, the government announced that claims of ill-treatment would be dealt with by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/18/judge-led-inquiry-rendition-intelligence-security-committee-cameron">Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC)</a> – rather than the original judge-led inquiry. But the ISC’s scrutiny of the case remains a long way off. </p>
<p>In her letter to Belhaj and his wife, the prime minister said: “The UK government has learned many lessons from this period. We should have understood much sooner the unacceptable practices of some of our international partners and we sincerely regret our failures.”</p>
<p>But the important issues raised by Gibson’s interim report remain. It listed 27 questions Gibson was unable to answer ranging from intelligence liaison to interrogation policy, ministerial guidance to the use of the UK’s overseas territories for CIA rendition flights, and the disclosure of information. </p>
<p>Did the UK’s spies take sufficient interest in the welfare of detainees rendered thanks to UK intelligence? What policies did the UK intelligence community have in place when supporting US extraordinary renditions? Were Britain’s spies willing to support US renditions despite public statements that they were not complicit in torture? What did government ministers and senior officials know?</p>
<p>These are just some of the questions that need to be answered. In the US, the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence completed a major investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme and use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”. The over 500-page summary (out of a total of 6,700 pages) was released in December 2014 with a damning critique of agency practices. </p>
<p>In the UK, letters of apology are welcome but where is the official inquiry into claims of ill-treatment and rendition by Britain’s spies?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Lomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Letters of apology are welcome but where is the official inquiry into claims of ill-treatment and rendition by Britain’s spies?Dan Lomas, Programme Leader, MA Intelligence and Security Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/887082017-12-06T11:33:34Z2017-12-06T11:33:34ZThe Manchester bombing: unknown unknowns and ‘hindsight bias’<p>The May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing <a href="https://www.daqc.co.uk/2017/12/05/report-mi5-police-intelligence-handling-reviews/">could have been prevented</a>, a report by the former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation has revealed. The 22-year-old attacker Salman Abedi, who killed 22 people and injured <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-41839277">512 others</a>, had been a “subject of interest” to Britain’s Security Service (MI5) in 2014 and 2015 but was classed as a “low residual risk” to national security and his case was closed. </p>
<p>David Anderson QC’s report suggests there were opportunities to reopen the case, raising the possibility the attack could have been stopped. MI5 twice received intelligence reports which – had their significance been “properly understood” – would have reopened the investigation into Abedi. The intelligence was not “fully appreciated” and judged to “relate not to terrorism” but possible “nefarious activity or criminality”. Abedi was just one of a number of closed subjects of interest (SOI) whose case needed “further consideration”. A meeting to review the evidence was scheduled for May 31, 2017 – nine days after <a href="https://theconversation.com/manchester-arena-attack-amid-the-horror-the-strength-of-an-incredible-city-took-hold-78202">the Manchester Arena bombing</a>.</p>
<p>MI5 had also missed the opportunity to place a port alert on Abedi following a visit to Libya in April 2017. Had they done so, Abedi could have been questioned and searched by counter-terror police four days before the attack. As with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/westminster-attack-the-questions-security-professionals-will-be-asking-75083">Westminster Bridge</a> attacker, 52-year-old <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39373766">Khalid Masood</a>, Abedi was judged to pose little threat, yet struck with devastating results. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"938309537597198336"}"></div></p>
<p>The findings form part of a review requested by Home Secretary Amber Rudd to provide “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/london-and-manchester-terror-attacks-independent-assurance-of-reviews">independent assurance</a>” of internal reviews by the police and MI5, to assess intelligence and decisions before the attacks, and to “identify whether the processes and systems … can be improved”.</p>
<p>Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said Anderson’s report would be a “<a href="https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/news/article/235/greater_manchester_mayor_andy_burnham_responds_to_the_anderson_report">difficult read</a>” for Mancunians, adding:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is clear that things could, and perhaps should, have been done differently and that wrong judgements have been made.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The report led to a series of headlines suggesting MI5 had been caught napping. BBC News claimed the attack “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42241344">could have been stopped</a>”, The Financial Times ran with the story that Abedi could have been “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1f53b612-d9c5-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482">prevented</a>”, while The Daily Mail suggested MI5 had missed a series of red lines and were “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5147059/MI5-knew-Manchester-bomber-months-attack.html">alerted months</a>” before the Manchester Arena blast. One commentator concluded that Anderson’s conclusions are “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/05/inquirys-conclusions-about-manchester-attack-are-damning-for-mi5">damning for MI5</a>”. The implication being a so-called “intelligence failure” had occurred. </p>
<p>Yet headlines like these are misleading, neglecting the nuance in Anderson’s report that the decision to ignore or misinterpret the intelligence on Abedi was “understandable” in the circumstances, overlooking the complex nature of counter-terror investigations. So could the Manchester bombing really have been prevented? </p>
<h2>Unknown unknowns</h2>
<p>For the security services, piecing together the intelligence jigsaw is a difficult process. Post-mortem reviews often suffer from hindsight bias. Complex issues become easy to interpret. Intelligence previously considered irrelevant, becomes suddenly important. Knowing the end result often provides clarity where there was none at the time.</p>
<p>“Hindsight can sometimes see the past clearly – with 20/20 vision”, concludes the <a href="https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">9/11 Commission report</a>. In her classic study of the attack on Pearl Harbor, intelligence academic Roberta Wohlstetter found it “easier after the event to sort the relevant from the irrelevant signals”. Intelligence before an event is “obscure and pregnant with conflicting” messages. </p>
<p>Intelligence agencies are far from the all-seeing and all-knowing entities of popular imagination. The very nature of intelligence means that the information available to the security services is often incomplete. Remember this classic bit of <a href="http://archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2636">intelligence speak</a> from US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in February 2002?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/REWeBzGuzCc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Lord Butler’s review of intelligence on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) also makes it clear that “intelligence seldom acquires the full story”. When collected, the information is “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/14_07_04_butler.pdf">sporadic and patchy</a>”. In these circumstances, intelligence gaps are to be expected. </p>
<p>Talk of failure also overlooks the growing tempo of counter-terror operations in the UK. On Tuesday, MI5’s Director General Andrew Parker told ministers that his service had prevented “<a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-security-plots/britains-security-services-thwart-nine-plots-in-past-year-idUKKBN1DZ1R9?il=0">nine terrorist attacks</a>” in the previous 12 months. Since the 2013 killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby, 22 attacks <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nine-terror-attacks-britain-been-11642281">had been foiled</a>. MI5 and counter-terrorism police continue to be inundated with potential threats. </p>
<p>Amber Rudd revealed to parliament there were over 500 live operations – up by a third since the start of the year – with a further 3,000 extremists categorised as “subjects of interest”. A further 20,000 individuals have been investigated and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-on-reviews-into-the-attacks-in-manchester-and-london">may pose a threat</a> in future. The security services have to prioritise threats – sometimes with tragic results.</p>
<h2>Intelligence failure?</h2>
<p>In 2004, MI5 surveillance of the ringleaders of a fertiliser bomb plot, known as Operation Crevice, picked up two of the future <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6476207.stm">July 7 suicide bombers</a>
– Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. At the time, both were marginal figures. Continued surveillance of the Crevice cell led to <a href="https://fas.org/irp/world/uk/july7review.pdf">successful prosecutions</a> of others but Khan and Tanweer remained off MI5’s radar until the 7/7 attacks. The pair killed 52 commuters on the London transport network with their co-conspirators. Questions were again asked as to how two terrorists fell through the gaps of an inquiry and went on to kill. But hindsight made it easier to connect the dots that MI5 had missed.</p>
<p>Anderson’s report highlights that problems continue with the security services’ strategies for dealing with “low level” subjects of interest that may suddenly pose a threat, <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/committee-reports/special-reports">a concern raised</a> by the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee in 2013. But claims that the Manchester Arena bombing could have been stopped are too simplistic.</p>
<p>The report acknowledges the “inherent uncertainty” of whether more could have been done, while, on the balance of probability, a “<a href="https://www.daqc.co.uk/2017/12/05/report-mi5-police-intelligence-handling-reviews/">successful pre-emption</a> … would have been unlikely”. Abedi could have been stopped, for Anderson, had “the cards fallen differently”. In reality, they rarely do. Simplistic headlines that the attack could have been prevented fail to understand the complicated situation facing the security services and do little to bolster public confidence in the UK’s counter-terror effort.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88708/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Lomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Claims that the Manchester Arena bombing could have been stopped are too simplistic.Dan Lomas, Programme Leader, MA Intelligence and Security Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/797742017-06-21T09:59:24Z2017-06-21T09:59:24ZThe security services need to get a handle on ‘low level’ terror threats … and fast<p>The UK’s security services are under the spotlight as the country still reels from major terror attacks in Manchester and London. But MI5 and Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee have been in a period of limbo while the country was waiting for a government to be formed following the snap election. There is now a desperate need to review the security failings that led to these shocking attacks. It is impossible to stop all terrorists – but the first thing that needs to be assessed is how so-called “low level” threats managed to fall through the cracks and then re-emerge carrying bombs and knives. </p>
<p>Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba killed eight people and injured 48 others in an attack on <a href="https://theconversation.com/eight-minutes-on-london-bridge-years-of-training-led-to-lightning-police-response-78815">London Bridge</a> and Borough Market. Butt was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/05/police-and-mi5-face-further-scrutiny-after-third-attack-since-march">already on MI5’s radar</a>, having links to al-Muhajiroun, a banned extremist group. Information that Zaghba was watched by Italian security sources was reportedly forwarded to Britain – a claim denied by MI5 – while Redouane was not known to the security services. </p>
<p>The pattern now seems familiar. In May, 22-year-old Salman Abedi <a href="https://theconversation.com/manchester-arena-attack-amid-the-horror-the-strength-of-an-incredible-city-took-hold-78202">killed 22 people at the Manchester Arena</a>. Like Butt, Abedi was investigated by MI5. One security source was reported to have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/28/missed-opportunities-stop-salman-abedi-investigated/">said of Abedi</a>: “Nothing came of this investigation and, tragically, he slipped down the pecking order.” Westminster Bridge attacker, 52-year-old <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/25/khalid-masood-profile-from-popular-teenager-to-isis-inspired-terrorist">Khalid Masood</a>, also had links to “violent extremism” but was judged not to pose an imminent threat. </p>
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<h2>Security guarantees are ‘impossible’</h2>
<p>All this prompts criticism. Just before the general election, foreign secretary Boris Johnson put pressure on MI5 believing the service “<a href="http://news.sky.com/story/mosque-chairman-terrorist-seemed-quiet-and-gentle-10905657">must answer questions</a>” over Butt’s monitoring while Theresa May said MI5 would try to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/06/mi5-to-review-handling-of-london-bridge-attack-says-theresa-may">learn lessons </a> from the London attacks. </p>
<p>Dominic Grieve, who was the Conservative chair of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until parliament broke for the election, said “<a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/dominic-grieve-100-per-cent-guarantees-of-security-not-possible-to-provide">100 per cent guarantees of security</a>” were impossible. He’s right. Intelligence can never provide certainty. To quote Lord Butler’s 2004 <a href="news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/14_07_04_butler.pdf">review of intelligence</a>, it “seldom acquires the full story”. Yet lessons still need to be learnt.</p>
<p>In the wake of the Manchester attack, MI5 <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/mi5-review-procedures-for-dealing-with-warnings-after-manchester-attack">announced</a> a review of its procedures, while <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/06/mi5-to-scrutinise-counter-terrorism-operations-after-may-calls-for-review">similar commitments</a> were made following the London attacks. But internal reviews aren’t enough. </p>
<p>Parliament’s <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/">Intelligence and Security Committee</a> – established by the 1994 Intelligence Services Act to oversee the policy, management and funding of Britain’s spy agencies – needs to conduct its own review. Previously, the ISC has provided oversight on past “failures”. In the area of UK counter-terrorism, the ISC conducted reviews of the 2005 London bombings in 2006 and 2009. A review of intelligence and the killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby was completed in 2014.</p>
<h2>An ‘unattended’ watchdog</h2>
<p>The work of parliament’s ISC is currently suspended following the snap general election. As a result, a report on diversity and inclusion in the intelligence community by Fiona Mactaggert was held back. Grieve <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/">said of the situation</a>: “It is not in the public interest for oversight of the intelligence community to be left unattended for any period of time.” </p>
<p>One priority needs to be the ISC’s reorganisation. Several former members are no longer in parliament. MI5’s own internal reviews are necessary but an ISC review would be welcomed, possibly helping to restore confidence in the security services.</p>
<p>Previous reports acknowledge the problems of monitoring those linked to radical groups. In 2009, the ISC reported that, before the 7/7 attacks, MI5 was in a position to provide only “a reasonable level of coverage” in just six percent of cases. In <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/committee-reports/special-reports">60 percent</a> there was “inadequate” or no information.</p>
<p>The ISC’s review into the killing of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2014/nov/25/-sp-lee-rigby-woolwich-report-in-full">Lee Rigby</a> also highlighted problems. The committee noted a serious delay in MI5’s investigation into one of the killers, Michael Adebowale. It said there was “insufficient co-ordination” between the police and MI5. The ISC noted MI5’s lack of strategy for dealing with “low level” subjects of interest (SoI) who appear peripheral to investigations. </p>
<p>Michael Adebolajo, the second killer, was linked to extremist groups, arrested in Kenya supposedly trying to join the group Al-Shabaab and involved in drug dealing – but MI5 concluded he didn’t pose a significant risk at the time. </p>
<h2>The ‘low level’ problem</h2>
<p>The ISC’s 2013 report lays bare the problem. In 2007, MI5 and the police launched <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2014/nov/25/-sp-lee-rigby-woolwich-report-in-full">Programme AMAZON</a>, aiming to highlight individuals known to have been involved in extremist groups who could potentially pose a risk. </p>
<p>Individuals included were “assessed through regular reviews of police and MI5 databases” for new intelligence and ranked in one of four categories. Category 1 (individual “poses a threat to life/property in the UK”) to Category 4 (“further work” was needed to establish extremist links). AMAZON ended in 2010 because of the “volume of suspects”. Other projects – Programme BELAYA and Programme CONGO – tried to deal with similar issues, ending in 2012. By late 2013, yet another initiative – Programme DANUBE – was set up, taking a “more holistic view”. Few details, or differences to earlier programmes were provided.</p>
<p>The ISC itself was sceptical, stating: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Previous attempts … have failed: we have not yet seen any evidence that the new programme, established in late 2013, will be any better.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The committee promised to keep a “close interest”. Yet <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/committee-reports/special-reports">it remains to be seen</a> whether the ISC scrutinised DANUBE or any similar programmes.</p>
<p>What is clear is that Programme DANUBE, like those before it, has failed to tackle the problem of “low level” suspects carrying out terrorist activity. Butt, Abedi and Masood – three recent attackers – were marginal, yet carried out attacks. </p>
<p>I am not trying to attack the security services here. They face an “unparalleled threat” – a list of up to 3,000 home-grown extremists – and have disrupted <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/25/five-uk-terror-plots-disrupted-past-two-months-mi5-battles-unparalleled/">five plots</a> in recent months. DANUBE, AMAZON and others may be trying to do the impossible. But the ISC needs to review the security services’ methods for dealing with “low level” subjects of interest … and fast. </p>
<p><em>Now, read this: <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-media-reporting-of-finsbury-park-attack-differs-from-other-terrorist-incidents-79797">Media reporting of Finsbury Park attack explained</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Lomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Security guarantees are impossible, but too many dangerous individuals are falling through the cracks.Dan Lomas, Programme Leader, MA Intelligence and Security Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/781422017-05-22T16:21:42Z2017-05-22T16:21:42ZWhy it’s unfair to single out Jeremy Corbyn over MI5 surveillance<p>The Telegraph newspaper has been making loud noises about its <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/19/exclusive-mi5-opened-file-jeremy-corbyn-amid-concerns-ira-links/">“exclusive”</a> that Britain’s Security Service (MI5) opened a file on Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the early 1990s.</p>
<p>Corbyn was being investigated because of concerns about his “support for the Republican cause” in Ireland. A former insider with links to the investigation told the newspaper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If there was a file on someone, it meant they had come to notice. We opened a temporary file and did a preliminary investigation. It was then decided whether we should open a permanent file on them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was unclear whether a permanent file was actually opened.</p>
<p>MI5 wasn’t the only organisation monitoring Corbyn. Peter Francis, a former officer in the Metropolitan Police’s controversial Special Demonstration Squad, revealed in 2015 that Corbyn was one of a number of Labour MPs – including Tony Benn, Peter Hain, Dennis Skinner and others – watched for their links with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32044580">“radical causes or protests”</a>.</p>
<p>Claims about Corbyn’s links with Sinn Féin and the IRA have become centre stage in the general election campaign. When interviewed by Sky News, the Labour leader refused to single out the IRA for its role in The Troubles, <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/jeremy-corbyn-labour-wants-fair-immigration-based-on-the-needs-of-our-society-10886500">saying that</a> “all bombing is wrong”. Corbyn’s team has defended his stance suggesting that links to Republican groups were to “bring about a peace process”.</p>
<h2>Controversial stance</h2>
<p>Corbyn’s links to prominent republicans is the subject of ongoing controversy. In 1984, shortly after the IRA killed five people in a bomb attack on the Conservative party conference in Brighton, Corbyn and fellow left-winger Ken Livingstone invited prominent figures in Sinn Féin to the House of Commons.</p>
<p>Then, two years later, Corbyn was arrested when attending a picket in London arranged by the Republican Troops Out Movement to protest the trial of Brighton Bomber Patrick Magee. In 1988, following the killing of eight IRA gunman in an SAS ambush at Loughgall, Corbyn told the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/19/exclusive-mi5-opened-file-jeremy-corbyn-amid-concerns-ira-links/">Wolf Tone Society</a>: “I’m happy to commemorate all those who died fighting for an independent Ireland.”</p>
<p>During the IRA’s campaign of violence, it’s suggested the Labour leader was involved in at least 72 events linked to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/election-2017/abbott-declared-support-for-ira-defeat-of-britain-rp79dvvmk">pro-republican groups</a>. Other members of Corbyn’s frontbench team – the shadow chancellor, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/18/john-mcdonnell-apologises-for-ira-comment-labour">John McDonnell</a>, and <a href="https://andrewgilliganblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/diane-abbott-backed-victory-for-the-ira-see-the-document/">Diane Abbott</a> have also come in for criticism for similar comments they’ve made.</p>
<h2>Eyes on Labour</h2>
<p>That MI5 opened a file on Corbyn isn’t a complete surprise, despite The Telegraph’s exclusive. We know that MI5 kept files on many people involved in certain movements at the time. These included trade unionists, those involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other “radical” issues. In fact, there’s a long tradition of Labour MPs having MI5 files.</p>
<p>In the 1920s and 1930s MI5’s blanket surveillance of left-wing groups meant that a number of Labour MPs elected in 1945 had files on them. Stafford Cripps, wartime ambassador to the Soviet Union and a future chancellor of the exchequer, had an MI5 file owing to his support for the Communist-backed Popular Front Movement. Fears about Communist penetration of the Labour party meant that many left wingers were watched.</p>
<p>In 1947, MI5 provided the then-prime minister, Clement Attlee, with a list of several Labour MPs suspected of being crypto-Communists or “fellow travellers”. It included some of the party’s most visible figures – among them <a href="http://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/activists/bessie-braddock/">Elizabeth “Bessie” Braddock</a> and political writer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2012/mar/27/archive-1950-professor-harold-laski">Harold Laski</a>, who was briefly party chair. MI5 also monitored suspect Labour MPs in the 1950s and 1960s; the agency’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/05/three-labour-mps-history-mi5">authorised history</a> reveals that in the late 1960s, defector <a href="https://spyinggame.me/2012/09/18/the-frolik-defection/">Joseph Frolik</a> helped uncover links between Czech agents and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/05/three-labour-mps-history-mi5">three Labour parliamentarians</a>. </p>
<p>MI5’s monitoring of MPs took a blow in the 1960s with the <a href="http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04258/SN04258.pdf">Wilson Doctrine</a>. This banned the “tapping of the telephones of members of parliament” without Downing Street’s permission. Successive governments upheld the policy, though subject to strain in recent years.</p>
<p>Ironically, Harold Wilson himself was the subject of an MI5 file, held under the pseudonym “Norman John Worthington”, stoking conspiracy theories that the service tried to undermine him. The <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6257345/MI5-secret-file-on-Harold-Wilson-KGB-contacts-made-him-a-suspect.html">file</a> was opened when Wilson first became MP and remained open during his tenure as prime minister from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976. However, he wasn’t the target of active surveillance.</p>
<p>Allegations about MI5’s surveillance of Labour MPs continued. In 1985, the MI5 whistle-blower Cathy Massiter revealed the service’s widespread monitoring of left-wing groups, especially the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuAzSDhZXk">National Council for Civil Liberties</a>, which had close links to the Labour party. Massiter’s claim that Patricia Hewitt, NCCL’s general secretary, and the organisations legal officer and Labour MP Harriet Harman were watched sparked a case before the European Court of Human Rights forcing the introduction of the 1989 Security Service Act.</p>
<p>Another MI5 former insider <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/216877.stm">David Shaylor</a> alleged in the 1990s that his service held files on Labour MPs, vetting them before elections. The names of Harmen and Joan Ruddock, CND’s chair between 1981 and 1985, were sent to the Labour party leadership. Livingstone was labelled a “dangerous subversive” and, like Corbyn, suspect because of links to Sinn Féin.</p>
<p>Others included Jack Straw – ironically a future home secretary and foreign secretary, responsible for MI5 and MI6 – who was considered a “communist sympathiser”. Peter Mandelson was also reportedly the subject of “two thick volumes” because of links to the Young Communist League while at <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/news/08/0826/secret.shtml">university</a>.</p>
<p>The suggestion that MI5 investigated Corbyn aren’t really a surprise. MI5’s history shows it has monitored other Labour MPs because of links to left wing and radical groups. These claims are yet another chapter in the stormy relationship between Labour and the security service. That said, the story has reignited a debate about Corbyn’s links to Irish republican groups just weeks ahead of the election, potentially damaging further his image with the British electorate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78142/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Lomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The security services have had eyes on many Labour MPs over the years.Dan Lomas, Programme Leader, MA Intelligence and Security Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/738032017-03-07T13:29:34Z2017-03-07T13:29:34ZTrump versus the intelligence agencies – we’ve seen it all before<p>Donald Trump’s remarkable attacks on his own intelligence community may seem shocking to the casual observer – but they are not without precedent. History is littered with the debris of this delicate and all too often abusive relationship. Whether it’s dirty tricks to undermine a “bolshevik” Harold Wilson or “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/01/21/did-nixon-blow-off-his-daily-cia-reports/?utm_term=.c3b0e1284b30">Ivy League liberals</a>” smearing Richard Nixon, it’s clear that the spies do not always love their leaders.</p>
<p>At the heart of the story is the role of intelligence in democracies. In theory, intelligence agencies are meant to be objective, free from political bias and to speak truth to power. They perform two tasks: providing intelligence assessments to shape policy and implementing government decisions. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j6ZokQGhwdkC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=intelligence+obstacle+race+uri+bar+joseph&source=bl&ots=GQP0BIBN4b&sig=xoDHFX_--9KdMZ8260DnQgrs8A8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5n-ujvrrSAhVGDsAKHS1xDf4Q6AEIPzAG#v=onepage&q=intelligence%20obstacle%20race%20uri%20bar%20joseph&f=false">Uri Bar-Joseph</a> said the relationship should actually be seen as an “obstacle race” in which both sides – intelligence officials and policymakers – show their frustration. </p>
<p>For their part, policymakers need to listen to advice – whether good or bad. But often they don’t like the message being reported by their intelligence officials, criticising them or – worst of all – cutting them out altogether. Party political differences can also create problems and the potential for unauthorised leaks and smears.</p>
<h2>The British experience</h2>
<p>Britain has been no stranger to alleged dirty tricks. In 1920, leaks of top secret intercepts by senior intelligence and military figures, headed by the chief of the imperial general staff, Sir Henry Wilson, wrecked government attempts to strike a controversial trade deal with Bolshevik Russia. </p>
<p>Four years later – in the now infamous “<a href="https://issuu.com/fcohistorians/docs/history_notes_cover_hphn_14">Zinoviev Letter Affair</a>” – intelligence officials, wrongly believing Britain’s first Labour government was sympathetic to Russia, leaked a fake letter into the national press during the October 1924 election. The letter – purported to be from Grigori Zinoviev, president of the internal communist organisation – called on British communists to mobilise “sympathetic forces” in the Labour Party to support an Anglo-Soviet treaty. It was said to have triggered the fall of the Labour government.</p>
<p>But one of the most famous intelligence plots must be the alleged attempt to undermine Harold Wilson. Oddly, it was Wilson himself who gave force to the story. In May 1976, after leaving Downing Street, the former PM told BBC journalists Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour that he wasn’t sure “what was happening, fully, in security”. </p>
<p>He said members of the Security Service (MI5) were “very right-wing” and “the sort of people who would have spread the stories of Number 10 and the Communist cell” – referring to claims that Wilson and his private office had been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6v1VxB5Lss">compromised by the KGB</a>. But Wilson quickly distanced himself from the allegations. He called them “cock and bull written by two journalists of limited experience”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159767/original/image-20170307-14957-1aa744f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159767/original/image-20170307-14957-1aa744f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159767/original/image-20170307-14957-1aa744f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159767/original/image-20170307-14957-1aa744f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159767/original/image-20170307-14957-1aa744f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159767/original/image-20170307-14957-1aa744f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159767/original/image-20170307-14957-1aa744f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harold Wilson about to be interviewed on television in 1980.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterdenton/4606851233/in/photolist-826jnx-dH7eGv-gBZw9g-9EDvKj-deBKP-7pQBiD-83rfYw-4R8J1w-hXXoDf-de88Ld-8vP4Km-7pQB4R-dKWbKU-5Z5ran-FkzP14-N3K6u-de88Zq-7hcWQp-JPpoDi-5ZkXMg-fwze14-4eDc1A-9FVXp9-8F4nS5-bDjENp-aweY8q-hXV4nJ-NQSqR-9EAFyi-invrW4-8gDbz1-phDre-9FVWQN-pTC7bA-qGZ4js-dcZiar-KDnsh-dSRi51-i9RgRb-mh3Ft4-mcbiyp-9EDC11-C8KihH-aw5ZyZ-fLK8qv-9EDE8N-k35D5-ot1AKQ-GMgvb-9EAM3t">Peter Denton/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Claims of the “Wilson plot” continued only thanks to the former MI5 officer Peter Wright, author of Spycatcher. Wright’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/7547558/Peter-Wright.html">book</a> claimed there were up to “30 officers involved” in a plot to leak sensitive information on Wilson to domestic and overseas newspapers. Questions were to be asked in parliament in a “carbon copy” of the Zinoviev Affair. Wright was later forced, however, to admit to BBC Panorama that his claims were “unreliable” and that the maximum number of officers tasked with this was very often “only three” – including himself. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Spycatcher: Wright or wrong?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rumours surrounding the Wilson plot continue to this day. Attempts by former MI5 director general Stella Rimmington to end the stories by talking to Labour grandees failed. She said the exercise was “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/sep/11/freedomofinformation.media">fruitless</a>” as Labour suspicions ran too deep. In 1996, a former cabinet secretary, Sir John Hunt, acknowledged a few “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/oct/10/defence-of-the-realm-mi5">malcontents</a>” in MI5, though it was unclear if this extended beyond Wright and his mates. And MI5’s authorised history – despite the best efforts of its author Christopher Andrew – has done little to put the claims to bed, with rumours that the cabinet office <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266837/Revealed-How-MI5-bugged-10-Downing-Street-Cabinet-Prime-Ministers-15-YEARS.html">deleted sections</a> of the book over claims Number 10 was secretly bugged (claims denied by government).</p>
<h2>Dirty tricks?</h2>
<p>President Trump’s allegation that his intelligence community is “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/15/donald-trump-slams-leaks-contact-russian-intelligence-ahead/">un-American</a>” echoes earlier intelligence-policy spats in the US. Famously, President Lyndon B Johnson compared the CIA to a cow swinging a “<a href="http://fsi.stanford.edu/news/why-intelligence-community-matters">shit-smeared tail</a>” through carefully worked out policy. President George W Bush, too, was “at war” with the CIA over claims the agency was “just guessing” in their assessments of Iraq’s insurgency during the 2004 <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/44dd2236-c136-11e6-81c2-f57d90f6741a">presidential election</a>. Relations with the White House got so bad that the acting head of the CIA even had to reassure Bush’s team it wasn’t supporting his opponent, John Kerry.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"831853862281699331"}"></div></p>
<p>The history of Israeli intelligence provides similar examples. In 1963, the Director of Mossad, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/feb/20/guardianobituaries.israel">Isser Harel</a>, was forced to resign having started an “unauthorised crusade” against German scientists in Egypt. He effectively began an independent foreign policy, leaking information to journalists, potentially wrecking David Ben-Gurion’s attempt to develop closer relations with West Germany. </p>
<p>More recently, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-assembly-israel-iran-idUSBRE88Q0GI20120927">Binyamin Netanyahu’s</a> September 2012 claim that Iran was nearer to completing a nuclear weapon – supporting the case for an Israeli military strike – led to differences with senior intelligence and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/28/israeli-spy-chief-warns-netanyahu-barak">military figures</a>.</p>
<p>Whether claims of dirty tricks are true remains open to question but they upset the delicate intelligence-policymaker relationship. Past examples from Britain, the US and Israel show that even the suggestion that intelligence agencies are trying to undermine the government cause significant problems. History does not bode well for President Trump. Expect more problems in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73803/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Lomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History is littered with the debris of the all too often abusive relationship between the intelligence community and those in power.Dan Lomas, Programme Leader, MA Intelligence and Security Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/714162017-01-17T14:49:06Z2017-01-17T14:49:06ZDangerous liaisons: the British guide to avoiding a honey trap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153028/original/image-20170117-23068-jp0kug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">British Embassy in Moscow.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Foreign Office</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recent word to enter the lexicon of those interested in the murky world of spies and skullduggery is “Kompromat” – the Russian art of obtaining compromising material on prominent individuals in order to exert leverage over them. Since the term came to light recently in the case of the dossier compiled about Donald Trump’s visits to Russia, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/14/russia-blackmail-chris-bryant-donald-trump-boris-johnson-liam-fox">number of articles</a> have detailed cases where individuals have <a href="https://theconversation.com/whether-or-not-trump-claims-are-true-russia-is-still-using-sex-for-spying-71293">found themselves in hot water</a> from misguided actions, which have led in turn to scandal, disgrace and the premature ending of careers.</p>
<p>Recently released Cabinet Office documents from the 1990s – now available at the National Archives – clearly show that the British authorities were very well aware of the existence of such operations and took the threat they posed particularly seriously. The documents also illustrate that such operations were not solely a Soviet specialism.</p>
<p>While much official material on this subject, some of which dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, remains closed to the public under <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/legislation/public-records-act/">Section 3.4 of the Public Records Act</a>, minutes of Whitehall’s <a href="http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C16329094">Personnel Security Committee</a>, dated December 1990, show the extent to which such activity was known and the advice provided to counter it. </p>
<p>The committee, which is housed in the Cabinet Office and includes representatives from the Security Service (MI5), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Atomic Energy Authority, met on December 19 1990 to discuss issuing “new guidance on travel to countries presenting a special security risk”. </p>
<p>Meeting in the context of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the proposed changes offered “a general relaxation on travel restrictions” . This meant that only those in “EPV [extended positive vetting] and PV(TS) [positive vetting (top secret)] posts” would be obliged to seek permission for recreational travel to certain countries. But, at the same time, there was a clear awareness of the continuing dangers posed by travel to particular destinations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153031/original/image-20170117-23075-cuzcs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153031/original/image-20170117-23075-cuzcs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153031/original/image-20170117-23075-cuzcs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153031/original/image-20170117-23075-cuzcs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153031/original/image-20170117-23075-cuzcs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153031/original/image-20170117-23075-cuzcs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153031/original/image-20170117-23075-cuzcs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Foreign & Commonwealth Office headquarters in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UK Government</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The revised guidance noted that: “The rules on ‘Travel to Communist Countries’ … have been revised in the light of the recent changes in Eastern Europe”. Interesting to note: the term “Communist countries” had now been replaced with “countries presenting a special security risk”. The countries of most concern – “List A countries” – were detailed in an annexure. They were Afghanistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Cambodia, China (including Tibet), Cuba, Laos, Mongolia, North Korea, Romania, the Soviet Union and Vietnam.</p>
<h2>Pitfalls and entrapment</h2>
<p>The authorities were under no illusions as to the potential dangers raised by a visit to these countries. They warned that government employees would be on the radar for potential entrapment as soon as they filed their visa applications. Unsurprisingly, officials from the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence were considered the biggest potential risks, “regardless of the degree of clearance of the official in question”. </p>
<p>“Having identified a person of interest”, the document continued, “the intelligence service may seek to gain control over that person whilst they are in the country concerned”.</p>
<p>Such control could be achieved through various means, including surveillance, eavesdropping and clandestine entry along with “other operations and entrapment ‘ploys’.” These included “sexual involvement” – a polite way of saying “honey trap”. </p>
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<p>While the Soviet Union was top of the list in terms of conducting such operations, it was not alone: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Russian Intelligence Service, the Chinese Intelligence Service and other intelligence services use the threat of exposure, following sexual involvement with a local, in order to blackmail visitors into working for them. The intelligence service may “arrange” the liaison itself, or may exploit a spontaneous liaison; visitors should therefore be wary of entering into any friendship which might attract the attention of the local intelligence service. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In addition to sexual liaisons, the document warned of involvement in currency transactions, dealing in black market goods and carrying “certain types of correspondence or literature”. Visitors detained by the local authorities as a result of failing to avoid these pitfalls “may be approached by the local militia or the local intelligence service which might seek to extract a promise of cooperation with the authorities in exchange for an undertaking that no charges will be preferred. Such undertakings should not be given if they can be avoided”.</p>
<p>Given recent allegations, one can only hope that the Personnel Security Committee continues to impress upon British politicians and civil servants the potential dangers of certain forms of behaviour abroad. Yet, in an era when such warnings have allegedly led to low-ranking official visitors <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3558239/Downing-Street-aides-traded-bogus-secrets-SEX-undercover-Russian-Chinese-honey-trap-spies.html">making efforts to puff up their importance</a> in the hope of attracting the attention of their hosts’ charms, ultimately such proactive preventative action on the part of the authorities can only go so far in protecting individuals from the very human frailty of foolish behaviour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher J. Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>UK diplomats are thoroughly briefed on the pitfalls that could trap them on overseas service.Christopher J. Murphy, Lecturer in Intelligence Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/681092016-11-08T13:28:48Z2016-11-08T13:28:48ZAnkle tags, house arrest and forced relocation: how does Britain balance security and civil rights?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145022/original/image-20161108-16721-i425nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Matthew Photography</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain is gearing up for an increased risk of terrorist activity, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/01/andrew-parker-mi5-director-general-there-will-be-terrorist-attacks-in-britain-exclusive">according to the head of security agency MI5</a>, Andrew Parker. He believes that the push against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq will force many UK-born fighters to return home and some of them will inevitably continue to pose a threat.</p>
<p>Part of their response to this will be to increase the use of preventative measures brought in to monitor people who are suspected of being a risk, but where there is not enough evidence to either try or deport them. TPIMs – or to give them their full name, <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/23/contents/enacted">Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures</a> – generally include some sort of a sanction such as tagging or overnight home arrest. </p>
<p>The controversial orders made headlines in September 2013 when terrorism suspect Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24799675">absconded from a west London mosque</a> disguised in a burqa, despite being subject to a TPIM which required him to wear an ankle tag. </p>
<p>The government has recently reaffirmed its commitment to relying on TPIMs as part of its counter-terror strategy. It is seeking to renew the enablinhg legislation until 2021, since it would otherwise <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/562930/TPIMs_act_2011_Print.pdf">expire in December 2016</a>. A government statement said that TPIMs “have been and remain a crucial component of the government’s national security response”. </p>
<p>TPIMs were strengthened under the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/6/contents/enacted">Counter-Terrorism and Security Act</a> in 2015 which <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13600869.2016.1145870?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=cirl20">reinstated forced relocation</a> as one of the range of obligations that can be imposed on a terror suspect. Forced relocation was dropped when the old system of control orders was replaced with TPIMs by the coalition government in 2010.</p>
<h2>Counter-terror toolkit</h2>
<p>There seems to be a weary public acquiescence in the notion that reliance on these non-trial-based liberty-invading measures remains necessary in the face of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/461404/6_1256_EL_The_Terrorism_Act_Report_2015_FINAL_16_0915_WEB.pdf">persistent though shifting terrorist threats</a>. They have come to occupy a niche from which they are now unlikely to be dislodged until 2021, if then. </p>
<p>The renewed commitment to continuance of TPIMs might seem surprising. TPIMs have been underused – as of March 2014 only ten people had been subjected to them since 2012. Two of those absconded – and most of the other <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/298487/Un_Act_Independent_Review_print_ready.pdf">TPIMs expired after reaching their two-year limit</a>. One suspect was imprisoned for breach of his TPIM; no information was made available on the others once their TPIMs expired. </p>
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<p>Only three TPIMs were in force by the end of August 2015 – and initially the coming into force of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act had no impact on their usage, despite their re-strengthening. Only two TPIMs were in force early in 2016 – and then only one. It appeared that they were not worth deploying in terms of their practical usefulness as part of the UK’s counter-terror response. But in late October 2016, shortly before the five-year renewal of the legislation was due, a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/26/six-terror-suspects-now-on-tpims-as-threat-of-attack-remains-high/">revival of their use was reported</a> and at present six are in force.</p>
<p>Reliance on TPIMs remains inherently problematic. Their use damages the UK’s reputation in constitutional terms – they rely on targeting terrorist suspects to curtail their liberty without a trial. So they create restrictions that have a punitive impact but avoid the safeguards accompanying a criminal trial – including the need for proof to the criminal standard. They therefore demand a radical departure from procedural and constitutional normality. Parliamentary scrutiny of TPIMs is very limited: in formal terms it need occur only once every five years to consider the renewal of the legislation.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there is a general public acceptance that TPIMs are effective in security terms as one minor but important part of the counter-terrorist toolkit. But, at face value, their efficacy must be questioned – since suspects are free to leave their residences during the day (TPIMs can impose only an overnight residence requirement) and may be able to abscond – as we have seen.</p>
<h2>Growing threat?</h2>
<p>Reliance on TPIMs must be juxtaposed to the current threat from terrorism; MI5’s head, Parker, recently stated in an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/31/andrew-parker-increasingly-aggressive-russia-a-growing-threat-to-uk-says-mi5-head">interview with the Guardian</a>: “There will be terrorist attacks in Britain” and there are about 3,000 “violent Islamic extremists in the UK, mostly British”. </p>
<p>The expected eventual military destruction of the ISIS “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria is also likely to lead to an increase in the number of high-risk returnees who have experienced weapons and explosives training – and, of about <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32026985">850 persons who went abroad to support ISIS</a> or similar groups, about half have already returned.</p>
<p>So it is not immediately clear what purpose TPIMs actually serve, given that if there is proof that a person has been involved in supporting terrorism they could be charged with a precursor offence, including giving support to a proscribed organisation. On the other hand, imposition of TPIMs only requires proof to the civil standard – and, also the government view is that there are some instances in which it is problematic to use security material in a criminal trial. </p>
<p>So if TPIMs are still found to be necessary, then enhanced parliamentary scrutiny is essential. We need to ensure that the cost in terms of Britain’s human rights record is in proportion to their actual value in terms of national security. At the moment, that’s debateable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68109/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Fenwick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government is set to increase its use of punitive security measures against individuals it can’t bring to court.Helen Fenwick, Professor of Law, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/681072016-11-03T16:19:13Z2016-11-03T16:19:13ZGuardian interview finally brings an MI5 boss in from the cold – but why?<p>I cannot believe that a frisson did not pass through The Guardian’s offices when the paper’s executives had to balance the value of an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/01/andrew-parker-mi5-director-general-there-will-be-terrorist-attacks-in-britain-exclusive">exclusive interview with Andrew Parker</a>, the director-general of the security service MI5, against the fact that it meant giving front page space to the loudest and most unrepentant critic of the paper’s work with whistleblower Edward Snowden.</p>
<p>The Guardian made much of the exclusivity of it being the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/31/andrew-parker-increasingly-aggressive-russia-a-growing-threat-to-uk-says-mi5-head">first-ever interview</a> with a serving head of MI5 by a newspaper – but that was not the really significant point. MI5 chiefs have given speeches in the past that were targeted at the press and duly published and broadcast widely. What was significant was Parker’s choice of newspaper. By picking The Guardian, Parker was targeting readers of a paper that include some of the most ardent critics and active campaigners against the huge expansion of the – largely unaccountable – resources and powers of the UK intelligence community. </p>
<p>In the interview, which was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/31/spy-chief-says-british-intelligence-has-foiled-12-terror-plots-s/">widely picked up</a> across the rest of the media, Parker made an erudite case for the value of MI5’s work in an unstable world – and identified numerous threats. From jihadists – notably 3,000 “violent Islamic extremist in the UK, mostly British”. From cyber and other dangers from the land of Putin – “Russia is at work across Europe and in the UK today. It is MI5’s job to get in the way of that.” And he cited a resurgence of Republican terrorism in Northern Ireland. Parker has taken his cogent if one-sided argument to his sternest critics.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144428/original/image-20161103-25359-9pcupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144428/original/image-20161103-25359-9pcupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144428/original/image-20161103-25359-9pcupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144428/original/image-20161103-25359-9pcupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144428/original/image-20161103-25359-9pcupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144428/original/image-20161103-25359-9pcupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144428/original/image-20161103-25359-9pcupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144428/original/image-20161103-25359-9pcupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Criticised: Edward Snowden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laura Poitras / Praxis Films</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Guardian reporters did tax him on his current position on the paper’s publication of the Snowden material from 2013 which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/apr/14/guardian-washington-post-pulitzer-nsa-revelations">won it a Pulitizer Prize</a> – but condemnation from the government, as well as the paper’s visceral Fleet Street enemies The Mail, The Sun, The Times and The Telegraph. And, of course, the intelligence lobby – notably <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mi5-chief-andrew-parker-edward-snowdens-gchq-leaks-gave-terrorists-the-gift-to-evade-us-and-strike-8867399.html">Parker himself</a>. </p>
<p>Has his opinion changed? Resolutely not. He held his own on a number of other questions with no further concessions to accountability or civil liberties. He said that MI5 has stopped 12 terrorist operations in the UK in the past three years but neither the Guardian reporters nor its readers are in any position to challenge that assertion. </p>
<h2>Public face of spying</h2>
<p>What this interview demonstrates is the increasing sophistication of the intelligence lobby and its media engagement. It is worth remembering that it was less than a quarter of a century ago that the government changed its policy of never revealing details of intelligence work or the names of intelligence chiefs.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144425/original/image-20161103-25349-r76hzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144425/original/image-20161103-25349-r76hzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144425/original/image-20161103-25349-r76hzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144425/original/image-20161103-25349-r76hzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144425/original/image-20161103-25349-r76hzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144425/original/image-20161103-25349-r76hzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144425/original/image-20161103-25349-r76hzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stella Rimington was the first MI5 director-general to be publicly named.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MI5</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Shortly after MI5 was acknowledged legally, the name of the director-general of MI5 – <a href="https://www.mi5.gov.uk/dame-stella-rimington">Stella Rimington</a> – <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1532221.stm">was revealed officially for the first time in 1993</a>. </p>
<p>Since then, the intelligence community, which had once had no official engagement with the public sphere, has learned to use it to effect. Sceptics may say that Parker agreed to the interview to influence the House of Lords’ vote on the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2016/june/lords-debates-investigatory-powers-bill/">Investigatory Powers Bill</a>. But the awful truth is that Parker does not need to lobby for the Bill. Backed by a prime minister who, as home secretary, made it her business to get an unadulterated version of the Investigatory Powers Bill into law, there is little danger of any changes being made. This is a <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2016/10/everything-you-need-know-about-terrifying-investigatory-powers-bill">draconian piece of legislation</a> the like of which we have not seen before, with too few safeguards and an accountability system that is still not independent enough. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"793217489668825089"}"></div></p>
<p>Whether the interview was a chance to fire a shot across the bows of the Russians or not, Parker’s interview for the Guardian was a complete publicity win for him. The Guardian “interrogation” produced nothing substantial. At one point, the reporters excitedly teased out of the lofty (“well over 6ft”) Parker new details of his Newcastle comprehensive school and Cambridge University background and then stated that MI5 has been traditionally drawn from the public school elite. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144424/original/image-20161103-25353-ch7j35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144424/original/image-20161103-25353-ch7j35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144424/original/image-20161103-25353-ch7j35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144424/original/image-20161103-25353-ch7j35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144424/original/image-20161103-25353-ch7j35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144424/original/image-20161103-25353-ch7j35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144424/original/image-20161103-25353-ch7j35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former MI5 director-general, Eliza Manningham-Butler.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MI5</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That demonstrates a worrying lack of knowledge of MI5 ethnography which has tended to be different from <a href="https://www.sis.gov.uk/">MI6</a> and <a href="https://www.gchq.gov.uk/">GCHQ</a>. MI5 may have changed from the <a href="http://www.mi5.com/security/mi5org/spycatcher.htm">Spycatcher days</a> of being staffed by former British and colonial special branch and military people – but anyone who has had contact with MI5 staff in more recent years knows that recruits are diverse, often ex-teachers or ex-City types from redbrick or lesser universities who want a bit more purpose and excitement in their lives. </p>
<p>Aside from <a href="https://www.mi5.gov.uk/eliza-manningham-buller-baroness-manningham-buller">Eliza Manningham-Buller</a>, not many of the chiefs were “posh”. </p>
<p>This is a small but important point about the quality of national security reporting. We have very little information about how the intelligence community now operates as even the most up-to-date Snowden document is now four years old. So Parker was able to make a strong case for the imminent 25% increase in MI5 staffing and commensurate other resources – all underpinned by the IPB.</p>
<p>Those who seek more transparency and accountability for intelligence may feel a little chagrined at the emergence of a lobby so able to dominate the public sphere. Never before have government and its intelligence services had such powers and techniques of invasive mass surveillance available – and thus the potential to control the population as a whole and those who dissent in particular – yet with so <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/8507818/MI5-will-have-to-be-more-accountable.html">little accountability</a> by parliament or the fourth estate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68107/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lashmar is part of a research group that is funded by ESRC but this article has not been funded.</span></em></p>By choosing to talk to MI5’s most outspoken press critics, the spy boss has made a very shrewd move.Paul Lashmar, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/666012016-10-10T15:24:26Z2016-10-10T15:24:26ZBritain’s obsession with secrecy goes back to the Tudors and Stuarts – and is still at work today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141087/original/image-20161010-3909-wsic86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C426%2C2768%2C2001&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thomas Cromwell, a man who definitely knew what you did last summer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cromwell,Thomas(1EEssex)01.jpg">Hans Holbein the Younger/National Portrait Gallery</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The secret services are recruiting – you may have seen advertisements seeking linguists or computer specialists placed by MI5 and MI6 in respectable publications. This is quite a change from the official position that they <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29938135">didn’t exist</a> maintained as recently as 20 years ago. </p>
<p>While these organisations’ origins lie <a href="https://www.sis.gov.uk/our-history.html">in the world wars of the 20th century</a>, we can trace their signature features back to the 16th and 17th centuries. And in doing so we find that many of the problems they face today – plots, terrorism, political unrest and foreign interference – would be very familiar to the spies and spymasters of the earlier era – such as Thomas Cromwell, for example, Henry VIII’s spymaster whose life forms the story of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gfy02">Wolf Hall</a>.</p>
<p>Living as we do in the age of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, we also find at that time similar tensions between the needs of the “secret state” and the demands of the growing public sphere.</p>
<h2>An early modern interest in secrecy</h2>
<p>Unquestionably, governments in the early modern era were always keen to cultivate an air of mystery. The arcane nature of ruling was seen as a natural part of an elite skill set – this suggestion of innate superiority obviously appealed to those in power. </p>
<p>Government secret actions, as journalist and pamphlateer Marchamont Nedham argued in his 1656 work <a href="http://www.constitution.org/cmt/nedham/free-state.htm">The Excellencie of a Free State</a>, was made up of “things … of a nature remote from ordinary apprehensions”. This way of framing the debate allowed governing to appear both mysterious and a skillful art outside the norms of life. These were, James Stuart himself <a href="http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oseo/instance.00032042">noted</a>, “no themes or subjects fit for vulgar persons or common meetings”. As “subjects” the role of the people in the early modern state was to “contain themselves within that modest and reverent regard of matters above their calling”. They might not have had an actual Official Secrets Act hanging over their head, but the people were certainly meant to know their place.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141108/original/image-20161010-3906-xhn1pm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141108/original/image-20161010-3906-xhn1pm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141108/original/image-20161010-3906-xhn1pm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141108/original/image-20161010-3906-xhn1pm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141108/original/image-20161010-3906-xhn1pm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141108/original/image-20161010-3906-xhn1pm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1246&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141108/original/image-20161010-3906-xhn1pm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1246&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141108/original/image-20161010-3906-xhn1pm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1246&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spilling the beans, 17th-century style.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And therein lay the tension which we can perhaps sympathise with today. Because just as governments developed their <em>arcana imperii</em>, or secrets of state, outside in the world a new landscape of media thronged with reams of printed newspapers, pamphlets and books, while in <a href="https://theconversation.com/coffee-shops-the-hangout-of-choice-for-the-hipsters-of-the-18th-century-43943">coffee houses political gossip and whispered knowledge flourished</a> – of politicians, but also of the state’s secret affairs. </p>
<p>It was feared that were state matters discussed widely this would weaken the doctrine of secrecy, perhaps even dispelling the “magic” of government and dissolving the boundaries between rulers and ruled. Given our world of endless speculation on social media, and the British government’s resistance to revealing anything at all about the workings of government throughout much of the 20th century, this should sound very familiar.</p>
<h2>Dark arts</h2>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the secret-state approach also provided a natural base from which to operate clandestine activities. Here we find many of the same activities used today. Spies and informers, and infiltration by foreign agents – such as William Gregg, who sold secrets to France before he was caught, tried and hanged in 1708. Political kidnapping was known on occasion, and political assassination, while rare, included serious attempts on <a href="http://www.elizabethfiles.com/plots-against-elizabeth-i/3509/">Elizabeth I</a>, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/overview_civil_war_revolution_01.shtml">Stuart kings</a> and Oliver Cromwell – the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z3hq7ty">Gunpowder Plot of 1605</a> against James I is the most notable example. </p>
<p>The interception of post was common. As with the myth in modern times of the UK’s GCHQ, it was alleged that hardly any letter was safe. In 1649, for example, Cromwell’s regime: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Authorised [its officers] to open and view all such letters or pacquets as you or they shall conceave may conteyne in them any matter or thing prejudicial to the Commonwealth. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The uncovering of plots and conspiracies were regularly publicised (some of them were even true). Like the blossoming conspiracy theories of today, at that time even the Great Fire of London was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/great_fire_01.shtml">blamed on a Franco-Popish Plot</a>. Writer and poet John Dryden later noted: “Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths, and ruin kings”. It is a sentiment that is still true today.</p>
<p>Modern electronics aside, the covert practices of today had their parallels in the early modern state. Governments would cheerfully justify their use, while an increasingly open and demanding public would respond with moral outrage if their use was discovered. Even in the 16th and 17th centuries the government’s philosophical justifications were emerging: the practicalities of politics and foreign affairs were more than enough justification to cast spying and subterfuge as statecraft’s necessary evil, and even to proclaim its virtues in respect of the need to protect the then newly formed British nation. Again, it is a justification still familiar today.</p>
<p>A tension developed between state – which suspected and feared the very idea of the public and its opinions, and which considered espionage, suppression and censorship as vital – and the press and public sphere, which sought to know not only how but also why decisions were made on their behalf, and who stood to gain from them. Commentators of the time fondly imagined that knowing this would illuminate how things were done, and “the Great Ministers of State … [would be] … presented naked, their consultations, designs, policies, the things done by them … exposed to every man’s eye”. Having laid the foundations for 400 years of state secrecy, it is a wish that is as true today as it was then – and one that is as unlikely to be fulfilled.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66601/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Look back centuries ago and you’ll find the same obsessive secrecy, and the same justifications, as seen today.Alan Marshall, Associate Professor in History, Bath Spa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/500252015-10-30T16:05:37Z2015-10-30T16:05:37ZShaker Aamer’s release doesn’t get Britain off the hook for its part in abductions and torture<p>The last UK resident held at Guantánamo Bay, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34675324">Shaker Aamer</a> has been returned to the UK after almost 14 years of imprisonment. He was never charged with any crime and never tried. He was subjected to years of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and torture, and has spoken to his doctors and lawyers of the <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-06-05/shaker-aamer-gives-disturbing-account-of-guantanamo-bay-torture/">damaging psychological effects</a> of his experience. </p>
<p>This is an important victory for those who have tirelessly campaigned for Aamer’s release, and it probably does owe something to the British state, which in the months before Aamer’s release <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/16/shaker-aamer-guantanamo-bay-prioritise-obama-case">renewed its appeals</a> to the Obama administration to end his detention. David Cameron has welcomed the release, and says he hopes it <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/david-cameron-hopes-britons-release-will-speed-guantanamo-closure-a6669851.html">speeds the closure of Guantánamo</a>. </p>
<p>But whatever the government’s contribution to getting Aamer out of detention, the British authorities’ complicity in his detention and torture must not be forgotten.</p>
<p>Shaker Aamer was <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/case-study/shaker-aamer/">sold by bounty hunters</a> in Afghanistan to US forces in December 2001. He was held for two months before being transferred to Guantánamo. During his time at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Aamer was visited and interrogated <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ministers-admission-links-mi5-and-mi6-to-torture-victim-1769946.html">by MI5 and MI6 agents</a>. </p>
<p>In evidence to his lawyers, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ministers-admission-links-mi5-and-mi6-to-torture-victim-1769946.html">he testified</a> that an MI5 agent was in the room when he was beaten, his head repeatedly bounced against the wall while his captors threatened to kill him. He eventually cracked under torture, <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/case-study/shaker-aamer/">telling his captors whatever they wanted to hear</a>. </p>
<p>On the basis of his tortured confession, he was transferred to Guantánamo on February 14 2002, the same day that his fourth child, Faris, was born. </p>
<p>UK intelligence agents continued to visit him, but no evidence was ever secured to justify his detention. In 2007, <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/case-study/shaker-aamer/">six US government agencies independently determined that he posed no threat</a>, and following pressure from the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, the Bush administration cleared him for release. </p>
<p>His release, however, was repeatedly blocked by the US Department of Defence. The Obama administration again cleared him for release in 2009, but again, his freedom was denied.</p>
<p>Lawyers for Aamer have claimed that his release was repeatedly blocked both because of his efforts to secure better conditions for fellow prisoners, and because he knows far too much about the extensive use of torture by the US military, revelations of which would be a real embarrassment for US and UK authorities. </p>
<h2>Never forget</h2>
<p>Aamer has been a powerful advocate for Guantánamo detainees. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/30/shaker-aamer-timeline-of-events-release-from-guantanamo">Having previously served as a translator for the US army</a> during the 1991 Gulf War, and having worked as an interpreter for various law firms in London, he is an articulate, intelligent man with a commitment to fighting injustice. He led other prisoners in various forms of protest at prison conditions, including leading prolonged hunger strikes. </p>
<p>As such, prison management considered him a serious threat to authority. There is evidence to suggest that he was singled out for particularly harsh treatment, including in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/opinion/nocera-is-force-feeding-torture.html?_r=0">the ways that his force-feeding was undertaken</a>.</p>
<p>More disturbingly still, Aamer has testified that he was a witness to extensive torture. This may have been a particular concern of those who attempted to block his release. While he was held at Bagram, Aamer was a witness to the torture of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/05/11/libya/us-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner">Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi</a>, which resulted in “evidence”, later discredited, which was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/shaker-aamer-last-uk-detainee-in-guantanamo-bay-says-britain-knew-about-torture-in-bagram-prison-a6679216.html">used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq</a>. </p>
<p>It is also possible that Aamer may have been exposed to some of the same techniques implicated in the suspicious deaths of three fellow hunger strikers in Guantánamo. While these were reported as suicides, one former Guantánamo guard, Joseph Hickman, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/23/guantanamo-bay-suicides-299432.html">has challenged the official account</a>, arguing that these were wrongful deaths resulting from prolonged beatings and torture – and that Aamer was subjected to a two-and-a-half-hour beating on the same night.</p>
<p>As the last remaining British resident in Guantánamo, Aamer’s long-awaited release marks the end of an era. But with this chapter coming to a close, there is a risk that UK authorities will attempt to sweep Britain’s role under the carpet. Aamer may be offered compensation from UK authorities as has happened with other former Guantánamo detainees, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11769509">ostensibly to avoid costly legal cases</a> – but such an offer would of course in no way represent an acknowledgement of British wrongdoing. </p>
<p>Aamer must be given the freedom and space to decide whether he wants to pursue legal proceedings against UK authorities for any part they played in his torture. Such efforts can take an enormous toll on litigants and their families, and he and his family may well have already been through too much. </p>
<p>Whatever he decides, the rest of us must hold the UK authorities, past and present, fully accountable. While a long-delayed inquiry into these violations has so far <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/06/gibson-inquiry-rendition-david-cameron-uk-torture">come to nothing</a>, we must not rest until the state is held responsible for participating in the arbitrary detention and torture of Aamer and dozens of others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50025/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Blakeley has received funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council for her academic research on the CIA's rendition, detention and interrogation programme. </span></em></p>The UK’s last inmate at Guantanamo Bay has finally been brought home – but the matter of Britain’s role in the War on Terror is by no means resolved.Ruth Blakeley, Professor of International Relations, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/496232015-10-23T16:30:02Z2015-10-23T16:30:02ZRevealed: the panic that followed the defection of the Cambridge spies<p>New papers released from the National Archives spell out the dismay and disarray that followed the <a href="http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/tag/cambridge-five/">dramatic defection of Cambridge spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess</a> more than 60 years ago as colleagues and friends struggled to come to terms with the treachery of two men they had considered to be erratic and promiscuous, but not traitors.</p>
<p>The papers also shed light on the Foreign Office’s obsession with Burgess’ sexuality which led to the introduction of harsh measures which would blight the lives of homosexuals employed in the Foreign Office for the next four decades. </p>
<p>Given the nature of the activities of the Cambridge spies, the value of the official government record in relation to their treachery will inevitably have some quite obvious limitations. Yet one area where this material has particular value is in shedding light on the fallout that followed within the Foreign Office, at both a departmental and a personal level. </p>
<p>Departmental distaste for security matters is immediately made apparent – while there was a wealth of personal knowledge about both men and their at times erratic behaviour, very little of it was “officially” known. As a report prepared at the request of the then prime minister, Clement Attlee, was forced to admit: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As a result of intensive investigation by the Security Service and of statements volunteered by friends and acquaintances … we have learnt a good deal about their character and personal behaviour which we did not know before.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Never ‘peach’ on a friend</h2>
<p>Prior to their disappearance, colleagues and friends within the Foreign Service had been reluctant to make formal reports, even when they had cause to question their behaviour. To do so – to tell tales – would have been considered to be in bad taste. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaries-lord-gladwyn-1360227.html">Lord Gladwyn</a>, by this time Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, recalled Burgess as: “about the most unreliable man I ever met” and questioned “whether I should not at an earlier stage have expressed to someone … my own doubts about Burgess’s character”. </p>
<p>Yet despite considering him a “positive menace” and “a deplorable selection for the Foreign Service”, Gladwyn added: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the other hand, one never wants to blacken somebody’s character if one can help it and to say nothing is often the line of least resistance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lord Pakenham now provided details of Maclean’s recent behaviour, reporting that at a recent dinner Maclean: “was drinking very heavily … His whole behaviour gave the impression that he was definitely unhappy and distraught and that he would be capable of any rash and violent act.” (Underneath this an official has scribbled: “This reinforced what we have heard from other sources”). </p>
<p>Nor at any point did the Foreign Office appear to have been made fully aware of Maclean’s behaviour during his posting to Cairo, during which time he committed a series of drunken assaults. George Middleton, head of the personnel department at the Foreign Office, conceded: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We never really got a full picture from Cairo of the extent and seriousness of his breakdown there … I had heard vague rumours of domestic quarrels but these are so common that I had not paid much attention … I had also heard rumours that he was drinking rather heavily. But there was nothing to suggest that his work was anything but first-class … Having known Donald pretty well for a number of years I did not take any of the scandal-mongering very seriously.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even in the aftermath of their disappearance, and with the need to ensure: “an adequate check on the personal behaviour of members of the Foreign Service”, the Foreign Office was loath to institute “a system of spying which would be both repugnant to our traditions and destructive of morale”.</p>
<p>To complicate matters, the Foreign Office’s own internal security department locked horns with personnel over who held responsibility for personal security. It is acknowledged in the documents (by no less a figure than <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sir-dick-white-1474703.html">Dick White</a>, who would go on to head both MI5 and MI6) that, had there been a “complete pooling of information” between the security and personnel departments, then Maclean “would certainly have been suspect somewhat earlier”.</p>
<h2>‘Homosexual tendencies’</h2>
<p>The disappearance of Burgess and Maclean also led officials to focus on the standard of personal conduct inside the Foreign Office. This led to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-love-that-dared-not-speak-its-name-in-the-foreign-office-1931127.html">policy developments on the employment of homosexuals</a> that would blight the careers of many diplomats for almost five decades until the 1990s.</p>
<p>As the full sordid details of the case – drunkenness, violent behaviour and sexual promiscuity – began to emerge, a committee was established, chaired by <a href="http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/24th-march-1950/7/the-retirement-of-sir-alexander-cadogan-from-the-p">Sir Alexander Cadogan</a>, former Foreign Office permanent under-secretary, to report on security standards across the Foreign Service. Informally, the purpose of the inquiry was described in somewhat different terms – MI5 deputy director-general, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20088973">Guy Liddell</a>, recorded in his diary that: “there is to be a highly confidential enquiry in the Foreign Office about the security risks of employing homosexuals”.</p>
<p>Alongside a range of relatively minor changes to relations between the security and personnel departments and the Foreign Office reporting system, the committee’s final report paid particular attention to homosexuality, on account of the “homosexual tendencies” the men were “alleged to have had”. </p>
<p>It recommended changes to the future employment of homosexuals, who were felt to have not only the potential to “bring discredit on the Service”, but were also considered to constitute a particular problem as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this and some other countries some forms of homosexuality involve offences under the criminal law. A practising homosexual is therefore especially liable to blackmail, and on this account represents a serious security risk.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As such, the report suggested that they needed to be “carefully watched”.
While the report demurred from setting down “hard-and-fast rules” to deal with homosexuals in the Foreign Service, the concerns expressed were quickly followed up. During a meeting in February 1952, officials set out “specific guidance” to protect the public reputation of the Foreign Office, with “categories” of homosexual misconduct established to prevent any future scandal. </p>
<p>In the least serious of cases, suspected homosexuals would be investigated and, if necessary, warned that “if the stories persist, his usefulness to the Service will inevitably be diminished”. In cases where homosexuality had been established but there was no risk of public scandal, individuals would be warned that “if any future case of homosexual practices comes to notice he will have to leave the Service, since there was some risk of scandal”. </p>
<p>In what were considered the most serious cases, where an individual had brought disgrace on the diplomatic service, they would be dealt with under “disciplinary regulations”. These categories were later approved by the the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. </p>
<p>The persecution of homosexuals in the Foreign Office remains an important, if often overlooked, legacy of the Burgess and Maclean scandal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49623/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New papers shed light on the aftermath of the dramatic flight of two of the notorious ‘Cambridge Spies’.Christopher J. Murphy, Lecturer in Intelligence Studies, University of SalfordDan Lomas, Programme Leader - MA Intelligence & Security Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/450232015-07-22T12:21:55Z2015-07-22T12:21:55ZWhat the royal family can learn from MI5 about secrecy<p>The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/19/queens-nazi-salute-video-pressure-mounts-on-royals-to-open-up-archives">debate</a> about the access (or lack thereof) to the royal archives prompted by The Sun’s publication of a very small Princess Elizabeth performing a <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6548665/Their-Royal-Heilnesses.html">Nazi salute</a> conjures up for me a certain sense of déjà vu. Because 20 years ago, the archives of the British intelligence services were surrounded by a similar smokescreen. And it caused the same sort of frustration to historians.</p>
<p>I began teaching an undergraduate module about the history of the British intelligence community around this time and would tell my students at the outset that essentially this was a course about “gossip” and what we could learn from “bad books” – the sort of brightly-coloured paperbacks that used to populate airport bookshops, promising shocking revelations about the glamorous world of spying.</p>
<p>The refusal of the intelligence agencies to release documents about their activities meant that beyond a few official accounts of the World War II and some pioneering works by the likes of <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v07/n18/noel-annan/dummy-and-biffy">Christopher Andrew</a> and <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/publications/reviews/">Richard Aldrich</a>, there was very little work on British intelligence that resembled conventional academic history. The intelligence writer Stephen Dorril once described his work as a kind of “archival archaeology” – making sense of the incomplete scraps of information that reached the public domain, sometimes because government censors had simply overlooked them. </p>
<h2>More intelligent</h2>
<p>Since then intelligence history has changed out of all recognition. In no small measure this was because, by the end of the 1980s, parts of the intelligence community had realised that an insistence on absolute secrecy was counter-productive. It meant that the public only learned about their activities from official inquiries into their failures – and from the often ill-intentioned and ill-informed testimonies of former employees, keen to fight out old internal battles and rake over ancient grievances. </p>
<p>The farcical and ultimately futile <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/13/newsid_2532000/2532583.stm">attempt</a> to prevent the retired MI5 officer, Peter Wright, from publishing his memoir Spycatcher, helped to persuade the security service to change tack. Since the 1990s it has sanctioned the gradual release of its archives. This has allowed it to boast about its achievements and to put its failures into proper historical perspective. Indeed, it has achieved the remarkable feat of making intelligence history “boring” by encouraging historians to treat the intelligence community as just another part of the administrative framework of the British state (few sets of papers are quite as dull as the minutes of the Joint Intelligence Committee).</p>
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<p>So the current silly-season sensation of the little princess’s Nazi salute shows just how much the Palace can learn from the intelligence community. </p>
<p>The majority of books about the contemporary monarchy bear a striking resemblance to the intelligence literature of the 1980s. Like the pre-1990s intelligence community, the Palace places entirely unreasonable restrictions on the work of professional scholars. It prohibits all but a small handful of “authorised” writers from viewing papers in the Royal Archives relating to the current reign. </p>
<p>In the dying days of Gordon Brown’s administration, it also managed to negotiate an <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/royal-family-granted-new-right-of-secrecy-2179148.html">absolute exemption</a> from the Freedom of Information Act. for all correspondence with government relating to the Queen, the heir to the throne and the second-in-line. This blanket of censorship covers not merely official files in the National Archives dating as far back as the 1950s, but also private collections of papers such as those of Anthony Eden at the University of Birmingham, and Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. </p>
<p>As a consequence, what we know about this fascinating and hugely significant part of the British state still consists mostly of reheated gossip, self-interested briefings from a range of current and former royal flunkeys, and tabloid revelations. And since the tabloids are largely interested in charting the misdemeanours of the royals (apparently from as far back as a 1930s home movie), this poses a real problem for the Palace’s image merchants. </p>
<h2>Stubborn secrecy</h2>
<p>This obsessive secrecy also impedes an informed and rational discussion about the nature of constitutional monarchy. In many respects, we know far less about how this institution operated in our lifetimes than our grandparents did. The 1950s saw the publication of official biographies of George V by Harold Nicolson (1952) and of George VI by John Wheeler-Bennett (1958). Both authors were under strict instructions to exercise discretion about the private lives of the Queen’s father and grandfather. They were, however, able to be fairly candid about their political attitudes and interactions with government. The sheer longevity of the Queen means we have no such authoritative accounts of the political role of the Palace in the 1960s or 1970s. </p>
<p>Some of those who make a living peddling royal gossip have been quick to defend the Palace’s refusal to make its papers more freely available, arguing – ironically – that the royal family has a <a href="http://www.robertlacey.com/?q=node/288">right to privacy</a>. Yet it is precisely the mixture of the personal and the political that makes constitutional monarchy so intriguing. And for the past 60 years it has been impossible to disentangle the institution of monarchy in the UK from the remarkable personality of the Queen herself. </p>
<p>A measured and duly sensitive policy of opening up royal papers from the current reign would be in everyone’s interests. It would allow the monarchy to become the object of serious historical investigation rather than simply gossip and scandal. Isn’t it time we stopped learning our royal history from The Sun?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Murphy receives funding from the AHRC.</span></em></p>Two decades ago, MI5’s archives were surrounded by secrecy like that of the royal archives. There’s a reason this has changed.Philip Murphy, Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and Professor of British and Commonwealth History, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/389472015-04-02T16:19:53Z2015-04-02T16:19:53ZIf intelligence services want more powers they must learn to live with increased oversight<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76815/original/image-20150401-31278-1jhh20l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who is watching them while they are watching you?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sacred_destinations/2055122183/in/photolist-48B3e6-99s4eB-9PG2Hp-8phsKc-axiqe3-99vhRs-avtuoM-8B2y6b-83ESDK-8QgV8w-5gs1aW-8wwdyY-aD8hwz-7qRh5v-a2eopv-a89sZP-9EB5bz-8wvt7u-7tZsiq-9Nmfw8-7ss5Ce-a8cdUN-9JorQD-kvY9Vb-a88JQD-rwi6NY-8Qhci1-a89nic-7s7KRJ-8sqg8A-c854n-643mur-5dbf1D-bcSg5e-cwpRJ-4ozR9p-7QY432-N3WMt-8piypL-nkSMS-9wg6fa-9B14PD-7BB1FZ-4ozUsv-4ozSCF-4oDUPQ-2mubXZ-2TyLcW-g9zRy-c84V2">sacred_destinations</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UK’s security and intelligence services face a “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11504702/Intelligence-agencies-in-technology-arms-race.html">technology arms race</a>” against terrorists and criminals’ use of the internet and encryption, the head of MI6, Alex Younger, has said. </p>
<p>The internet and big data, he said, can “combine to our advantage, allowing us to know more about the people we meet”. But their opponents have the same tools – opponents “unconstrained by consideration of ethics and law”. </p>
<p>The implication is clear: give us more powers in order to meet the threat. The British spy chief echoes similar comments from the FBI and CIA, from police chiefs, and now from <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500243336/Europol-chief-joins-call-for-legal-tools-to-deal-with-encryption-problem">Europol</a>.</p>
<p>But the stream of revelations stemming from the Edward Snowden documents reveal an altogether different view of surveillance carried out by GCHQ and other agencies. The subsequent inquiry by the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) into surveillance practices found reasons to worry about acceding to demands for greater powers, and missed opportunities to hold the agencies to account. </p>
<h2>Nothing to see here</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31845338">ISC inquiry</a> examined the range of surveillance techniques and how they were used, the scale of use and nature of their breach of privacy, and the legal safeguards surrounding their use.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-are-right-to-fear-spy-database-of-everything-if-even-politicians-know-little-about-it-38792">committee’s report</a> may be readily characterised as seeking to reassure the public that the immense amount of surveillance does not amount to anything untoward occurring. The committee found GCHQ has “neither the legal authority, the technical capacity nor the resources” for “blanket coverage” of all internet communications. Committee member Hazel Blears MP declared that “the way in which the agencies use the capabilities they have is authorised, lawful, necessary and proportionate”.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there was no shortage of criticism; Privacy International pithily summed it up in <a href="https://www.privacyinternational.org/?q=node/505">saying</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No jargon can obscure the fact that this is a parliamentary committee, in a democratic country, telling its citizens that they are living in a surveillance state and that all is well.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Consolidating power and responsibility</h2>
<p>The main recommendation of the report was that the current out-dated, fragmented, over-complex and unclear legislative legal framework should be replaced by a single new comprehensive act, one that “must clearly set out the intrusive powers available to the Agencies, the purposes for which they may use them, and the authorisation required before they may do so”. </p>
<p>A number of intelligence-based activities, such as data-sharing with foreign intelligence bodies, currently have no clear statutory basis and in some cases <a href="https://theconversation.com/passenger-tracking-in-the-eu-will-be-as-invasive-as-it-is-in-the-us-36916">are likely to be unlawful</a>. Putting surveillance activity on a firmer legal footing is to be welcomed, especially considering that current laws date from before the recent explosion in social media use. The opportunities to gather personal information from data online have exponentially increased; inevitably, legal safeguards and regulations have failed to keep pace.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76825/original/image-20150401-31296-1y12vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76825/original/image-20150401-31296-1y12vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76825/original/image-20150401-31296-1y12vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76825/original/image-20150401-31296-1y12vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76825/original/image-20150401-31296-1y12vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76825/original/image-20150401-31296-1y12vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76825/original/image-20150401-31296-1y12vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">England’s doughnut of knowledge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ministry of Defence</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Snoopers’ Charter?</h2>
<p>The concern is that the proposed new legislative framework, while much more comprehensive, still doesn’t address the key concerns raised by what we’ve learned from the Snowden files. To give any reassurance that privacy will be respected and protected, progressively more intrusive surveillance measures should warrant progressively higher levels of authorisation. This would suggest granting a greater role to judges, as a more independent check and balance; instead the committee proposes to give the authority to government ministers. </p>
<p>It has been suggested that this report may <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/12/intelligence-agencies-finally-understand-need-to-step-out-of-the-shadows">pave the way for a so-called “Snoopers’ Charter”</a>, forcing data controllers and ISPs to hand over details of emails, social media messages, texts and voice calls.</p>
<p>In the context of a legislative overhaul, the system of oversight provided by the ISC might also have been expected to come under scrutiny. Yet the fact that it took the Snowden revelations to stir up any action over GCHQ’s bulk collection of data suggests that it was a role that had hardly been rigorously discharged.</p>
<h2>Power without control</h2>
<p>So the findings of the ISC’s report, and the committee’s tendency to exonerate agencies from wrongdoing seem in harmony with calls for more powers for the likes of MI6, MI5, GCHQ – not in opposition. Whether or not there are extensive statutory guidelines for the agencies’ activities does not in itself create any confidence that mass surveillance is not occurring. Greater transparency, in the sense of providing more information or clarification of the law, doesn’t necessarily demonstrate that powers are not being abused – as indicated by what we’ve learned from the Snowden files. </p>
<p>The fact that the agencies’ opponents are “unconstrained by consideration of ethics or law” does not, and should not, provide an argument that the agencies should be less constrained. Younger accepted that the difference between the agencies and their opponents was the rule of law. So demands for greater powers should concentrate their focus on the constraints that legal reform could impose, because the rule of law is not something that the UK or any of its government agencies should start considering as optional.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Fenwick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Police and spies’ calls for more powers should fall on deaf ears until they have learned the letter of the law.Helen Fenwick, Professor of Law, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/367822015-01-27T15:28:52Z2015-01-27T15:28:52ZThe rise of an intelligence lobby threatens the rights of lawyers, journalists – and all of us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70135/original/image-20150127-17550-1mr7hyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The thin wall of decency between us and unrestrained power.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">spiber.de/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A powerful intelligence lobby made up of former defence ministers, police chiefs and intelligence commissioners has emerged in British politics, determined to push for greater powers and resources for the police and intelligence agencies. </p>
<p>The attempt to pass a “Snooper’s Charter” <a href="http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2391992/opposition-grows-to-snoopers-charter-introduced-by-the-back-door">via an amendment to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill</a> as it passes through the House of Lords – the same provisions as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/theresa-may-says-the-uk-is-not-a-surveillance-state-but-her-proposed-law-might-create-one-28473">Communications Data Bill</a> that were twice rejected by parliament – shows how keen they are to win greater powers before the general election. The old military-industrial complex is being replaced by a powerful political-intelligence technocracy.</p>
<p>The draft Communications Data Bill, re-inserted in full as an amendment, would require internet service providers and mobile phone companies to keep records (but not the content) of everyone’s internet browsing activity (including social media), emails, internet gaming, calls, and text messaging for a year. Introduced by the home secretary, Theresa May, in the 2012–13 session, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22292474">withdrew his support</a> over civil liberties grounds and the bill was blocked from being reintroduced during this parliament.</p>
<h2>Do as I say, not as I do</h2>
<p>So who are their lordships that would undermine the elected chamber in this way? They include former Conservative defence secretary Tom King, formerly chairman of the <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/">Intelligence and Security Committee</a>, parliament’s intelligence oversight body, Liberal Democrat peer and reviewer of terrorism laws Alex Carlile, former Labour defence minister Alan West, and former Metropolitan Police commissioner Ian Blair.</p>
<p>Despite concerns over the rapid erosion of privacy the intelligence lobby seeks ever wider powers. Retiring GCHQ director Sir Ian Lobban <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/21/gchq-outgoing-director-sir-iain-lobban-edward-snowden-revelations">defended the work of GCHQ</a>, and his successor Robert Hannigan controversially <a href="http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/news_and_features/Pages/Director-opinion-piece-financial-times.aspx">argued</a> that: “privacy has never been an absolute right and the debate about this should not become a reason for postponing urgent and difficult decisions.”</p>
<p>Other intelligence service bigwigs have made similar claims: after retiring as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Sir John Sawers claimed that preventing terrorism was impossible without monitoring the internet traffic of innocent people. He <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11356645/Ex-MI6-chief-Sir-John-Sawers-We-cannot-stop-terrorism-unless-we-spy-on-innocent-people.html">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a dilemma because the general public, politicians and technology companies, to some extent, want us to be able to monitor the activities of terrorists and other evil-doers but they don’t want their own activities to be open to any such monitoring.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet the regard for human rights that might see them agonising over this dilemma seems in scant supply at MI5 and MI6, judging by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/22/cooperation-british-spies-gaddafi-libya-revealed-official-papers">recent revelations</a> detailing their involvement with the Gadaffi regime in rendition and torture.</p>
<h2>Too much safety, too little freedom</h2>
<p>So the public are uneasy; a YouGov <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2012/10/31/communications-data-bill/">survey</a> regarding the Communications Data Bill found that 71% of Britons did not trust that their data would be secure and 50% believed the proposal would be poor value for money.</p>
<p>The problem is that the Conservative side of the Coalition, with the support of the intelligence lobby, are always going to play the terror card. The Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris have been used to clamour for new powers, yet ironically it is journalists – as murdered by Islamist terrorists in Paris – who are also targeted by UK intelligence agencies alongside the terrorists themselves.</p>
<p>Further recent revelations from Snowden documents reveal that GCHQ was prepared to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/19/gchq-intercepted-emails-journalists-ny-times-bbc-guardian-le-monde-reuters-nbc-washington-post">monitor journalists’ emails</a>, suggesting the agency is confident of political support for an action – infringing the freedom of the press – that would have been considered completely unacceptable in a modern democracy until quite recently. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70142/original/image-20150127-17554-unypil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70142/original/image-20150127-17554-unypil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70142/original/image-20150127-17554-unypil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70142/original/image-20150127-17554-unypil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70142/original/image-20150127-17554-unypil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70142/original/image-20150127-17554-unypil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70142/original/image-20150127-17554-unypil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Just another day at email scanning central.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Balefire/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Surveillance is now so pervasive it makes the development of sources in the sector all but impossible, and consequently the press’ duty to provide critical oversight of power is reduced.</p>
<p>There is always the suspicion that threat of terrorism is a card politicians play in order to distract from other issues. No government bureaucracy has ever asked for fewer powers or resources, and taxpayers are right to be wary. Where is the proportionality? How much terrorism, how much risk is required for us to surrender our rights and freedoms? There is little real discussion but there is considerable theatre – taking off our belts and shoes and no liquids at airports. None of this tackles terrorism. Politicians are not fighting a war so much as “<a href="http://boingboing.net/2014/12/06/high-court-rules-that-english.html">throwing red meat to their base</a>”, as the writer Cory Doctorow memorably put it.</p>
<h2>Invisible spies turn out to be outspoken</h2>
<p>Laws passed after 9/11 are far more draconian than temporary measures passed during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, during which more than 3,000 people died. Many more people die of bad diets due to poverty – yet politicians are not striving for sweeping legislation that would combat inequality. </p>
<p>The British public’s lack of reaction to the Snowden revelations has caused some astonishment abroad, especially among the Germans, with still-fresh memories of the Stasi. Writing in <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-cozy-relationship-between-britain-and-its-intelligence-apparatus-a-917689.html">Der Spiegel</a>, commentator Christoph Scheuermann said it was “astonishing” to see the uncritical trust put in the UK’s intelligence service, as if GCHQ was still “a club of amiable gentlemen in shabby tweed jackets who cracked the Nazis’ Enigma coding machine in World War II”.</p>
<p>What has become clear is that the ground has shifted. From the position where the government neither confirmed or denied the existence of the spy agencies, nor the names of those that ran them, to a position where chiefs would make occasional speeches in public on matters of significant public interest, to that today, where chiefs and former chiefs speak as one – a lobby, in effect, for greater powers and resources for their organisations. The power and resources of the intelligence services should be a matter for serious public debate; instead of debate we have a monologue voiced by politicians, civil servants, police, much of the press and the intelligence agencies themselves. Disagreement is dismissed.</p>
<p>We seem to moving into what the philosopher Giorgio Agamben called a permanent “<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/009254.html">state of exception</a>”, where the safeguards of the past are discarded in the face of a risk that is unquantified. History shows repeatedly that if intelligence and security services are allowed to operate without scrutiny, the result is abuse of power. </p>
<p>Never before have government and intelligence agencies had such powers and technologies for mass surveillance – and with them the potential to control the population, investigative journalists and any who dissent. Faced with bringing down the Counter-Terrorism Bill entirely, the Lord’s amendment that would introduce the “Snooper’s Charter” was withdrawn at the 11th hour. But you can be sure that in some form or other it will be back.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36782/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lashmar receives funding from the ESRC. I am a co-investigator on DATA PSST! Seminar Series (2015-16) will explore, from multi-disciplinary and multi-end user perspectives, how different aspects of transparency, whether state-imposed, commercially-imposed, peer-imposed, or voluntarily entered into, affect questions of privacy, security, surveillance and trust.</span></em></p>A powerful intelligence lobby made up of former defence ministers, police chiefs and intelligence commissioners has emerged in British politics, determined to push for greater powers and resources for…Paul Lashmar, Lecturer in Journalism, Brunel University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346822014-11-26T06:19:34Z2014-11-26T06:19:34ZIn the wake of Lee Rigby inquiry, remember radicalisation and terrorism are not the same<p>A <a href="https://b1cba9b3-a-5e6631fd-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/files/20141125_ISC_Woolwich_Report%28website%29.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cpEagiSMND53lffzSHfMnxJFQGdDoP6QM6fXhW5rAGDFPkDYG3taWylolenPYOLzm9YuJgHHICHWResoo9lA_X1kS63BuKkeHOylGyD-Q_QUx9HfgSQHsMQRxSvaiGfASSb7ywiTa9FCqbZFwmrag9DvOKV5jLaXRmC5uJIdNK_GOCOK3weo8uxrj_NwUO56mhoALNdVEYQeME76xwpgjU2KvLbYw_XvGsxDrJQRE8vINUYxnzErVQdSuK3QMkiFRAwWP7Y&attredirects=0">parliamentary inquiry</a> has cleared MI5 of failing to prevent the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013. This despite the fact that his killers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were both subjects of previous investigations by the security services – investigations which showed that both men had been radicalised.</p>
<p>Inevitably this conclusion has reignited the debate about how one can go about spotting a terrorist, and preventing an attack. If these two men held radical beliefs, why weren’t they stopped before committing such a terrible crime?</p>
<p>But radicalisation and terrorism are often conflated. It is assumed that people who have been radicalised become terrorists, and vice versa that terrorists have radical beliefs.</p>
<p>This assumption is wrong, and indeed radicalisation is used to explain too much in many of these accounts.</p>
<h2>Signs of radicalisation</h2>
<p>The process of radicalisation tends to hinge on the beliefs of an individual. A person becomes radicalised when their beliefs have changed from being similar to the rest of society’s – which are assumed to be normal – to beliefs that are quite extreme and possibly violent.</p>
<p>But how do we know what someone is thinking if they don’t express their views out loud? When we ask about someone’s beliefs, are they telling us what they think we want to know, how they like to think of themselves, or, in the case of violent beliefs, what they think will keep them safe? </p>
<p>One way to approach the problem is to look at what they talk about more generally. That includes their beliefs but also about who they are, what they fear and what they think of other people. This can provide an insight into their non-negotiable beliefs and values – what they hold to be sacred.</p>
<p>This approach might help us get an outline of someone’s beliefs, and it might even tell us that these beliefs are very extreme, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us how or whether they are going to act violently. As the Director General of MI5 outlined in his evidence for the report, plenty of people express violent beliefs, the real difficulty lies in separating the doers from the talkers.</p>
<p>This is an important problem that is too often overlooked in the rhetoric about the threat posed by Islamic extremism. Plenty of people have extreme views but a liberal democracy doesn’t set out to police beliefs and values. It should challenge violent beliefs but that is a very different proposition from criminalising them.</p>
<h2>Terrorism, not radicalisation</h2>
<p>Radicalisation is a different problem to terrorism so we need to be clear that we only criminalise people who express their beliefs and values in a way that threatens or hurts others, who incite people to act violently, and who express their intent to act violently themselves.</p>
<p>Adebowale’s radical views, for example, became more specific threats in an online exchange with an unnamed person overseas that only came to light after Rigby’s death. Adebowale stated that he wanted to murder a soldier. This is crucial in this case. Had this information come to light earlier, MI5 would have made its investigation into Adebowale a top priority. What the security services can’t do is prioritise an investigation unless the person under surveillance shows signs of planning an attack. </p>
<p>Talking about planned terrorist acts is not that unusual, even amongst self-starter terrorists. <a href="http://www.radicalisationresearch.org/research/bombing-alone/">Research</a> certainly suggests that in a majority of cases, lone-actor terrorists make their intent clear, possibly to family and friends and even in public.</p>
<p>The fact that Adebowale’s communications about his plan were not shared with the security services will no doubt form part of the case to support the government’s attempts to increase powers for the security services. But we must be careful that this doesn’t extend to criminalising people for expressing unpalatable views. </p>
<p>As we debate whether monitoring rules should be tightened, we need to keep in mind the fact that spotting that someone has been radicalised is not the same as spotting a terrorist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Francis edits RadicalisationResearch.org. He receives funding from the RCUK Global Uncertainties fund.</span></em></p>A parliamentary inquiry has cleared MI5 of failing to prevent the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013. This despite the fact that his killers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were both subjects…Matthew Francis, Senior Research Associate, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/337172014-11-06T12:28:40Z2014-11-06T12:28:40ZIntelligence world is an onion: the more layers you strip away, the more likely you are to cry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63779/original/42rx5rzh-1415208395.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Keeping too many secrets will come back to bite you in the end.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GlebStock/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One method for safeguarding online anonymity is <a href="https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en">Tor</a>, “the onion router”, whose name comes from its method of adding and stripping away encryption layer by layer as messages pass from one node to another in the network en route to their destination.</p>
<p>This image of peeling back layers could equally describe the task of trying to establish whether intelligence agencies comply with the law. This is an onion that is, a few layers down under its outer shell, giving off a distinctly mouldy smell.</p>
<p>Any government intrusion into citizens’ lives that breaches their human rights should be proportionate – and only made when necessary to safeguard national security or public safety. In the days before the internet this was relatively easy to regulate. Post and telephone calls could only be intercepted in the UK on the basis of a warrant signed by a minister, or in some countries a judge. But the digitisation of practically everything has transformed this process, with the opportunity to “just collect everything” quite possible if the agencies have the will and resources to do so. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files">tranche of documents</a> released to the media by whistleblower Edward Snowden has demonstrated the extent to which that will exists. </p>
<p>We knew that material could be obtained from ISPs, telephone companies or the postal service under powers granted by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). We did not know that intelligence agencies also obtain this data by directly tapping the fibre optic cables or the servers and networking equipment at exchanges and data centres – done apparently <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server-collection-facebook-google">without the companies’ knowledge</a>.</p>
<p>We do not pay for the services we use every day – Google, Facebook, Microsoft, YouTube – except with our personal information. But whether or not we “volunteer” this information knowingly to companies, this does not imply our consent to it being routinely available to governments.</p>
<p>The rapid growth of social media brings into sharp relief concerns about the misuse of personal data. A <a href="http://www.tnsglobal.com/uk/press-release/public-opinion-monitor-britons-give-safeguarding-security-higher-priority-protecting-p">TNS poll in the UK</a> found that 55% were concerned about the activities of search engines such as Google, 60% were concerned about social media such as Facebook and 43% were equally concerned about intelligence agency monitoring. And rightly so, it seems.</p>
<p>The Snowden files also give us insight into the collaboration between national intelligence agencies, especially between the five Anglophone nations within the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/25/intelligence-deal-uk-us-released">UKUSA agreement</a> from 1946, the formal basis for co-operation that began in World War II and continues into the present.</p>
<p>It has long been suspected that this co-operation was a way in which country A could get around legal restrictions on information gathering at home by receiving the information it sought from the foreign intelligence service of country B.</p>
<p>After the release of the Snowden papers, the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (<a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/">ISC</a>), a key part of the oversight and regulation apparatus of British intelligence, issued a statement that the allegations GCHQ had illegally accessed material gathered by the NSA were unfounded. Its claim that in every case there was a ministerial warrant failed to reassure anyone outside government, however, and the ISC eventually announced that <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/news-archive/11december2013">they would inquire more widely</a> into the issues of privacy and security raised by these revelations.</p>
<p>These are the claims that have now come back to haunt the government, after <a href="https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk">Liberty</a> and <a href="https://www.privacyinternational.org">Privacy International</a> challenged the legality of GCHQ’s interception practices before the <a href="http://www.ipt-uk.com/">Investigative Powers Tribunal</a>, which hears complaints about improper use of RIPA to conduct surveillance.</p>
<p>Instead, the documents now revealed in court have exposed how false the ISC’s statement in response to the Snowden files was. In fact GCHQ can and does request and receive <a href="https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news/press-releases/secret-policy-reveals-gchq-can-get-warrantless-access-bulk-nsa-data">raw unanalysed bulk data from NSA</a>, and others, with no warrant required if it were not feasible to obtain one in the UK.</p>
<p>This is not surprising to people who study international intelligence co-operation given the complexity – and secrecy – of the arrangements in place. However, this slow striptease of information indicates how inadequate the current law and system of oversight and accountability is. The senior judge with responsibility to oversee interception under RIPA describes the Act as “difficult for anyone to get their head round” and notes that “a reader’s eyes glaze over before reaching the end of Section 1, that is, if the reader ever starts.” </p>
<p>Bringing about better, clearer laws and more robust oversight of the intelligence agencies will be <a href="http://www.iocco-uk.info/docs/2013%20Annual%20Report%20of%20the%20IOCC%20Accessible%20Version.pdf">considerably more difficult</a> and cutting into this mouldy onion will be enough to induce tears.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33717/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Gill is a member of Amnesty International and Liberty</span></em></p>One method for safeguarding online anonymity is Tor, “the onion router”, whose name comes from its method of adding and stripping away encryption layer by layer as messages pass from one node to another…Peter Gill, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/338132014-11-06T06:09:02Z2014-11-06T06:09:02ZShifting world of espionage prompts call for Mandarin and Russian-speaking spies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63766/original/q2rpn59y-1415204728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What's Russian for cloak and dagger?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For some, it began with a tap on the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/money/2005/jan/15/careers.graduates10">shoulder at Oxford or Cambridge</a>. Now recruitment for British intelligence occurs via newspaper and online advertisements and aptitude tests through websites. Despite the newfangled – and arguably more egalitarian – means of generating job applicants, there is a distinctive Cold War edge to the Security Service’s <a href="http://www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/news/uk-secret-services-recruit-more-russian-and-mandarin-linguists">push for more Mandarin and Russian speakers</a>. More significantly, it may indicate a shifting of priorities away from the decade-long dominant counter-terrorism field.</p>
<p>Although it came into existence prior to the Cold War, the Security Service, better known as MI5, found its <em>raison d’etre</em> in the half-century struggle against Soviet communism. The end of the Cold War, apparently, removed the threat from former Communist countries and left MI5 struggling, beyond its role in Northern Ireland, for new priorities. The point we are missing, of course, is that the end of the Cold War did not end the activities of foreign intelligence agencies against the United Kingdom – those have continued over the past two decades as have MI5’s efforts at countering espionage.</p>
<p>What did change was the emergence of a much more immediate threat. Its presence was signalled by September 11 attacks in the US and reiterated by the July 7 2005 bombings in London. Already, by early 2004, the British government had announced that MI5’s personnel <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3510611.stm">would increase by 50%</a> as part of the drive towards making international terrorism its main security priority, an emphasis which remains to this day.</p>
<h2>Spy v spy</h2>
<p>The problem is that foreign intelligence agencies did not stop spying even as terrorism surged as a threat. Ten years ago, in 2004, the UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee warned that UK intelligence was falling behind in its efforts against Russian and Chinese intelligence because of the concentration on the threat of terrorism. It also regularly warns, as it did in <a href="https://b1cba9b3-a-5e6631fd-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/files/2011-2012_ISC_AR.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7coBnQEUm5h52uZYCCrUNer7raHEBfSGzmvVtZGBRfoc5N55x_vEbSMwnAfygb_60i07Y620vTTqFCoVweiIoemONcKcxI-LqU7UrA-D1dq2U69kn1EadfDfxji7e__2gMW-93dsEC9lKBM-7UOVp5PobUecdyySong3RYfGVdPevv8jY2cv6ua_pXC4sCu9roFFF7kLnf1WOk37_gV4rgEOwsI6BJ3rNj47W-kdcnZ7dNqWClQ%3D&attredirects=0">its 2011-12 report</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Government, defence and security interests, as well as the commercial sector, continue to be at risk from traditional espionage by several countries that are targeting UK interests.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The new recruitment emphasis on Mandarin and Russian speakers may be simply an acknowledgement that a threat from foreign espionage remains. More widely, it could also be a shifting back of priorities from counter-terrorism. In relation to the latter, if the future terrorism threat is posed less by well-organised terrorist groups with sophisticated plots and more by “lone actor” terrorism in which individuals or small groups of individuals carry out crude attacks, then MI5 will have less of a role to play in counter-terrorism than regular police forces.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63767/original/wpsyx9pk-1415205098.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63767/original/wpsyx9pk-1415205098.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63767/original/wpsyx9pk-1415205098.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63767/original/wpsyx9pk-1415205098.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63767/original/wpsyx9pk-1415205098.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63767/original/wpsyx9pk-1415205098.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63767/original/wpsyx9pk-1415205098.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Trenchcoat: not suitable for on-duty wear in Beijing.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A similar trend is evident in the United States. After 9/11 the main American domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbi-counterterrorism-analysis-and-collection">declared</a> that countering terrorism would be its top priority. Nevertheless, it has for a number of years also paid attention to the threat of Chinese espionage. This threat is much more diffused than during the Cold War, thanks to globalisation. It could include the oft-discussed approaches via computers but also, potentially, through Chinese students and business people.</p>
<h2>Limited pool of recruits</h2>
<p>In its effort to recruit those with proficiency in specific languages, as well to ensure a more diverse workforce in general, MI5 has a crucial disadvantage beyond having to compete with potentially higher-paying private companies for skilled personnel. Its recruitment policy disenfranchises an obvious cohort with relevant skills: immigrants and the children of immigrants. </p>
<p>The Security Service does accept born or naturalised citizens but only ones who also have at least one parent who is a British citizen or who has “substantial ties to the UK”. The latter, despite <a href="https://www.mi5.gov.uk/careers/how-to-apply/eligibility.aspx">broadly being defined</a> as: “your parent is a citizen of a British Overseas Territory, a Commonwealth citizen, US citizen, EEA citizen, British national or citizen overseas, and they would need to have demonstrable connections with the UK by way of family history or have been resident here for a substantial period of time”, could still potentially eliminate valuable recruits.</p>
<p>Limiting the pool, done undoubtedly out of concern about the loyalty of citizens without strong connections to the United Kingdom, at a time when a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/apr/10/students-taking-languages-record-low">when a record low number</a> of British students are taking foreign languages at universities makes the prospect of getting good recruits that much more daunting. As a result, MI5 and the British intelligence services will have to be increasingly creative in their pursuit of a shrinking number of candidates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33813/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Hewitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For some, it began with a tap on the shoulder at Oxford or Cambridge. Now recruitment for British intelligence occurs via newspaper and online advertisements and aptitude tests through websites. Despite…Steve Hewitt, Senior Lecturer in American and Canadian Studies, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/337902014-11-05T11:21:27Z2014-11-05T11:21:27ZBetter locks to secure our data are the inevitable result of too many prying eyes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63652/original/mmf9rzgr-1415123389.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It was bound to happen eventually.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">wk1003mike/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Robert Hannigan, the new head of British signals intelligence agency GCHQ, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29891285">has accused technology companies</a> of aiding terrorists and criminals by providing them secure communications through their products and networks.</p>
<p>Far from adopting a conciliatory tone following last year’s revelations from documents leaked by Edward Snowden about government spying on citizens, the intelligence chief has doubled down, railing against companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Apple for what some will see as trying to balance user privacy against the rapacious demands of the surveillance services. </p>
<p>Hannigan’s statement is bound to rile some. Privacy, he says, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/03/privacy-gchq-spying-robert-hannigan">has never been “an absolute right”</a>. Extremist groups are using the liberties granted them by the web: while some have been harboured by dark areas of the net in the past, ISIS instead uses the internet to openly “promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits.”</p>
<p>Last month Apple released iOS 8, the latest version of its mobile phone and tablet operating system, with encryption for the phones contents enabled by default. This led to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2014/09/25/68c4e08e-4344-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html">outcries from the FBI</a> that it would make their work harder, while a Chicago police chief claimed the iPhone would become to “choice of phone for paedophiles”. </p>
<p>The fifth version of Google’s Android operating system, codenamed <a href="http://www.android.com/versions/lollipop-5-0/">Lollipop</a>, is released next week with similar security upgrades. Besieged by thefts and leaks of anything from intimate photos to financial data, users might legitimately ask why it has taken so long.</p>
<p>The protection for digital files on computers or phones provided by <a href="http://www.2brightsparks.com/resources/articles/understanding-file-attributes.html">file attributes</a> and content types has barely changed in decades, and is based on concepts of stand-alone computer systems, and with little thought on keeping things truly private. This works well from a corporate point of view, where we can keep backwards compatability and allow IT department administrators to keep full control. </p>
<p>The firms creating mobile devices, however, have different issues, as their devices are on the move, and often stolen or mislaid. The internet itself is built from the protocols used in the days of mainframe computers and teletype terminals, with little thought given to protecting data as it is stored and transmitted. Now more connected, more mobile than ever, we carry our most sensitive data with us all the time: what was once protected by firewalls and physical security is now in our pocket.</p>
<p>With mobile phones increasingly integrated into our lives, the devices need to be more protected that our traditional desktop computers. So Apple and Google now find themselves with consumers who will switch mobile devices to keep up to date, without many decades of previous operating systems and application software to maintain compatibility with – the ball and chain around Microsoft’s neck, particularly. With the power and speed of even mobile phone hardware now considerable and growing all the time, the days when a special maths chip was needed to perform complex cryptography are gone.</p>
<p>This tension between law enforcement and the right to privacy remains unresolved. The FBI currently see the status quo, where major tech companies are persuaded or brow-beaten into cooperating with police and security agencies under the PATRIOT Act, as necessary to pursue criminals and terrorists. In the UK the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) defines what information of citizens that law enforcement can access, with the support of a warrant. </p>
<p>In both cases this will undoubtedly become harder with encryption-by-default, and the same tension exists with encrypted and anonymised “dark net” service Tor, where law enforcement are scared that crime can go un-noticed, whereas privacy advocates promote the privacy capabilities it offers. But the introduction of improved security is a predictable response to a situation in which the agencies headed by Hannigan’s predecessors and fellow spooks have been seen to ease themselves past those safeguards to citizens’ information that remain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33790/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Buchanan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Robert Hannigan, the new head of British signals intelligence agency GCHQ, has accused technology companies of aiding terrorists and criminals by providing them secure communications through their products…Bill Buchanan, Head, Centre for Distributed Computing, Networks and Security, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/338122014-11-04T17:33:18Z2014-11-04T17:33:18ZGCHQ: ask yourself not how to defeat our privacy tools, but why we feel we need them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63635/original/vpjrh6k6-1415118209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Watching you, watching me.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PublicDomainPictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The language Robert Hannigan, the new head of GCHQ, uses in his <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c89b6c58-6342-11e4-8a63-00144feabdc0.html">opening statement</a> is well considered in his appeal to openness, democratic values, and the need for corporate responsibility towards helping the security services. </p>
<p>“I understand why they have an uneasy relationship with governments”, he writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They aspire to be neutral conduits of data and to sit outside or above politics. But increasingly their services not only host the material of violent extremism or child exploitation, but are the routes for the facilitation of crime and terrorism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s an important part of the on-going debate about privacy and security, but I suspect the piece has been read, tweaked and perfected by many eyes. It is a piece of political public relations. A strategic communications weapon, if you like, from the agency for whom communications – yours, theirs – is what they do.</p>
<p>Certainly Hannigan is right when he writes about misuse of data, and the increasing pressure that companies and governments are under to demonstrate that they handle it properly. Already, firms that directly or indirectly make money from advertising have done so under shady and sometimes illegal premises, such as the court case over <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/14/bt_phorm_2007/">Phorm advertising trialed by BT</a>. The commercial application of techniques used to mine people’s electronic data are intrusive, growing in sophistication and poorly understood by the public. </p>
<p>But companies will respond to customer demand. Clearly the growth of privacy-friendly technologies is because customers object to the corporate world’s interest in their data, just as they distrust intelligence services and the national governments that direct them. They are capitalising on a market opening. </p>
<p>Apple and Google <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29276955">introduced encryption</a> for their mobile operating systems because organisations supposedly accountable to democratic oversight abused their position. Citizens’ lack of trust is a correct and proper response to a coterie of intelligence security services conspiring – a sinister word, I know, but accurate – to gather extraordinarily large amounts of data on their citizenry. </p>
<p>In fact the scale of surveillance surprised nearly everyone, from computer scientists, privacy lawyers, industry watchers and critically engaged academics to some politicians themselves.</p>
<p>Hannigan is correct in stating privacy is not an absolute right. He will not find a serious privacy campaigner that disagrees with him, because no one believes that privacy trumps all. This is because, in a liberal democratic society, privacy is a qualified right. The question is whether GCHQ has a good reason for such excessive measures and whether it should be able to do so employ them without oversight.</p>
<p>I believe this is by some margin a step too far, and deeply undemocratic. The task facing society is to build greater public accountability into the system while being able to make best use of relevant intelligence. Demanding surveillance without oversight is not good enough.</p>
<p>It’s important, however, that we do not fall into the habit of casting security services in a cartoon-ish role of sinister organisations. The abuse of surveillance tools is enough concern without adding any excessively dystopian amplification. Recall that security services forced businesses to hand over data under secret orders, tapped privately-owned cables carrying citizens’ communications, and gathered and stored data from telephone calls, internet searches and websites visited to analyse these at will. </p>
<p>This was done without public oversight or consent. As <a href="http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2378367/gchq-conducts-mass-surveillance-without-a-warrant-with-help-from-nsa-government-admits">recent revelations</a> in the <a href="http://www.ipt-uk.com/">Investigatory Powers Tribunal</a> highlight, the legality of this is questionable because these activities circumvent UK laws on the need for a warrant to conduct surveillance. </p>
<p>Hannigan’s article makes generous use of appeals to democratic principles, but they are precisely what the powers he would see his agency awarded would undermine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew McStay receives funding from ESRC and is affiliated with Open Rights Group.</span></em></p>The language Robert Hannigan, the new head of GCHQ, uses in his opening statement is well considered in his appeal to openness, democratic values, and the need for corporate responsibility towards helping…Andrew McStay, Senior Lecturer in Media Culture, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.