Tagged with GCHQ

Greens start legal challenge over GCHQ snooping in violation of “Wilson doctrine”

big-brother-1984Two Green Party parliamentarians are taking legal action against the Government over claims that their communications continue to be intercepted by GCHQ. Caroline Lucas MP and Baroness Jenny Jones have started legal proceedings at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the tribunal which examines complaints about surveillance by the country’s intelligence agencies and other public bodies.

Lawyers will argue that there is a strong likelihood that both Ms Lucas and Baroness Jones’ communications are being intercepted as part of the Tempora programme exposed by CIA whistle-blower Edward Snowdon. Continue reading →

Couldn’t make it up: Tribunal dealing with complaints against MI5/GCHQ is housed in Home Office!

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, passed in 2000, one of the most insidious Acts of Parliament in modern times, set up a tribunal with the power to investigate any complaints against MI5, MI6 or GCHQ, including complaints about surveillance activities of the police or any other public bodies. Very little at first was heard about this Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), and it was only the Snowden revelations that have brought to light how farcical those arrangements are and how contemptuous the Establishment is about the independence, integrity and effectiveness of the system for holding to account one of the most secret and potentially wayward powers within the State. Continue reading →

This week’s spooks hearing proves urgent need for independent inquiry

Edward SnowdenTo call it a grilling would be unfair to fried fish. It was a soft-centre velvet-glove exchange between decent establishment chaps which only confirmed just how feeble and inadequate the present system of so-called oversight of the security services really is. As spy chiefs came before parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), it is incredible that not once in the whole 90-minute encounter was the word Tempora mentioned. Even though the hoovering up of unimaginable amounts of internet traffic from the transatlantic under-sea cables by GCHQ is at the heart of public concerns about the biggest potential breach in personal privacy in history.

Worse, none of the three heads of MI5, MI6 or GCHQ showed any awareness that the public are right to be worried about how such a powerful capability might be used, or that the deployment of such a capacity beyond the scope of any existing law might show that the spymasters were simply out of control. Why were neither the ISC nor the cabinet nor the National Security Council never let into the secret about Tempora, which we would still know nothing about were it not for Snowden’s revelations? But the ISC stooges never even asked this! Continue reading →

Who can you trust in Britain today?

The latest evidence that GCHQ in their systematic electronic harvesting of information went far beyond what the law allowed, and were acutely well aware of this, is certainly troubling, but perhaps not surprising. The mood and culture in Britain today in the use of power is push your advantage to the limit and beyond – so long as you can get away with it.

Deregulation masquerading as the removal of red tape is all the fashion, the law is there to be circumvented if you can, and conscience and justice don’t really fit into our fast-moving commercialised world. If it were GCHQ alone, that would be bad enough. But the last 4 years have seen every institution of trust tarnished if not disgraced – the banks, the media, the police, the politicians, and now the security services. It isn’t just austerity that is now biting hard, it’s the painful awareness of the huge accountability deficit that affects every part of the power structure. Continue reading →

Time for a public inquiry into mass surveillance

Public InquiryThe role of Parliament is to hold the Executive (Government) to account and the role of the media is to prevent the abuse of power and to provide a mechanism of accountability where that fails. Are they at present fulfilling that role? Neither is. And both have failed at the critical point where today the development of extraordinarily powerful new communication technologies have far exceeded the capability of current instruments to apply effective oversight. The nursery story hitherto has been that for MI5/6 to target an individual or group, they had to get a warrant from the Home Secretary.

The truth is, and has been for some time already, that the NSA in the US via the Prism programme and GCHQ in the UK via the Tempora programme have mutually acquired the capability to hoover up untold vast quantities of personal data from the undersea cables that carry internet data in and out of the UK on a colossal scale, and without any check or accountability at all. Continue reading →