Why are apparently so few people worried that a state employee can now select on a computer any item in their individual make-up – their address, phone, mobile, email, passport number, credit card number (any of them), any of their logins to a web service, etc. – and can thus access the content of their […]
Posts Tagged ‘Intelligence services’
Regulation of the security services needs to be completely overhauled
Aug 4th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The cascade of revelations from the Edward Snowden files gets ever more damning. After exposure of the US National Security Agency’s Prism system and the matching UK GCHQ’s Tempora system, allowing interlocking and virtually unlimited access to almost all internet activity regardless of so-called privacy protections, we now find that a NSA programme entitled XKeyscore […]
If only we had a government we could trust, we should offer Edward Snowden asylum
Jul 15th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Instead of pursuing Edward Snowden to the ends of the earth, as the US is doing, we should be lauding him for the huge service he has done us at enormous risk to himself. He has revealed the nature of our State and the security services which every citizen of the UK needs to […]
Snowden fugitive saga distracts attention from real unanswered issues
Jul 1st, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Of course the issue in mass surveillance is the balance between intrusiveness and the destruction of privacy on the one hand and the overriding need to protect a country from real and serious threats to its security. After both Hague and Obama initially gave po-faced defences of the spies as subject to all necessary supervision, […]
Whistleblowers v Big State and Big Tech: we still need Davids to bring down Goliath
Jun 11th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.There are several huge lessons that flow from this latest explosive story about the comprehensive range of the modern surveillance State. First, if we are ever going to know what is really going on behind the scenes and what government is getting up to, we are entirely dependent on the morality and courage of a […]
MI5 exposed as a state within a state
Sep 5th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Documents abandoned in the ruined British embassy in Tripoli reveal that MI5 was working hand in glove with Gaddafi’s intelligence services from 2005 onwards to obtain details extracted under torture from ‘terror suspects’ (opponents of the Gaddafi regime) in return for information updates on the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Britain. Yesterday’s Sunday Times […]
7/7 inquest exposes lack of MI5 accountability
May 9th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Perhaps the most important finding in the inquest on the 7 July 2005 bombings was the revelation of how MI5, on the evidence of a senior MI5 officer, misled Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). This is the body that is supposed to exercise scrutiny and oversight of the security services, but what the inquest […]