G4S: Greater privatisation of police should be a major cause for concern

Recently, the head of the UK branch of G4S, the largest private security firm in the world, predicted that within the next few years an increasing amount police work will be allocated and outsourced to private security companies – like G4S.

The comments were made by the director of the UK led private security firm, off the back of G4S having secured lucrative contracts to carry out policing duties on behalf of West Midlands and Surrey police – and ultimately the taxpayer.

One of the immediate criticisms raised at this prospect was of the need for all individuals contracted to carry out police duties to be held equally accountable to the IPCC (Independent police complaints commission) – at present this will not the case.

G4S are also set to have a massive presence at this year’s Olympic Games, with around 13,000 staff allocated for the games which are set to begin in a couple of weeks time. Mainstream news reports have described the makeup of east London as looking increasingly more like an occupied military zone rather than the sight for one of the greatest spectacles on Earth. Coincidentally, we are talking about the same G4S that carries out duties for the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Despite concerns raised over the last couple of days regarding the ability of G4S to deliver, the Home Secretary Theresa May today maintained that the Olympic games were safe to go ahead and that london is prepared.

Indeed, the security giant looks likely to secure lucrative contracts to undergo outsourced work on behalf of the NHS, and the police, and post Olympics, and does not look likely to be struggling for work, to put it politely.

Police forces across the country, as well as suffering from acute levels of public skepticism, and diminishing resources, will be headed by a company, driven by profit margins at the behest of our government.

Although according to government this is of course done in the name of efficiency and cost effectiveness, one might say that there is a direct conflict of interest. If we were to make any predictions as to how this were to translate into reality, looking at how the police, immigration officials, and prisons which have been privatised are operating in the US, and the resulting criticisms that have been leveled at them, we ought to surely be concerned.

Incidentally, here in the UK, we have already emulated the private prison system, with several currently outsourced to private companies.

In addition to the news that the police along with our other institutions, will now be further privatised and sold off, we have also had to digest the added revelation that we are likely to see an even greater drop in police numbers in the years leading up to 2015.

If alarm bells were not already ringing as a result of the fragility of the relationship between the police and the public, then they should be now.

There is no reason to believe that this will have a beneficial effect on the level of service provided. Or put another way, there is no evidence to suggest that in the long run this will benefit society. On the contrary many are voicing concerns saying the opposite; A climate under which it becomes more profitable to imprison people than to educate them, is not something we want. We only have to look across the pond to realise that.

Equally, the likes of G4S, securing the Olympics and carrying out increasingly more and more police duties holds just as many legitimate concerns.

As was revealed in a recent report, the extent to which some of the private companies awarded contracts to kickstart the coalition governments ‘work programme’ sought to actually cut the number of claimants claiming benefits- including G4S – was shockingly high. Many are concerned that they are more focused on cutting the number of benefit claimants, rather than actually getting people back to work.

Many groups and activists concerned about G4S have been trying to raise awareness and scrutinize G4S for many years, but in recent months and especially in the aftermath of the death of Jimmy Mubenga, which for many after a long list of incidents which brought into sharp focus the prospect of criminal charges being sought for possible criminal behaviour by G4S, that scrutiny has increased – and with good reason. Whether the staff that held Mubenga in their custody will now face criminal charges remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether the company itself will face criminal charges of manslaughter.

Just like the last New Labour government, which designated the contract for our census data to be gathered to Lockheed Martin, the arms manufacturer, with many other impressive titles to its name to boot, this coalition hasn’t flinched from its predictable ideological course, in shipping the important work of our already stretched institutions, over to private companies, and the reality is that we are poised to see more of the same. The fact that one of the big beneficiaries of this, has massive question marks hanging over it says much about our government’s willingness to ship out anything to the highest bidder, irrespective of the spin, which justifies such decision making in the name of cost effectiveness and efficiency. The question really, is what’s coming next.

Meanwhile the Olympics are awaited with bated breath from many and for many reasons. For sports lovers it’s the chance to enjoy the games the chance to inspire young people. For many police officers, the circumstances surrounding the Olympics, are just inviting the kind of scenes and trouble that we saw last year, possibly further rioting. Private companies, just like the big multinationals that go in to rebuild a destroyed infrastructure after a war, are poised to get rich either way.

Find this story at 13 July 2012

By Richard Sudan
Notebook – A selection of Independent views -, Opinion
Friday, 13 July 2012 at 12:00 am

£284m debacle over security: As troops fill the Olympics gap, how did G4 get it all so wrong?

 

Army called upon to fill Games security shortfall
Fears G4S may even fail to meet reduced target
MP accuses firm – who were paid £284m – of letting the country down

The security firm G4S was reportedly paid a staggering £284million to provide up to 17,500 personnel for the 2012 Games.

But yesterday, in a major humiliation for company bosses and Olympic organisers, it admitted it would fall well short of the target, forcing ministers to pull in thousands of military personnel.

The company was contracted to provide a minimum of 15,400 security staff, with a target of 17,500.

Yesterday, as the Government confirmed the call-up of 3,500 extra troops, G4S claimed it would be able to bring in 13,800.

However, with 14 days to go to the Games, question marks remained whether it would meet even that target, as just a small fraction of that total is available for deployment. Only 4,000 are ‘boots on the ground’, working as ticket checkers and bag searchers at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London.

Another 9,000 are still in the training and vetting process – raising fears even the more reduced target might not be achievable.

The Armed Forces now make up the overwhelming majority of the security staff likely to be deployed during the Games.

The original plan for 7,500 military is bolstered by a special contingent of 5,000, plus the 3,500 announced on Tuesday, making a total of 16,000. In addition, there will be 3,000 unpaid volunteers.

The number of staff needed to guard the Olympic venues more than doubled last December after the organising committee Locog wildly underestimated the total required. Originally Locog contracted G4S to provide 2,000 security guards, but in December the firm agreed to increase that number massively.

Yesterday Downing Street insisted there would be financial penalties for the firm for failing to meet the contract. But Locog refused to comment on the nature of any fines, claiming it would breach commercial confidentiality. That is despite taxpayers coughing up at least £9billion for the cost of the Games.

Insiders said the company had repeatedly claimed until last week that it would meet its obligations.

A Whitehall source accused the firm of ‘abysmal’ failure and said it had delayed completing training and vetting processes to save money by not having too many staff on the books before the start of the Games.

The source said: ‘Until yesterday officials from G4S were turning up and assuring us that the figures were getting better and going to be OK.

‘Then we learn there’s not as many as we need. They didn’t want to be throwing money at the problem six months ago because their staff would be sitting around doing nothing.’

Home Secretary Theresa May was hauled to the House of Commons to try to explain the shortfall.

She insisted: ‘There is no question of Olympic security being compromised.’

But Labour MP Keith Vaz, who called for the emergency statement, said: ‘G4S has let the country down and we have literally had to send in the troops.’

Mr Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, has written to Nick Buckles, chief executive of G4S, demanding he give evidence before MPs next week.

The debacle is the latest blow to the reputation of G4S which, while relatively unknown to the public, is one of the world’s biggest security companies.

In recent years its tentacles have extended into swathes of British life which used to be the preserve of the public sector, including running prisons and police custody suites.

From headquarters in Crawley, Sussex, company bosses run a sprawling multinational company with interests in more than 125 countries.

They provide security at Heathrow and other major airports, and for vans transporting cash on behalf of banks and other financial institutions.

Under its previous name Group4Security it had a contract for transporting prisoners, but in 2004 the company ‘lost’ two prisoners, sparking a major investigation.

It runs six jails in the UK including Birmingham, where an inspection report in October 2011 said drugs were regularly being thrown over the prison walls.

Three G4S guards are on police bail over the death in October 2010 of Angolan national Jimmy Mubenga, who was restrained while being deported from the country.

…

Find this story at 13 July 2012

By Jack Doyle

PUBLISHED: 22:39 GMT, 12 July 2012 | UPDATED: 10:30 GMT, 13 July 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Olympic security chaos: depth of G4S security crisis revealed

The depth of the crisis over G4S’s Olympic security preparations became increasingly clear on Thursday as recruits revealed details of a “totally chaotic” selection process and police joined the military in bracing themselves to fill the void left by the private security contractor.

Guards told how, with 14 days to go until the Olympics opening ceremony, they had received no schedules, uniforms or training on x-ray machines. Others said they had been allocated to venues hundreds of miles from where they lived, been sent rotas intended for other employees, and offered shifts after they had failed G4S’s own vetting.

The West Midlands Police Federation reported that its officers were being prepared to guard the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, which will host the football tournament, amid concerns G4S would not be able to cover the security requirements.

“We have to find officers until the army arrives and we don’t know where we are going to find them from,” said Chris Jones, secretary of the federation.

G4S has got a £284m contract to provide 13,700 guards, but only has 4,000 in place. It says a further 9,000 are in the pipeline.

G4S sent an urgent request on Thursday to retired police asking them to help. A memo to the National Association of Retired Police Officers said: “G4S Policing Solutions are currently and urgently recruiting for extra support for the Olympics. These are immediate starts with this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday available. We require ex-police officers ideally with some level of security clearance and with a Security Industry Association [accreditation], however neither is compulsory.”

Robert Brown, a former police sergeant, told the Guardian that he pulled out of the recruitment process for the Games after seeing it close at hand.

He said: “They were trying to process hundreds of people and we had to fill out endless forms. It was totally chaotic and it was obvious to me that this was being done too quickly and too late.”

Another G4S trainee, an ex-policeman, described the process as “an utter farce”.

He added: “There were people who couldn’t spell their own name. The staff were having to help them. Most people hadn’t filled in their application forms correctly. Some didn’t know what references were and others said they didn’t have anyone who could act as a referee. The G4S people were having to prompt them, saying things like “what about your uncle?”

Tim Steward, a former prison officer, said he was recruited by G4S in March as a team leader but said he would not be working at the Games because of a series of blunders.

Steward said he provided documentation for vetting but G4S had said it did not have the information on record and so closed his file. The security firm then offered him a training session at short notice, which he could not attend, but it did not offer an alternative.

A recruit who was interviewed in March and completed training last month, said: “There are people like me that are vetted and trained in security and would be happy to work, but can’t. Some of the classes were of around 200 in size with only two trainers accommodating the training for a class of this size.

“I am yet to hear from G4S regarding my screening, accreditation, uniform or even a rough start date. I know many people also who will be commencing work on 27 July who have had absolutely no scheduled on-site training. They are simply being chucked into their role on x-ray machines, public screening areas and even athlete screening areas.”

Another guard who has been trained as an x-ray operator, complained that he was unable to get through to G4S to find out when and where he was meant to be working, and was once left on hold on the phone for 38 minutes.

One student applicant said he had already spent £650 on travel and hotel bills to attend training and was now worried that, because he had not received any accreditation or rota from G4S, he might not be given the shifts that would enable him to cover those costs. He said he had expected to earn about £2,000 over the period of the Games.

G4S’s own Facebook page for new recruits is littered with similar complaints.

“They’ve placed me in Manchester and I want to work in London,” wrote Glenn Roseman. “Some idiot has changed my location, I’m never going to get any work now.”

Christian Smith complained: “I did the training course, passed, and got my own security industry association licence, only to fail G4S vetting. Two days after I got their letter, they rang me, and asked me what days I could work.”

…

 

Find this story at 13 July 2012 

 

Recruits tell of chaos over schedules, uniforms and training while ex-police officers asked to help out
Robert Booth and Nick Hopkins
The Guardian, Friday 13 July 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

MI6 role in Libyan rebels’ rendition ‘helped to strengthen al-Qaida’

Secret documents reveal British intelligence concerns and raise damaging questions about UK’s targeting of Gaddafi opponents
Britain already faces legal action over its involvement in the plot to seize Abdul Hakim Belhaj, who is now the military commander in Tripoli. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP

British intelligence believes the capture and rendition of two top Libyan rebel commanders, carried out with the involvement of MI6, strengthened al-Qaida and helped groups attacking British forces in Iraq, secret documents reveal.

The papers, discovered in the British ambassador’s abandoned residence in Tripoli, raise new and damaging questions over Britain’s role in the seizure and torture of key opponents of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

Britain is already facing legal actions over its involvement in the plot to seize Abdul Hakim Belhaj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who is now the military commander in Tripoli, and his deputy, Sami al-Saadi. Both men say they were tortured and jailed after being handed over to Gaddafi.

The documents reveal that British intelligence believe the pair’s rendition boosted al-Qaida by removing more moderate elements from the insurgency’s leadership. This allowed extremists to push “a relatively close-knit group” focused on overthrowing Gaddafi into joining the pan-Islamist terror network.

One document, headed “UK/Libya eyes only – Secret”, showed the security services had monitored LIFG members since their arrival in Britain following a failed attempt to kill Gaddafi in 1996, and understood their aim was the replacement of his regime with an Islamic state.

The briefing paper, prepared by the security service for a four-day MI5 visit in February 2005, said that following the seizure of its two key leaders the year before the group had been cast into a state of disarray.

“The extremists are now in the ascendancy,” the paper said, and they were “pushing the group towards a more pan-Islamic agenda inspired by AQ [al-Qaida]”.

Their “broadened” goals, it continued, were now also the destabilisation of Arab governments that were not following sharia law and the liberation of Muslim territories occupied by the west.

The 58-page document, which included names, photographs and detailed biographies of a dozen alleged LIFG members in the UK, went on to highlight “conclusions of concern” in the light of these changes.

These included the sending of money and false documents to a contact in Iran to help smuggle fighters into Iraq, where British and US forces were coming under fierce attack. “UK members have long enjoyed a reputation as the best suppliers of false documents in the worldwide extremist community,” said the report. It added that British LIFG members were becoming “increasingly ambitious” at fundraising through fast-food restaurants, fraud, property and car dealing, and raised nearly all the money for the group outside of Libya.British security also asked Gaddafi’s security forces for access to detainees and their debriefs.

Asked about the document, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “It is the government’s longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters.”

The LIFG eventually merged with al-Qaida in 2007. However, a second document, a secret update on Libyan extremist networks in the UK from August 2008, says the response of British members was “subdued and mixed”.

It concluded that those already supporting the wider aims of al-Qaida continued to do so, but “those with reservations retain their focus on Libya”. It added, however, that some money raised by members in Manchester may have gone to “assist operational activity”.

The cache of confidential documents – which included private letters to Gaddafi from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and key Downing Street aides – was abandoned when the three-story residence was attacked by Gaddafi loyalists in April. .

There was also a dossier prepared by British intelligence with suggested questions for the captured men. The 39-page document, entitled Briefs for Detainees and labelled “UK Secret” on each page, was written in three sections in March, June and October 2004.

The first section is dated the month of Belhaj’s arrest, and sought answers on everything from his private life to his military training, activities in Afghanistan and links to al-Qaida. There were also personalised questions for Saadi.

The LIFG, founded by veterans of the mujahideen’s war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was for many years the most serious internal threat to Gaddafi, coming close to blowing up the dictator with a car bomb in his home town of Sirte in 1996. The government denied claims by David Shayler, the renegade British spy, that this assassination attempt was funded by British intelligence.

After Gaddafi’s clampdown on the group, dozens of dissidents were allowed to settle in Britain. London only designated the LIFG a terrorist organisation after Libya said it was abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003. The move is understood to have been agreed as part of the negotiations with Gaddafi’s regime that paved the way to the controversial Blair deal.

Belhaj, now a key figure in liberated Libya, is preparing to sue Britain after other documents discovered in the wake of Gaddafi’s fall indicated that MI6 assisted in his rendition to torture and brutal treatment from the CIA and Gaddafi’s regime.

MI6 informed the CIA of his whereabouts after his associates told British diplomats in Malaysia he wanted to claim asylum in Britain.

He was allowed to board a flight to London, then abducted when his aircraft landed at Bangkok.

…

Find this story at 24 October 2011 

 

Ian Birrell
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 October 2011 20.28 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

 

Arab spring took British intelligence by surprise, report says

Committee says there are questions about whether agencies should have been able to anticipate how events might unfold
Britain’s intelligence agencies were surprised by the Arab spring, and their failure to realise unrest would spread so rapidly may reveal a lack of understanding of the region, according to the parliamentary body set up to scrutinise their activities.

A particularly sharp passage of the intelligence and security committee’s (ISC) report describes as “ill-considered” an attempt by MI6 to smuggle into Libya two officers who were promptly seized by rebels.

The report says that at the time the Arab spring erupted, both MI6 and GCHQ, the government’s electronic eavesdropping centre, were cutting resources devoted to Arab countries.

The criticism of MI6’s attitude is all the more significant given the agency’s traditional close ties with the Arab world.

The ISC, chaired by the former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, said it was understandable that the intelligence agencies were taken by surprise, “as indeed were the governments in the countries affected”.

However, it said there were questions about whether the agencies “should have been able to anticipate how events might subsequently unfold, and whether the fact that they did not realise that the unrest would spread so rapidly across the Arab world demonstrates a lack of understanding about the region”.

SAS troops escorted MI6 officers to Libya in a Chinook helicopter and dropped them off at a desert location south of Benghazi in the middle of the night in March 2011. The mission was an embarrassment to the British government and the anti-Gaddafi rebels alike. MI6 “misjudged the nature and level of risk involved”, the ISC said.

It noted that the lessons had been taken seriously by MI6, and added: “We would have expected nothing less.” The incident “demonstrates a lack of operational planning that we would not have expected from [MI6]and other participants”, it said.

Cuts being made in Whitehall’s defence intelligence staff mean greater risks would have to be taken “when reacting to the next crisis than was the case with the Libya campaign”, the ISC warned. It said GCHQ’s difficulties in retaining internet and cyber specialists attracted by higher salaries in the private sector was a matter of grave concern.

The report said Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, had told the ISC there had been “very considerable erosion of al-Qaida’s senior leadership capability in Pakistan, and to some extent now in Yemen, as a result of drone strikes”.

Al-Qaida had to spend a lot of its time trying to protect itself, Evans was quoted as saying. “It is much more difficult to take action if you are permanently in fear that you are going to be attacked. I think that has had a strategic impact on al-Qaida’s senior leadership.”

The ISC said British intelligence agencies were now concerned that al-Qaida in Iraq “may gain a lasting foothold in Syria if there is a prolonged power vacuum, and also at the prospect of Syrian conventional and chemical weapons stockpiles falling into the hands of terrorist groups”.

…

Find this story at 12 july 2012

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 July 2012 17.26 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

 

 

Mark Kennedy hired as consultant by US security firm

Former police spy provides ‘investigative services, risk and threat assessments’ for Densus Group
Mark Kennedy posed as Mark Stone, a long-haired, tattooed campaigner, and took part in many demonstrations between 2003 and 2010. Photograph: Guardian

A former police spy who infiltrated the environmental movement for seven years has been hired by a private security firm in the US to give advice on how to deal with political activists.

Mark Kennedy has become a consultant to the Densus Group, providing “investigative services, risk and threat assessments”, according to an entry on his LinkedIn profile.

He says he has given lectures to firms and government bodies drawing on his experiences “as a covert operative working within extreme left political and animal rights groups throughout the UK, Europe and the US”.

Kennedy, 42, went to live in Cleveland, Ohio, after he was unmasked by activists in late 2010. He has claimed to have developed sympathies for the activists while undercover, although many campaigners have scorned this claim.

The disclosure of his clandestine deployment has led to a series of revelations over the past 18 months about the 40-year police operation to penetrate and disrupt political groups. The convictions of one group of protesters were quashed after it was revealed that prosecutors and police had withheld key evidence – Kennedy’s covert recording of campaigners – from their trial. A second trial of activists collapsed after it emerged that Kennedy had infiltrated them.

Kennedy was one of a long line of undercover officers since 1968 sent to spy on political activists under a fake identity. He posed as Mark Stone, a long-haired, tattooed campaigner, and took part in many demonstrations between 2003 and 2010. He has admitted sleeping with activists he was spying on, even though police chiefs say this is strictly forbidden.

Even after the police ended his deployment, he continued to pretend he was a campaigner and to fraternise with activists he had known while undercover. In particular, Kennedy developed a sudden interest in animal rights campaigns, according to activists.

After he was exposed, he sold his story to the Mail on Sunday which reported that soon after he left the police he worked for Global Open, a security firm that advises corporations on how to thwart campaigners promoting animal rights and other causes. He denied this in a later interview.

A month before he left the police he set up the first of three commercial firms whose work has not been described. For the past four months he has been working for the Texas-based Densus Group, which advises firms on “countering current and developing threats” from protesters.

…

 

Find this story at 21 June 2012

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 June 2012 17.29 BST
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

 

 

G4S chief predicts mass police privatisation

Private companies will be running large parts of the police service within five years, according to security firm head

David Taylor-Smith, the head of G4S for the UK and Africa, said he expected most UK police forces to sign up to privatisation deals. Photograph: Guardian

Private companies will be running large parts of the UK’s police service within five years, according to the world’s biggest security firm.

David Taylor-Smith, the head of G4S for the UK and Africa, said he expected police forces across the country to sign up to similar deals to those on the table in the West Midlands and Surrey, which could result in private companies taking responsibility for duties ranging from investigating crimes to transporting suspects and managing intelligence.

The prediction comes as it emerged that 10 more police forces were considering outsourcing deals that would see services, such as running police cells and operating IT, run by private firms.

Taylor-Smith, whose company is in the running for the £1.5bn contract with West Midlands and Surrey police, said he expected forces across the country to have taken similar steps within five years . “For most members of the public what they will see is the same or better policing and they really don’t care who is running the fleet, the payroll or the firearms licensing – they don’t really care,” he said.

G4S, which is providing security for the Olympics, has 657,000 staff operating in more than 125 countries and is one of the world’s biggest private employers. It already runs six prisons in the UK and in April started work on a £200m police contract in Lincolnshire, where it will design, build and run a police station. Under the terms of the deal, 575 public sector police staff transferred to the company.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: “We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be.”

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was “a frightening prospect”. Peter Allenson, national officer, said: “This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services.”

Taylor-Smith said “budgetary pressure and political will” were driving the private-sector involvement in policing but insisted that the “public sector ethos” had not been lost.

“I have always found it somewhere between patronising and insulting the notion that the public sector has an exclusive franchise on some ethos, spirit, morality – it is just nonsense,” he said. “The thought that everyone in the private sector is primarily motivated by profit and that is why they come to work is just simply not accurate … we employ 675,000 people and they are primarily motivated by pretty much the same as would motivate someone in the public sector.”

In the £1.5bn deal being discussed by West Midlands and Surrey police, the list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources.

Chris Sims, West Midlands chief constable, has said his force is a good testing ground for fundamental change as he battled to find £126m of savings. He said the armed forces had embraced a greater role for the private sector more fully than the police without sparking uproar.

But a home affairs select committee report said many of the policing contracts being put up for tender amounted to a “fishing expedition”. MPs added that they were not convinced the forces understood what they were doing. The committee chair, Keith Vaz, said: “The Home Office must ensure it knows what services local forces wish to contract out before agreeing to allow expenditure of £5m on what is little more than a fishing expedition.”

Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire police announced this month that they were considering privatising some services in an attempt to tackle a £73m funding shortfall created by government cuts. Police authority members in the three counties will be asked to consider how services including HR, finance and IT could be outsourced in line with the G4S contract in Lincolnshire as part of a joint recommendation made by the three chief constables.

…

Find this story at 20 June 2012

Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 June 2012 19.31 BST

• This article was amended on 21 June to add a quote from a Home Office spokesperson.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Ian Tomlinson’s last moments shown at trial of Simon Harwood

Jury sees footage tracing newspaper vendor’s movements through City of London during G20 protests in 2009
Simon Harwood, charged with the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson, arrives at Southwark crown court with his wife, Helen. Photograph: Rex Features

A court has seen video footage of the minutes leading to the death of Ian Tomlinson, the man prosecutors allege was killed on the fringes of the G20 protests in London by a riot police officer who struck him with a baton before shoving him to the ground.

The jury at Southwark crown court also heard from friends of Tomlinson, who said he had been calm and happy on the evening of 1 April 2009, although clearly under the influence of drink. The court was shown another compilation of images, tracking the movements of the police constable involved, Simon Harwood, before his encounter with Tomlinson.

Tomlinson’s family looked on grim-faced as the prosecution showed dozens of video clips giving a chronological rundown of Tomlinson’s movements as he tried to return home, having spent time with a newspaper vendor friend by Monument station in the City.

They also saw several video angles of the moment when Harwood, a member of the Metropolitan police’s Territorial Support Group unit, struck Tomlinson on the leg with a baton as the 47-year-old walked away from police lines, his hands in his pockets. Harwood then shoved Tomlinson to the ground causing, the prosecution alleges, internal bleeding which killed him within little more than half an hour.

In his attempt to reach the hostel where he lived when not with his family at weekends, Tomlinson, a long-term alcoholic, headed towards Bank tube station, where he was turned back at a police cordon set up following clashes involving protesters marking the G20 meeting of world leaders. He then wandered through alleyways towards the pedestrian passageway by the Royal Exchange building, where he encountered Harwood.

This slow progress was followed by dozens of cameras, mainly CCTV but also shaky, handheld amateur video, and footage from TV crews. The montage, some of it only brief glimpses as Tomlinson walked past internal cameras in shops, was compiled by investigators from the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which initially investigated his death.

While there were still occasional skirmishes between police and protesters by this time, throughout his walk Tomlinson appeared calm, walking mainly with his hands in the pockets of his tracksuit trousers. The final footage, chronologically, showed Tomlinson briefly walking away after he was pushed to the ground and then, after a cut in the filming, lying prone on the pavement, where a medical student was trying to assist him.

Harwood, 45, was first shown standing by the police van he had been designated to drive, then dragging away a man who wrote graffiti on the vehicle, only to lose him when the man slipped out of his jacket. Wearing a riot helmet and balaclava but easily identifiable by a waist-length fluorescent jacket, Harwood then joined a line of other riot officers who began clearing the passageway.

Amid initial chaos, Harwood shoved a man who blew a plastic vuvuzela in his face before pushing over a cameraman filming an arrest.

Another piece of footage showed Harwood pushing a third man, who had stopped seemingly to help someone sitting on the pavement. It is shortly after this that the line of police reaches Tomlinson.

The court later heard from several of Tomlinson’s friends, including Barry Smith, a newspaper vendor who had known him for more than 25 years. Smith said his friend had been very happy that day, having cashed his giro and used some of the money to travel to the Millwall FC club shop in south-east London to buy a replica shirt and other clothes.

Tomlinson had left the stall only because the papers sold out early, Smith said: “If I’d phoned up and got some more papers he might have been alive. I’m gutted.”

…

Find this story at 19 June 2012

Peter Walker
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 June 2012 18.08 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Police demand the right to snoop on everyone’s emails: Scotland Yard chief is accused of playing politics

Met Police Commissioner slammed for his public support of the Government’s Communications Data Bill
Tory MP Dominic Raab accuses him of being ‘deeply unprofessional’ and jeopardising principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’
Bill would force communications companies to store data on every website visit, email, text message and social network use for 12 months

Britain’s most senior police officer was accused of playing politics yesterday after he gave his full backing to Government plans to monitor the public’s every internet click.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe endorsed a draft law that critics claim amounts to a snoopers’ charter, saying that in some cases it could be a matter of ‘life or death’.

His actions were branded ‘deeply unprofessional’ and prompted calls for official censure.

Mr Hogan-Howe’s intervention in the Communications Data Bill was compared to that of former Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who was accused of lobbying for a Labour plan to allow terrorism suspects to be detained for up to 90 days and also backed controversial ID cards.

Tory MP Dominic Raab said: ‘Just as it was wrong for Sir Ian Blair to lobby for the flawed ID card scheme, it is deeply unprofessional for Commissioner Hogan-Howe to lobby for Big Brother surveillance.

‘It politicises our police and undermines public trust. It’s also shocking that he wants more surveillance powers to “eliminate innocent people from an investigation”.

‘In this country, we’re innocent until proven guilty – not the other way round.’

Former shadow home secretary David Davis, one of the most outspoken critics of the proposed law, said: ‘He will have done his reputation no end of harm by getting involved in this process.’

He said that after Sir Ian spoke out on 90 days detention he was seen as a Government spokesman and, if not careful, the same would be said of Mr Hogan-Howe.

He added: ‘The truth of the matter is this is a highly political issue and the police should stay out of it.’

Mr Hogan-Howe made the comments yesterday in an article for The Times, in which he brought the 2005 Soham murder investigation into his argument, saying police were able to disprove Ian Huntley’s alibi that he did not kill schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells by looking at his phone and text records.

He also appeared alongside Home Secretary Theresa May at a press conference to promote the draft Communications Data Bill.

If made law, it will give ministers powers to demand that internet companies store data on every website visit, email, text message and visit to social networking sites for a minimum of 12 months.

Police and security services would not have access to the content of messages, but would know who was contacted, when and by what method.

The Bill is expected to face fierce criticism from Lib Dem and Tory backbenchers when it is scrutinised by Parliament.

Currently, police can access information that is stored automatically by internet companies, but they say that 25 per cent of the data is not logged, leaving a loophole for determined criminals.

Mrs May said that without the new powers, offenders would go free. ‘We will see people walking the streets who should be behind bars,’ she said.

Sitting alongside her, Mr Hogan-Howe claimed the proposals were no more intrusive than current laws.

But in facing repeated questions over whether he was right to intervene so publicly, the Commissioner accepted there was a risk of the police becoming politicised over the issue.

‘You could say there is a risk [of politicisation], but the thing I’m passionate about is making sure criminals can’t get away with crime,’ he said.

‘If that’s regarded as political, it’s a sorry state of affairs.’

…

Find this story at 14 June 2012

By Jack Doyle

PUBLISHED: 23:14 GMT, 14 June 2012 | UPDATED: 23:14 GMT, 14 June 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Intelligent kill: The dirty art of secret assassination

State-sponsored foreign assassinations of military, religious, ideological and political figures are an ugly reality of world history.

By means of sudden, irregular or secret attack, there is even a common euphemism in international law which bluntly describes the practice: targeted killing.

According to a UN special report on the subject, targeted killings are “premeditated acts of lethal force employed by states in times of peace or during armed conflict to eliminate specific individuals outside their custody”.

And it works something like this.

A state deems a certain individual wanted or a danger to its national security. After ruling out any feasible attempt to bring them to their own jurisdiction, usually because they are based in a third country, it deems itself responsible with silencing them by whatever means necessary.

The operational dynamics are then conducted under the auspices of one of two possible dimensions.

Either to eliminate the target under a fog of plausible deniability, in order for the state authorities to wash their hands clean of any discreditable action in a foreign land, and by extension any prosecution should its agents be captured; or to have blatant disregard to the norms of international law by reference to domestic constitutions that empower them to act under the guise of self-defence – in order to protect themselves from imminent threats of attack.

The use of targeted killing has become quite common in the aftermath of 9/11. U.S. Predator drones strikes against Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and the Yemen, Israeli airstrikes against Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories and Russian targeting of Chechen separatists in the Caucasus — are just a few recent examples.

But the covert practice of this art has always been a lot murkier.

In 1942, formerly secret memos now reveal how the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) secretly trained Czechoslovakian volunteers to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most feared men in Nazi Germany, in a daring ambush on his motorcade.

Alternatively, the main security services of the Third Reich, the RSHA, had in place its own clandestine unit which planned to target Allied soldiers with poisoned coffee, chocolate and cigarettes; as part of a ruthless terrorist campaign.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s equivalent of the CIA, the KGB, poisoned two of its dissidents abroad, once by firing a tiny Ricin-infested pellet from a specially designed umbrella into the target’s leg; and on another occasion by a spray gun firing a jet of poison gas from a crushed cyanide ampoule.

But even when the intended targets happen to miraculously survive a surreptitiously planned death, the devil that’s in the detail can be just as intriguing.

The CIA attempted to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro on numerous occasions by utilizing everything from exploding cigars, mafia contractors and femmes fatales — albeit without success.

On another occasion, the CIA unsuccessfully attempted to kill the Republic of Congo’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, using a tube of doctored toothpaste which would have left him dead, apparently of Polio.

In 2004, Ukrainian opposition leader Victor Yushenko was poisoned with TCDD, the most toxic form of Polychlorinated Dibenzodioxins, otherwise known as Dioxins, by what is largely suspected were pro-Russian individuals within the state’s security apparatus.

Although many of the shrewd techniques that have been secretly used in the murder of dissidents and enemies abroad have long been acknowledged in the post-cold war era, many practices may still be eluding us by virtue of remaining shrouded in anonymity, even to this day.

But generally speaking, secret state-sponsored targeted killings are still synonymous with booby-trapped car bombs, sniper hits, exploding cell phones and even small arms fire.

In recent years, however, the art of these smart assassinations – designed in the most part to make a person’s death look somewhat natural – have now been refined by the most unthinkable of materials.

And you don’t have to look beyond what happened to Alexander Litvenenko, a former officer in Russia’s internal security force, FSB, and critic of Vladimir Putin’s rule, in London on November 2006.

After meeting what he ostensibly thought were two former KGB officers for tea in a hotel bar, within hours he was hospitalized with mysterious symptoms including progressively severe hair loss, vomiting and diarrhea for three weeks — before he ultimately succumbed to his horrible death.

His post-mortem finally furnished us with details. He was poisoned it turns out, with tiny a nuclear substance, the radioactive isotope, Polonium-210. Its acute radiation syndrome that he ingested virtually meant he had no chance of survival.

The UK authorities were able to piece together trails of the material as left by the culprits, incidentally right back to Russia itself, where almost all the world’s polonium is produced.

The logic of administering such toxic materials was in fact deliberate. Polonium-210 is something which is normally undetectable; as a rare radioactive isotope it emits alpha particles, not the common gamma radiation that standard radiological equipment would detect in hospitals.

The accused culprits may have underestimated the determination of the British authorities to uncover the whole plot, but simultaneously the incident also told us something; the Russians were not going to play by the old rules – they were going to rewrite them.

It would be wrong to assume, however, that biological poisons, chemical agents and nuclear materials are the only things used in smart killings. In fact, the use of materials designed for rudimentary medical procedures have also taken on a new course.

Israel’s Mossad, long considered the most effective intelligence agency in the world per magnitude, and no stranger to the world of targeted killing in foreign countries, has two shiny examples.

In September 1997, Mossad agents sprayed Hamas Leader Khaled Meshal with the poison Levofentanyl – a modified version of the widely-used painkiller Fentany – by using a small camera which served as a trajectory. Although the agents were later apprehended, and eventually exchanged the antidote (following lengthy behind-the-scenes negotiations before it was eventually given to the victim), the audacity of the materials they used spoke volumes: it was designed not to leave any visible or tell-tale signs of harm on the target’s body.

In January 2010, Hamas military commander Mohammad Al Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room in what initially appeared to be death by natural causes.

However, upon thorough investigation, not only were 26 suspects (believed to have emanated from Israel) fingered, but the circumstances surrounding his death also soon transpired.

Al Mabhouh was injected in his leg with Succinylcholine, a quick-acting, depolarizing paralytic muscle relaxant. It causes almost instant loss of motor skills, but does not induce loss of consciousness or anesthesia. He was then apparently suffocated — ostensibly to quicken the pace of his death.

In his bestselling book, Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, gives a chilling and detailed account of how the Mossad uses Biochemists and genetic scientists in order to develop lethal cocktails as bottled agents of death.

This includes the development of nerve agents, choking agents, blood agents, and blister agents – including Tuban (virtually odorless and invisible when dispensed in aerosol or vapor form), Soman (the last of the Nazi nerve gasses to be discovered which also has a slightly fruity odour and is invincible in vapour format), blister agents (which include chlorine, phosgene and diphosgene, and smell of new-mown grass) and blood agents (including those with a cyanide base).

The point to extrapolate is clear. States that employ the practice of smart assassination techniques see them as effective strategies that are justified. They don’t need to admit to carrying them out, but we know they are happening.

An obvious concern raised here is that their almost pathological unwillingness to answer questions about the consequences of resorting to such assassinations – or covert targeted killings – will result in the practice becoming more widespread.

The arbitrary stretching of legal justifications for such assassinations, premised on what an individual country recognizes as self-defence, indirectly renders them to be bound by no limits — and by extension may serve as encouragement for other nations to follow suit, if they interpret their national security considerations being failed by international treaty and cooperation.

Just last month, British Police warned two outspoken Rwandan dissidents of threats to their lives by the Rwandan government, which could come in ‘any form’ or by ‘unconventional means’.

…

Find this story at 19 June 2012

By Mohammad I. Aslam
Tuesday, 19 June 2012 at 3:00 am

©independent.co.uk

 

Netpol 2012 breaks new revelations of private sector snooping on protest

New evidence of the disturbing practices of private sector companies seeking ‘intelligence’ on protest organisations was revealed by documentary photographer and investigative journalist Marc Vallée at Sundays Netpol conference.

Speaking on the subject of Olympic policing, Marc Vallée told how he had been personally approached for information on protest groups by a private sector company specialising in risk analysis. The company, Exclusive Analysis, asked him to provide any information he had about direct action and protest groups, particularly the groups No Tar Sands, Rising Tide UK, Climate Camp and UKuncut.

Exclusive Analysis promotes themselves as “a specialist intelligence company that forecasts commercially relevant political and violent risks.” Their website claimed they work with a range of private sector and government clients, including intelligence and national security agencies.

Marc Vallée was approached by a Richard Bond, who stated he was an employee of Exclusive Analysis. He told Mr Vallée that Exclusive Analysis had a number of clients that ‘had interests in’ the Olympic games. Asked whether there was an Olympic context to the information they were after, Richard Bond replied, “We have followed these groups for a long time. Yes we are looking at them for the Olympics.”

Exclusive Analysis are one of a growing number of private sector organisations providing intelligence or vetting information to private sector companies on protest activity. One of the roles of Exclusive Analysis appears to be the provision of intelligence and information that enables private companies to better manage or control the ‘risks’ from political action.
The company website claimed that as well as dealing with global terrorism threats, “Our regional teams analyse data and risk indicators on other groups (from violent single-issue groups focused on animal rights, the environment and pro-life activism to politically motivated groups such as anarchists and the extreme right and extreme left.”

Find this story at 22 May 2012

 

Undercover policeman planted bomb in 1987 Debenhams blast that caused millions of pounds worth of damage to ‘prove worth’ to animal rights group he was infiltrating, claims Green Party MP

News revealed as minister said undercover officers CAN have sex with environmental activists to maintain their cover

Bob Lambert planted a bomb in Debenhams inHarrowin 1987, MP says using parliamentary privilege

Three bombs planted during the coordinated attacks

Two bombers were caught and jailed, but the third one was never traced

An undercover policeman planted a bomb in a department store to prove his commitment to animal rights extremists, an MP claimed yesterday.

Bob Lambert is accused of leaving an incendiary device in a Debenhams inLondon– one of three set off in a coordinated attack in 1987.

Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, used parliamentary privilege to claim that Mr Lambert – who went under the alias Bob Robinson – carried out the attack after infiltrating the Animal Liberation Front.

The group planted the devices in protest at the store’s decision to sell fur products.

The attacks caused £8million of damage and led Debenhams to stop selling fur.

The claims were strongly denied by Mr Lambert, who is now a leading academic and expert in terrorism and Islamophobia at St Andrew’s University.

Following the July 1987 attacks on Debenhams, two activists – Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke – were jailed for planting devices in theLutonand Romford stores.

Sheppard received a sentence of four years and four months, while Clarke was jailed for more than three years. The third activist involved was never caught.

Miss Lucas yesterday said she had seen a witness statement from Sheppard claiming the third man was Mr Lambert and that he targeted a store inHarrow.

She told MPs that Sheppard was not there when the bomb was planted. She read from his statement, which said: ‘I straightaway knew that Bob had carried out his part of the plan.

‘There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Bob Lambert placed the incendiary device at the Debenhams store inHarrow.

‘I specifically remember him giving an explanation to me about how he had been able to place one of the devices in that store, but how he had not been able to place the second device.’

Miss Lucas alleged that when Sheppard’s flat was raided two months later while he was making four more fire-bombs, the intelligence was so accurate it ‘came from Bob Lambert’.

Calling for an inquiry into the activities of undercover officers, Miss Lucas told MPs: ‘It would seem that planting the third incendiary device was perhaps a move designed to bolster Lambert’s credibility and reinforce the impression of a genuine and dedicated activist.

 

‘There is no doubt in my mind that anyone planting an incendiary device in a department store is guilty of a very serious crime and should have charges brought against them.’

 

Mr Lambert said: ‘It was necessary to create the false impression that I was a committed animal rights extremist to gain intelligence so as to disrupt serious criminal conspiracies.

 

‘However, I did not commit serious crime such as planting an incendiary device at the Debenhams Harrow store.’

 

Mr Lambert infiltrated the Animal Liberation Front in the late 1980s and his evidence was used to convict Sheppard and Clarke.

 

He went on to become a police spymaster who led a network of undercover officers who infiltrated radical groups.

…

 

Find this story at 13 june 2012

By Kirsty Walker and Chris Greenwood

PUBLISHED: 14:27 GMT, 13 June 2012  | UPDATED: 00:45 GMT, 14 June 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Het gebruik van de telefoon- en internettap in de opsporing

De minister van Justitie heeft tijdens een Algemeen Overleg over tapstatistieken toegezegd een onderzoek te laten verrichten naar de effectiviteit van telefoon- en internettaps (TK 2009-2010, 30 517, nr. 16).
Dit rapport heeft als doel inzicht te bieden in het feitelijk gebruik van de telefoon- en internettap bij opsporing van strafbare feiten. In het onderzoek wordt uitgegaan van een getrapte vraagstelling:
Hoe wordt in Nederland gebruikgemaakt van de telefoon- en internettap tijdens het opsporingsproces?
Hoe wordt in enkele andere West-Europese landen (Engeland en Wales, Duitsland en Zweden) met dit opsporingsmiddel omgegaan?
Kunnen (grote) verschillen tussen deze landen in het gebruik van dit opsporingsmiddel worden verklaard?
Deze vraagstelling is uitgewerkt in verschillende onderzoeksvragen, die zich samen laten vatten als: hoe vaak, waarom en wanneer wordt de telefoon- en internettap ingezet, voor hoe lang wordt een tap aangesloten en wat voor een informatie levert het dan op?

Inhoudsopgave:
Voorwoord
Afkortingen
Samenvatting
Inleiding
De telefoon- en internetmarkt
Regulering van tappen in Nederland
Wat is een tap en hoe komt deze tot stand?
De tapstatistieken in Nederland
De telefoontap in de praktijk
De internettap in de praktijk
Alternatieven voor de tap
Het gebruik van de tap in Engeland en Wales
Het gebruik van de tap in Zweden
Het gebruik van de tap in Duitsland
Slotbeschouwing

Auteur(s): Odinot, G., Jong, D. de, Leij, J.B.J. van der, Poot, C.J. de, Straalen, E.K. van
Organisatie: WODC
Plaats uitgave: Den Haag

Document te vinden bij

Samenvatting te vinden bij

Summary at

Undercover Policing

Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion, Green)

It is a pleasure to hold this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I am very grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of the rules governing undercover police infiltrators and informers.

I am sure the House will agree that when it comes to the deployment of undercover police officers, transparency and accountability are of the utmost importance. In recent months, however, a number of cases have come to light that seem to expose serious abuses of any guidelines that we might reasonably assume inform what police officers working undercover can and cannot do. The cases raise important questions about whether such guidelines are ever enforced, whether individuals who breach them are properly held to account, and the extent to which infiltration of campaign groups is a legitimate, or even effective, tactic. Also, I have details of new allegations relating to the behaviour of one undercover officer that I believe require immediate investigation and raise questions about the convictions of two individuals.

Since at least the 1968 protests against the Vietnam war, police chiefs, backed by successive Governments, have used the tactic of infiltration to secure more reliable intelligence about political demonstrations than could be provided by informants. Undercover police officers pose as political activists over several years, to gather reliable intelligence and perhaps disrupt campaigners’ activities. In the early days, such officers were part of a super-secret unit within special branch, called the special demonstration squad; more recently they have been under a second unit, the national public order intelligence unit.

Up to nine undercover officers have been unmasked following the exposure of Mark Kennedy in late 2010. I will say a bit more about his case later, but the officers include Bob Lambert, know by the alias Bob Robinson. That officer pretended to be a committed environmental and animal rights campaigner between 1984 and 1988. By the summer of 1987, he had successfully infiltrated the Animal Liberation Front, a group that operated through a tightly organised underground network of small cells of activists, making it difficult to penetrate. In October 2011, after he was exposed as an undercover officer, Bob Lambert admitted:

“In the 1980s I was deployed as an undercover Met special branch officer to identify and prosecute members of Animal Liberation Front who were then engaged in incendiary device and explosive device campaigns against targets in the vivisection, meat and fur trades.”

Lambert has also admitted that part of his mission was to identify and prosecute specific ALF activists:

“I succeeded in my task and that success included the arrest and imprisonment of Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke.”

The men Lambert referred to were ALF activists who were found guilty of planting incendiary devices in two Debenhams stores. Allegations about exactly what kind of role Lambert might have played in their convictions have come to light only recently.

In July 1987, three branches of Debenhams, in Luton, Romford and Harrow, were targeted by the ALF in co-ordinated, simultaneous incendiary attacks, because

the shops sold fur products. Sheppard and Clarke were tried and found guilty, but the culprit who planted the incendiary device in the Harrow store was never caught. Bob Lambert’s exposure as an undercover police officer has prompted Geoff Sheppard to speak out about the Harrow attack. He alleges that Lambert was the one who planted the third device and that he was involved in the ALF’s co-ordinated campaign. Sheppard has made a statement, which I have seen, in which he says:

“Obviously I was not there when he targeted that store because we all headed off in our separate directions but I was lying in bed that night, and the news came over on the World Service that three Debenhams stores had had arson attacks on them and that included the Harrow store as well. So obviously I straightaway knew that Bob had carried out his part of the plan. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Bob Lambert placed the incendiary device at the Debenhams store in Harrow. I specifically remember him giving an explanation to me about how he had been able to place one of the devices in that store, but how he had not been able to place the second device.”

In the same interview, Sheppard says that two months after the three Debenhams store were set on fire, he and another person were in his flat making four more fire bombs when they were raided by police. Sheppard alleges that the intelligence for the raid was so precise that it is now obvious that it “came from Bob Lambert”. Lambert knew that the pair were going to be there making another set of incendiary devices.

Sheppard was jailed for four years and four months, and Clarke for more than three years. For Lambert, it was a case of job done—in fact, so well had he manipulated the situation that he even visited Sheppard in prison, to give him support before disappearing abroad. Until recently Sheppard had no reason whatsoever to suspect the man he knew as Bob Robinson—he assumed that Robinson had got away with it, fled the country and built a new life.

It seems that planting the third incendiary device might have been a move designed to bolster Lambert’s credibility and reinforce the impression of a genuine and dedicated activist. He successfully went on to gain the precise intelligence that led to the arrest of Sheppard and Clarke, without anyone suspecting that the tip-off came from him, but is that really the way we want our police officers to behave?

The case raises new questions about the rules governing undercover police infiltrators and informers, particularly when it comes to those officers committing a crime—an area in which the law is especially grey. Police chiefs can authorise undercover officers to participate in criminal acts to gain the trust of the groups they are trying to infiltrate and, in theory, to detect or prevent a more serious crime, but usually they are not allowed to be involved in planning or instigating the crime. As I understand it, the specific law on that is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and that before its enactment, at the time of the Debenhams attacks, the rules were vague. They have not so far been made public.

If Sheppard’s allegations are true, someone must have authorised Lambert to plant incendiary devices at the Harrow store, and presumably that same person may also have given the officer guidance on just how far he needed to go to establish his credibility with the ALF. We simply do not know, and in the absence of any

proper framework or rules, the task of holding Lambert to account is very difficult. Even if strict protocols are in place to try to control the actions of undercover officers, who decides what the protocols say, and how can we hold those people to account, given the secrecy that surrounds such activities?
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Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood, Conservative)

Will the hon. Lady give way?
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Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion, Green)

Yes, but very briefly, as I am short of time.
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Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood, Conservative)

Is not an alternative explanation that there were no protocols in place and that decisions were taken at the discretion of this officer, who was not properly controlled? To the extent that there were protocols, is it not clear that the guidance for undercover officers was coming from the Association of Chief Police Officers, which is an entirely unaccountable organisation?
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Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion, Green)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The truth is that we simply do not know, and that is the problem. We need clarity, which is what I hope the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice can help us with later.

There is no doubt in my mind that anyone planting an incendiary device in a department store is guilty of a very serious crime and should have charges brought against them. That means absolutely anyone, including, if the evidence is there, Bob Lambert or, indeed, the people who were supervising him.

Ironically, as we have seen, the use of undercover police infiltrators can make it much more difficult to secure successful convictions. Three Court of Appeal judges have overturned the convictions of 20 environmental protestors, ruling that crucial evidence recorded by an undercover officer, Mark Kennedy, operating under the false name of Mark Stone, was withheld from the original trial. The judges said that they had seen evidence that appeared to show that Kennedy was

“involved in activities that went further than the authorisation he was given”,

and that he was “arguably, an agent provocateur.” The latest allegations concerning Bob Lambert and the planting of incendiary devices prompt us to ask: has another undercover police officer crossed the line into acting as an agent provocateur, and how many other police spies have been encouraging protestors to commit crimes?

Mark Kennedy’s exposure in 2010 has shone a light on how officers behave when they go undercover, and especially on the rules governing whether they are permitted to form intimate relationships with those on whom they are spying. Jon Murphy, Chief Constable of Merseyside and the police chiefs’ spokesman on the issue, claims that that is “grossly unprofessional” and “never acceptable”, yet one undercover police officer, Pete Black, claims that superiors knew officers had developed sexual relationships with protestors to give credibility to their cover stories and help gather evidence.

Eight women who say that they were duped into forming long-term loving relationships with undercover policemen have started a legal action against the police. They have a copy of a letter from a Metropolitan police solicitor that asserts that the forming of personal and other relationships by a “covert human intelligence

source” to obtain information is permitted and lawful under RIPA; so either rogue undercover officers have been breaking the rules set by senior officers, or senior officers have misled the public by saying that such relationships are forbidden. We need to know what the truth is, and we need any rules of engagement to be published and open to public and parliamentary scrutiny or challenge.

The eight women allege that the men’s actions constitute a breach of articles 3 and 8 of the European convention on human rights. Article 3 asserts that no one shall be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment, and article 8 grants respect for private and family life, including the right to form relationships without unjustified interference by the state. The women go on to allege that the actions amount to common law tortious acts of deceit, misfeasance in public office and assault.

Bob Lambert is one of the five men named in the legal action, as is Mark Kennedy. The Guardian has also reported that Bob Lambert secretly fathered a child with a political campaigner whom he had been sent to spy on, and later disappeared completely from the life of the child, concealing his true identity from the child’s mother for many years. Lambert has admitted having had a long-term relationship with a second woman to bolster his credibility as a committed campaigner, and he subsequently went on to head the special demonstration squad and mentor other undercover officers who formed deceitful relationships with women.

The police authorities have made virtually no attempt to hold those or other men to account, or to examine whether they have broken any rules on relationships when undercover. The solicitors instructed by the Metropolitan police have taken a totally obstructive approach to the litigation, threatening to strike out the claims as having no foundation. Furthermore, police solicitors argue that cases can be heard only by the investigatory powers tribunal, in secret—a move that would prevent the women, whose privacy was invaded in the most intrusive manner imaginable, from hearing the evidence, such as the extent to which intimate moments were reported back to police chiefs. It seems that the police do not want anyone to be able to challenge their version of events or to scrutinise their actions. To paraphrase one of the women involved, it is incredible that in most circumstances the police need permission to search someone’s house, but if they want to send in an agent who may sleep and live with activists in their homes, that can happen without any apparent oversight.

The rules governing undercover police infiltrators and informers are also remarkably deficient when it comes to giving false evidence in court to protect a secret identity. For example, Jim Boyling, who was exposed last year for infiltrating groups such as Reclaim the Streets using the pseudonym Jim Sutton, concealed his true identity from a court when he was prosecuted alongside a group of protestors for occupying a Government building during a demonstration. It is alleged that from the moment Boyling was arrested, he gave a false name and occupation, maintaining this fiction throughout the entire prosecution, even when he gave evidence to barristers under oath.

Boyling was reported to have been present at sensitive discussions between other activists and their lawyers to decide how they would defend themselves in court, undermining the fundamental right of the activists to

hold legally protected consultations with a lawyer and illicitly obtaining details of private discussions. A lawyer representing activists who were charged alongside Jim Boyling has noted:

“This case raises the most fundamental constitutional issues about the limits of acceptable policing, the sanctity of lawyer-client confidentiality, and the integrity of the criminal justice system. At first sight, it seems that the police have wildly overstepped all recognised boundaries.”

Yet Boyling’s actions may well have been authorised. Pete Black, who worked with Boyling in the same covert unit penetrating political campaigns, said that the case was not unique and that, from time to time, prosecutions were allowed to go ahead in order to build up credibility with the activists being infiltrated.

The Metropolitan commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, has defended undercover officers’ use of fake identities in court, claiming that there is no specific law that forbids it. However, I echo the concerns of Lord Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, who said that Hogan-Howe’s defence was “stunning and worrying”. He commented that

“at the very least, the senior officers who are sending these undercover PCs into court to give evidence in this way are putting them at serious risk of straying into perjury.”

Bob Lambert, Mark Kennedy and Jim Boyling, as well as two other officers named in current legal actions against the police, John Barker and Mark Cassidy, have all crossed a line. Similarly, other undercover police officers may well have crossed such a line. The assumption is that they have been authorised and instructed to do so or at least, if that is not specifically the case, that a blind eye has been turned to some of their actions.

Activists who have been infiltrated have called for one overarching, full public inquiry to examine what has gone on. Lord Macdonald has also called for such an inquiry to consider how we should control undercover operations, but the Government have ignored calls to set one up. Instead, the authorities have set up 12 different inquiries since January 2011, each held in secret and looking at only one small aspect of an undercover operation. Those inquiries have not been particularly thorough and have not resulted in follow-up action. For example, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, ordered an investigation and report into allegations that the Crown Prosecution Service suppressed vital evidence in the case of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar environmental protestors. A key criticism of the CPS in that report is of the

“failures, over many months and at more than one level, by the police and the CPS.”

Nick Paul, the senior CPS lawyer who specialises in cases involving police misconduct, was not even interviewed as part of the investigation, and senior CPS staff have evaded disciplinary action. The CPS shows an ongoing reluctance to investigate past possible miscarriages of justice, and Keir Starmer is among those resisting calls for a more far-reaching inquiry.

The new allegations that I have raised today make the case for a public inquiry even more compelling. So many questions remain unanswered, including whether Bob Lambert planted the third incendiary device and, if he did, who authorised him to do so and why. More widely, the public have a right to know why money is being spent on infiltrating campaign groups, with no apparent external oversight of the decision to infiltrate

or of whether the methods used are necessary or proportionate. Why are the rules on such practices open to such abuse? Why are high-ranking police officers and, presumably, politicians sanctioning operations that put police officers at risk and undermine basic human rights?

We need to have faith that police officers are beyond reproach, that robust procedures are in place to deal with any transgressions and that those making decisions about the deployment of police officers are accountable and subject to proper scrutiny. I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to review the various concerns I have raised, and that he can tell us that the Government will agree to set up a far-reaching public inquiry into undercover police infiltrators and informers, which will look back over past practices as well as look forward.
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11:16 am

Nick Herbert (Minister of State, Justice; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)

May I say what a surprise, but nevertheless what a great pleasure, it is to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies? I congratulate Caroline Lucas on securing the debate. I am grateful to her for raising some of these issues, because it gives me an opportunity to set out the Government’s response. I recognise that the issues she has raised are serious.

Undercover operations are sometimes necessary to protect the public and to prevent or detect crime. We should commend the difficult and often dangerous job performed by undercover officers. However, in the light of recent cases and concerns, including those raised by the hon. Lady, it is right to ask two principal questions that we must be able to answer with confidence. First, is there a system for ensuring that the use of police undercover deployment is consistent with human rights legislation, particularly the right to privacy and the right to a fair trial? Secondly, is the system working sufficiently well for the particular type of undercover deployment that has led to concerns, or do we need to take action to improve it and ensure that it provides the required assurance?

Before I consider those two fundamental questions, it is important to point out that the deployment of Bob Lambert, a case raised by the hon. Lady, took place in the 1990s, before the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000—or RIPA, as it is known—was implemented. RIPA is the legislative framework that enables police and other public authorities using covert human intelligence sources, such as undercover officers, to ensure that they act in compliance with their duties under the Human Rights Act. A “covert human intelligence source” is the label used by the legislation to describe anyone who establishes or maintains a relationship for a covert purpose. That applies to a member of the public who comes forward to volunteer information about someone and who is asked by a public authority to find out more. It applies to a public authority test purchaser who engages the confidence of a supplier to buy illicit goods. It also applies to a member of a law enforcement agency who goes undercover to infiltrate and to pass intelligence back to that agency about an organisation planning disruption or criminal acts.
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Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood, Conservative)

Could the Minister clarify whether RIPA also applies to ACPO’s responsibility for an undercover officer and its status as a private company? Moreover, did ACPO have any involvement in the Lambert case, or did it become involved only in later operations?
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Nick Herbert (Minister of State, Justice; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)

I will clarify that point later, but my understanding is that the accountability lies with chief constables, not ACPO. I am aware of and share my hon. Friend’s concern about ACPO and its status. I hope and believe that it will be addressed, but if there is anything further to say about the matter, I will write to him.
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Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood, Conservative)

I am thinking in particular of the environmental protests at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, where it emerged that ACPO was responsible for the management of undercover officers. I am delighted that since then, Ministers have ensured the transfer of the powers involved to the Metropolitan police.
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Nick Herbert (Minister of State, Justice; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)

My hon. Friend is correct about the responsible unit, and that important change has enhanced accountability.

RIPA applies to each of the instances that I have mentioned, because the true nature of the relationship, which involves reporting back covertly to a public authority what has been said or done, is hidden from the other person or people being talked to. In every case, RIPA requires that authorisation is only given if it is necessary and proportionate. RIPA sets out who can make a decision to deploy a covert source and for what purpose the deployment might be made. RIPA codes of practice provide practical guidance on how best to apply the regulatory framework and how to observe the human rights principles behind authorisations. External oversight and inspection is provided by the chief surveillance commissioner, and independent right of redress is provided by an investigatory tribunal for anyone who believes that they have been treated unlawfully.

That is the current system, which was not in place when Lambert was deployed, but does it work? The published annual reports of the chief surveillance commissioner indicate that, in the main, it does, but that has not always been the case. That was shown graphically by the independent report produced by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary earlier this year on the deployment of undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. It showed that there had been failings in the application of the existing system and safeguards, but it went further by making a number of recommendations for ACPO to strengthen both internal review and external quality assurance of undercover officers deployed against domestic extremism. It also invited the Home Secretary to consider the arrangements for authorising the undercover police operations that present the most significant risks of intrusion. In particular, it proposed raising the internal level of police authorisations for the long-term deployments of undercover police officers under RIPA, and establishing independent, external prior approval by the chief surveillance commissioner for long-term deployments of undercover police officers.

The Home Secretary welcomed the HMIC report, and since its publication the Home Office has been working with the inspectorate, ACPO, the chief surveillance commissioner and others on how best to implement its recommendations.
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Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion, Green)

I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the situation as he sees it, but does RIPA allow undercover police to have sexual relationships with those they are trying to infiltrate? That is one of the points at issue: some say that it does and some say that it does not.
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Nick Herbert (Minister of State, Justice; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)

I will try to respond to the hon. Lady’s question before the end of my speech.

One factor is how we target the type of deployment that causes concern, without imposing an unnecessary or burdensome bureaucracy across a much wider field where the current regime may be said to be working as Parliament intended. We need to ensure that we do not deter members of the public from coming forward to help the police in what can be difficult work. We also need to make sure that officers charged with sensitive, intrusive and dangerous policing in the community are given the support and protection they require. Above all, we need to avoid the mistakes identified in the HMIC report being made again. Our response, when we make it, will have that uppermost in mind.

On the hon. Lady’s call for a public inquiry, the independent HMIC review looked at the broad issues raised by the Kennedy case, and made clear recommendations as to how the current system should be strengthened—a system that was not, in any case, in place when Lambert was deployed. We are considering our precise response to those recommendations. I do not think that it is necessary to conduct a public inquiry.

The hon. Lady raised a number of specific issues, one of which was whether RIPA can be used to authorise a covert human intelligence source to break the law. In a very limited range of circumstances, an authorisation under RIPA part II may render lawful conduct that would otherwise be criminal, if it is incidental to any conduct falling within the Act that the source is authorised to undertake. That depends, however, on the circumstances of each individual case, and consideration should always be given to seeking advice from the legal adviser of the relevant public authority when such activity is contemplated. A covert human intelligence source who acts beyond the limits recognised by the law will be at risk of prosecution, and the need to protect the covert human intelligence source cannot alter that principle.

The RIPA statutory guidance does not explicitly cover the matter of sexual relationships, but it does make it clear that close management and control should

be exercised by the undercover officer’s management team. That will be a relevant factor. The absence of such management gave rise to concern in the Kennedy case.
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Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion, Green)

Does the Minister agree that that sort of fudged, grey area means that for women who have had such an experience, and for women and, indeed, men who might have such an experience in the future, this is incredibly unsatisfactory? We simply do not have clear guidelines on whether the action and going that far is legitimate, and that undermines confidence in the system. The Minister has referred to other inquiries that have been conducted, but what has not been conducted is a public, overarching inquiry to consider all the relevant areas.

Moreover, the Minister’s response to the case of Bob Lambert is extraordinarily complacent. Yes, RIPA was not in place at that point, so there can be no criticism that its guidance was not followed, but what is the Minister going to do now, given that the issue is in the public domain and that there could have been serious miscarriages of justice? How will the Minister follow up on that case in particular?
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Nick Herbert (Minister of State, Justice; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)

I would be happy to pursue the matter further with the hon. Lady, if she likes, but I am not persuaded that it would be appropriate to issue specific statutory guidance under RIPA about sexual relationships. What matters is that there is a general structure and system of proper oversight and control, rather than specific directions on behaviour that may or may not be permitted. Moreover, to ban such actions would provide a ready-made test for the targeted criminal group to find out whether an undercover officer was deployed among them. Specifically forbidding the action would put the issue in the public domain and such groups would know that it could be tested.

The Government are certainly not complacent about the Lambert case. We were keen for an independent, wider review of the deployment of undercover officers by HMIC, which is now independent of the Government and reports to Parliament. We are satisfied that its recommendations will further strengthen the proper system of safeguards for the deployment of undercover officers that did not operate when Lambert was deployed.

Sitting s uspended.

Find this story at 13 June 2012

Questions remain over animal rights activists’ case

An undercover operation 25 years ago that led to the jailing of two animal rights activists now appears shrouded in mystery

It seemed like – and may well have been – a heroic police triumph that thwarted a campaign to firebomb department stores. When anti-terrorist officers caught two animal rights activists red-handed as they assembled incendiary devices to set fire to branches of Debenhams, it appeared their timing could not have been better.

As police burst in, the Old Bailey was later to hear, the activists were sitting at a table using a soldering iron that was still hot.

But on Wednesday, 25 years after an audacious police investigation led to the jailing of two activists for inflicting damage totalling £9m on three Debenhams stores, new questions have been raised in parliament about the ethics of the operation and the conduct of one particular police spy.

The MP who raised the case – Caroline Lucas of the Green party – conceded that much of the infiltration of a cell of the Animal Liberation Front in 1987 remains shrouded in mystery.

What is unlikely to be disputed is that an undercover police officer, Bob Lambert, adopted a fake identity to live deep undercover among hardcore activists – gaining crucial intelligence about their campaign against the fur trade.

The question raised on Wednesday was whether Lambert went further, potentially acting as agent provocateur. According to the accusation levelled by one convicted activist – and aired by Lucas in parliament – Lambert is suspected of planting one of three incendiary devices in branches of Debenhams. Lambert has strongly denied the allegations.

A long-standing investigation by the Guardian has brought to light various aspects of Lambert’s clandestine surveillance unit, set up in 1968 to gather intelligence about anti-Vietnam war protesters.

Police continue to maintain an army of spies living long-term in activist groups – the most infamous example being Mark Kennedy, who was last year exposed as a police officer after a seven-year deployment among green activists. Kennedy’s double life as ‘Mark Stone’ ended in ignominy last year after it emerged he had developed sexual relations with women while undercover.

Since Kennedy was unmasked, a further eight undercover police officers have been identified, most of whom stand accused of developing sexual relations with activists – behaviour police chiefs insist is banned. They include Lambert, who has apologised for deceiving “law-abiding members of London Greenpeace” during his deployment and admitted he tricked an innocent woman into having a long-term relationship with him, to lend credibility to his alter ego. Lambert also fathered a child with a woman activist he had been sent to spy on.

Responding to Lucas during the parliamentary debate, the policing minister, Nick Herbert, said police officers can start sexual relationships with suspected criminals if it means they are more plausible. He said that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), the law that has governed their activities since 2000, does not explicity prohibit sexual relations, but requires the operations to be strictly managed.

Herbert said it was important police were allowed to have sex with activists because otherwise it could be used as a test for outing suspected undercover officers.

In his almost total adoption of a new identity, and his willingness to develop close personal relations with women activists, Lambert followed a similar path to that of Kennedy. His journey into the core of the animal rights movement started around 1984.

Like other members of the covert unit, then known as the Special Demonstration Squad, Lambert radically changed his appearance, growing his hair long to reinvent himself as the militant animal rights activist ‘Bob Robinson’.

Insiders from the covert police unit confirm Lambert’s work inside the ALF burnished his reputation as one of their most successful spies. He went on to become a spymaster in the unit before leaving the police for a career as a lecturer at St Andrews University.

However, his respected record was placed in doubt on Wednesday when Lucas raised questions about the extent of his involvement in a campaign to target Debenhams stores with incendiary devices. Lucas admitted “we just don’t know” exactly how far Lambert may have taken his operation.

By 1987, Lambert had infiltrated the small ALF cell co-ordinating arson attacks on stores in protest against their sale of fur. The relatively simple devices – the size of cigarette boxes – were placed under inflammable objects in the stores and were designed to set off the sprinkler systems, causing extensive flooding. They were set to go off at night so that people were not harmed, according to the activists. In July that year, the incendiary devices were simultaneously planted and ignited at three Debenhams stores in Luton, Romford and Harrow. But only two activists – Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke – were caught and convicted. It appeared that the perpetrator who planted the third device had got away.

Lucas told MPs: “Sheppard and Clarke were tried and found guilty but the culprit who planted the incendiary device in the Harrow store was never caught. Bob Lambert’s exposure as an undercover police officer has prompted Geoff Sheppard to speak out about that Harrow attack. Sheppard alleges that Lambert was the one who planted the third device and was involved in the ALF’s co-ordinated campaign.”

She added: “Sheppard says that two months after the three Debenhams stores were set on fire, he and another person were in his flat, making four more firebombs, when they were raided by police. Sheppard alleges that the intelligence for the raid was so precise that it is now obvious that, and I quote, it ‘came from Bob Lambert’ who knew that the pair were going to be there making another set of incendiary devices.”

The suggestion that intelligence gathered by Lambert thwarted two activists planning a firebombing campaign is likely to be uncontroversial. On 9 September, police burst into Sheppard’s bedsit in Hillside Road, Tottenham and caught the pair red-handed surrounded by paraphernalia for making the devices – alarm clocks, copper wire, bulbs and batteries.

Victor Temple, for the prosecution, said at the time: “They were in the process of what was clearly a well-practised method of constructing incendiary devices similar in every significant respect to those used at Harrow, Luton and Romford.”

Previously, Lambert has spoken about his role in the police operation against the ALF, and his specific involvement in the investigation into Sheppard and Clarke, saying: “I succeeded in my task and that success included the arrest and imprisonment of Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke.”

What is likely to prove more controversial is the suggestion, relayed by the MP, that Lambert may have gone further than a mere observer, and planted the third incendiary device in order to bolster his credibility and “reinforce the impression of a genuine and dedicated activist”.

That is an allegation that Lambert has firmly denied. He told the Guardian: “It was necessary to create the false impression that I was a committed animal rights extremist to gain intelligence so as to disrupt serious criminal conspiracies. However, I did not commit serious crime such as ‘planting an incendiary device at the [Debenhams] Harrow store’.”

One possibility is that police chiefs authorised some kind of controlled explosion at the Harrow store – which the court heard suffered £340,000-worth of damage – to maintain Lambert’s cover story. That, however, would raise further questions.

If Lambert did not let off the incendiary device, who did? And if police knew about the plan to start fires in three branches of Debenhams, why did they let them go ahead, causing £9m in damages and lost trade?

Both are likely to be questions explored by an internal Metropolitan police inquiry into the activities of undercover officers in protest groups between 1968 and 2008 – a review that has been continuing for several months.

The Met said in a statement: “Any matters arising from the review will be assessed and where appropriate will be referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).”

Whatever the precise nature – if any – of Lambert’s involvement in the firebombing campaign, his success in duping hardened animal rights activists into believing he was a fellow campaigner is beyond doubt.

In 1988 – a year after the Debenhams fire attacks – Lambert later went abroad, telling friends he was escaping the attentions of Special Branch. They could not have known he was in fact one Special Branch’s finest operatives.

Following their arrests in 1987, Sheppard and Clarke were convicted for planting devices in the Debenhams branches. Sheppard was jailed for four years and four months, and Clarke for more than three years. Sheppard was jailed again in the 1990s but says he stopped doing illegal protests some years ago.

Sheppard said he did not doubt the motives of the man he knew as ‘Bob Robinson’ until his true identity was revealed in the Guardian. The convicted activist told the Guardian: “For 24 years I have believed that my friend … Bob Robinson was on the run and had most likely gone to a different country and probably made a new life for himself and I just thought – good for him, he was the lucky one that managed to get away.”

So instinctively did Sheppard trust Lambert, he said, that he was grateful to him when he visited him in jail. Sheppard said: “I remember thinking ‘Bob’s still there for me’. Actually, he was the guy who put me there.”

Clarke declined to talk about his role in the arson campaign but his lawyer, Mike Schwarz, said: “These allegations are very serious. If true, they cast doubt on the safety of my client’s convictions. Over a month ago I wrote to the director of public prosecutions asking about these issues. It is of great concern that the Crown Prosecution Service have still not replied to me.”

His letter to the DPP, Keir Starmer, states that Lambert played an “active, participating and crucial” role in the firebombing campaign, and the failure of prosecutors to diclose his information about his role would render Clarke’s conviction unsafe.

Herbert indicated on Wednesday that the Home Office was not inclined to investigate the Lambert case. It may therefore turn out to be in the courts where the latest allegations are resolved.

Last year the court of appeal quashed the convictions of 20 environmental activists infiltrated by Kennedy. The key issue was the failure by the Crown Prosecution Service to disclose details about Kennedy’s undercover operation to the defence team. On the face of it, the Lambert case presents another example in which police or prosecutors did not disclose all the evidence they had amassed.

In July last year, when overturning the convictions of green activists, the three senior judges said they had evidence indicating Kennedy “was involved in activities that went further than the authorisation he was given” and was “arguably, an agent provocateur”.

During her speech in parliament, Lucas suggested Kennedy may not be the police spy to have “crossed the line”.

“The latest allegations concerning Bob Lambert and the planting of incendiary devices would beg the question: has another undercover police officer crossed the line into acting as an agent provocateur?” she said. “And how many other police spies have been encouraging protesters to commit crimes?”

Find this story at 13 June 2012

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012 17.40 BST
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Call for police links to animal rights firebombing to be investigated

MP claims that undercover police officer may have ‘crossed the line’ during animal rights activists’ bombing of department store

Ministers have been asked to investigate the police infiltration of a cell of animal rights activists responsible for a firebombing campaign after questions were raised about the ethics of an operation that, it was alleged, may have involved an undercover spy planting an incendiary device in a department store.

The MP who raised the case, which dates back to the 1980s but surfaced only after recent disclosures about the clandestine unit of police spies, suggested it may constitute a case in which “a police officer crossed the line into acting as an agent provocateur”.

Caroline Lucas, parliament’s only Green MP, used a Westminster Hall debate on the rules governing undercover policing to raise the case under parliamentary privilege, and add to calls for a public inquiry into the use of police spies.

Only limited details are known about the mysterious police operation to infiltrate a group of hardcore anti-fur protesters, and Lucas admitted no one could be sure about the precise role played by the undercover police officer, Bob Lambert, who spent years living among the activists having adopted a new identity.

Lambert infiltrated a cell of activists from the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), who detonated three incendiary devices at three Debenhams branches in London in July 1987 as part of a campaign against the sale of fur.

Two activists, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke, were caught red-handed months later as they prepared for a second wave of arson attacks. They were convicted over the attacks on the stores.

“Sheppard and Clarke were tried and found guilty – but the culprit who planted the incendiary device in the Harrow store was never caught,” Lucas said. “Bob Lambert’s exposure as an undercover police officer has prompted Geoff Sheppard to speak out about that Harrow attack. Sheppard alleges that Lambert was the one who planted the third device and was involved in the ALF’s co-ordinated campaign.”

The MP relayed comments from Sheppard in which the convicted activist said: “Obviously I was not there when he targeted that store because we all headed off in our separate directions but I was lying in bed that night, and the news came over on the World Service that three Debenhams stores had had arson attacks on them and that included the Harrow store as well.

“So obviously I straight away knew that Bob had carried out his part of the plan. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Bob Lambert placed the incendiary device at the Debenhams store in Harrow. I specifically remember him giving an explanation to me about how he had been able to place one of the devices in that store, but how he had not been able to place the second device. So it would seem that planting the third incendiary device was perhaps a move designed to bolster Lambert’s credibility and reinforce the impression of a genuine and dedicated activist. He did go on to successfully gain the precise intelligence that led to the arrest of Sheppard and Clarke – and without anybody suspecting that the tipoff came from him. But is that really the way we want our police officers to behave?”

Lambert, who has admitted having sexual relations with women while operating undercover, has previously spoken about his role in the police investigation of the ALF and his specific role in the operation against Sheppard and Clarke.

However, he firmly denies planting the incendiary device. He told the Guardian: “It was necessary to create the false impression that I was a committed animal rights extremist to gain intelligence so as to disrupt serious criminal conspiracies. However, I did not commit serious crime such as ‘planting an incendiary device at the [Debenhams] Harrow store’.”

Lucas admitted “we just don’t know” exactly how far Lambert may have taken his operation, but said: “Yet, if Sheppard’s allegations are true, someone must have authorised Lambert to plant incendiary devices at the Harrow store. Presumably that same someone may also have given the officer guidance on just how far he needed to go to establish his credibility with the ALF.”

She added: “There is no doubt in my mind that anyone planting an incendiary device in a department store is guilty of a very serious crime and should have charges brought against them. That means absolutely anyone – including, if the evidence is there, Bob Lambert or indeed the people who were supervising him.”

Lucas raised the case of Mark Kennedy, who was revealed last year to have spent seven years living undercover among environmental activists. He also had sexual relations with female activists. Kennedy’s exposure led the court of appeal to quash the convictions of 20 environmental campaigners wrongly convicted of conspiring to break into a power station. The three judges said they had seen evidence that appeared to show Kennedy had been “arguably, a provocateur”.

Lucas said: “The latest allegations concerning Bob Lambert and the planting of incendiary devices would beg the question: has another undercover police officer crossed the line into acting as an agent provocateur? And how many other police spies have been encouraging protesters to commit crimes?”

The MP voiced concerns about other aspects of a longstanding operation to plant spies in protest groups, including the evidence that most of those unmasked in public are suspected of having engaged in sexual relationships with activists. She raised the case of eight women who say they were duped into forming relationships with undercover officers, and who have begun a legal case against police.

She said senior police chiefs had said it was “never acceptable” for their spies to have sexual relations with activists, but the Met had told the women’s lawyers that “forming of personal and other relationships” is permitted under Ripa, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

“So either rogue undercover officers have been breaking the rules set by senior officers, or senior officers have misled the public by saying that such relationships are forbidden,” Lucas said.

The policing minister, Nick Herbert, acknowledged there were questions about the accountability of long-term spies and said the Home Office was considering how better to regulate the area.

He said ministers were considering proposals from a review of the Kennedy case by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, which recommended that future deployments of undercover police officers should be “pre-authorised” by the Office of Surveillance Commissioners.

…

Find this story at  13 June 2012

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012 13.29 BST
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

 

 

Claims that police spy ‘crossed the line’ during animal rights firebombing campaign

An MP has raised questions over the conduct of Bob Lambert, an undercover policeman who infiltrated the Animal Liberation Front in the 1980s, suggesting he may have acted as an ‘agent provocateur’. Here, one of two activists convicted over an ALF firebombing campaign explains how he was duped by the police spy.

Find this story at 13 june 2012

Rob Evans, Paul Lewis, Richard Sprenger, Guy Grandjean and Mustafa Khalili
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Undercover police spies given go-ahead for affairs if it makes their false identity more convincing

But operations must be strictly managed according to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000

It’s a tough job: Home Office Minister Nick Herbert has given police the go-ahead to have sex with suspects

Undercover police officers can start sexual relationships with suspected criminals to make their false identity more convincing, a Home Office minister said yesterday.

Nick Herbert said officers were permitted to have sex as part of their job, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, but the legislation meant the operations were strictly managed.

There had been confusion about whether undercover police were allowed to go that far following the collapse of a case against environmental activists in Nottinghamshire.

It emerged the group was infiltrated by an officer called Mark Kennedy, who had been in sexual relationships with two women in the campaign.

Mr Herbert said it was important police were allowed to have sex with activists because otherwise it could be used as a way of outing potential undercover officers.

Speaking in a debate in Westminster Hall, Mr Herbert said: ‘In very limited circumstances, authorisation under Ripa Part 2 may render unlawful conduct with the criminal if it is consentutory conduct falling within the Act that the source is authorised to undertake.

…

Find this story at 14 June 2012

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KRO Reporter International: Huurlingen

Nederlandse gewapende beveiligingsbedrijven moeten verplicht gescreend worden op justitiële antecedenten. Dat stellen defensiespecialisten naar aanleiding van de uitzending van Reporter International van vrijdag 3 februari.

In de uitzending wordt onthult dat de directeur van het Nederlandse beveiligingsbedrijf Specops Company een strafblad heeft. Hij heeft de Wet Wapens en Munitie overtreden, maakte zich schuldig aan drugsbezit en een woninginbraak. Het Ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie was daarvan op de hoogte, maar zag geen reden actie te ondernemen.

Specops Company biedt in 15 landen, waaronder Zuid Afrika, Seychellen en de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten, gewapende diensten aan. Het gaat onder meer om beveiliging van schepen tegen piraten en persoonsbeveiliging . Omdat Specops alleen in het buitenland werkt, hoefde het bedrijf volgens de huidige regels geen vergunning aan te vragen. Het bedrijf is dus niet gescreend door het Ministerie van Justitie.

Hoogleraar Militair Recht Terry Gill van de UvA reageert geschrokken op deze zaak. Gill vindt dat gewapende beveiligingsbedrijven die in Nederland gevestigd zijn altijd gescreend moeten worden. ‘Je moet zorgen voor een deugdelijke screening en een vergunningstelsel van beveiligingbedrijven op eigen bodem’ aldus Gill in Reporter International.

Ook hoogleraar Internationale Betrekkingen Rob de Wijk en René Hiemstra van adviesbureau Acestes willen strengere eisen aan Nederlandse gewapende beveiligers. ‘Het begint met in kaart te brengen welke bedrijven er op dit gebied zijn en te inventariseren wat ze precies doen. Screening op antecedenten is er nu voor deze bedrijven niet, dat moet echt gaan veranderen’, aldus Hiemstra. Om problemen met de militaire beveiligers te voorkomen is zelfs een nieuwe, interdepartementale samenwerking van diverse ministeries nodig, zo stelt hij in Reporter International.

Hiemstra voorzag in 2007 de Adviesraad internationale vraagstukken, AIV van informatie over deze groeiende bedrijfstak. Hoeveel Nederlandse bedrijven momenteel gewapende beveiliging aanbieden in het buitenland is onbekend. Hoogleraar Rob de Wijk denkt dat het om zo’n 20 bedrijven gaat die vanuit Nederland opereren.

Bekijk hier de uitzending van 3 februarie 2012

Police up to 28 times more likely to stop and search black people – study

Human rights watchdog warns of ‘racial profiling’ as data reveals under 3% of stop and searches leads to an arrest
Vikram Dodd

A Metropolitan officer is allegedly about 30 times more likely to use section 60 to stop a black person than a colleague outside London. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Police forces are up to 28 times more likely to use stop-and-search powers against black people than white people and may be breaking the law, new research from the official human rights body reveals.

The research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) looked at police stop powers where officers do not require suspicion of involvement in crime, known as section 60 stops.

The power is used most by the Metropolitan police, which carried out three-quarters of the stops between 2008-11, some 258,000 in total. The next heaviest user was Merseyside with 40,940 stops. Some forces barely use the power.

Thus what the Metropolitan police does can skew the national picture and the data shows a Met officer is about 30 times more likely to use section 60 to stop a black person than a colleague outside London.

The figures show how often black Britons experience stop and search through section 60 alone, never mind the more commonly used other stop-and-search powers. The EHRC found that in 2008-09, the Met stopped 68 out of every 1,000 black people in its area. This fell to 32.8 per 1,000 by 2010-11. In the rest of England, the figure was down to 1.2 stops per 1,000 black people by 2010-11.

Section 60 of the 1994 Public Order Act was introduced to target originally brought in to tackle people going to illegal raves. It gave police the power, if they feared violence or disorder, to stop and search suspects at a specific time and place.

Most stops in England and Wales require an officer to have “reasonable suspicion” that someone is involved in crime. Section 60 gives an officer maximum discretion and privately police fear its wide-ranging nature and the discretion it gives officers, plus the allegations it is being abused, may lead the courts to strike it down – as happened with section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which had to be reformed after the courts ruled its provision allowing stops without suspicion was too wide-ranging.

The EHRC notes that while the overall use of section 60 had fallen, excessive use of the power against ethnic minorities, known as racial disproportionality, had continued or even increased. The report found a rise in the percentage of ethnic minorities among those stopped under section 60 between 2008-11, from 51% to 64%.

The commission said the police may be breaching their legal responsibilities, known as the public-sector equality duty: “Any continuing and serious disproportionate use of these powers against ethnic minorities may indicate that the police and Home Office are not complying with their public-sector duties obligations.”

The worst rates of racial disproportionality were outside London, according to the EHRC. An officer in the West Midlands was 28 times more likely to stop and search a black person than a white person, in the Greater Manchester force the figure was 21 times, in the Met 11 times, and for British Transport police the figure was 31 times.

Nationally, the EHRC said black people were 37 times more likely to be stopped and searched under section 60 than white people in 2010-11. From 2008 to 2011, the racial disproportionality worsened for the Met and West Midlands forces, while Greater Manchester’s disproportionality rate in 2008-9 was 44.9 times greater, which had been halved three years later.

Racial disproportionality meant an officer was 10 times more likely to stop Asian Britons than a white person, with the worst offender being West Midlands police.

The EHRC said through section 60 alone ethnic minorities underwent more than 100,000 excessive searches over 2008-11.

Figures also show that section 60 may be ineffective in fighting crime. According to the report: “In England as a whole, only 2.8% of [section] 60 stops and searches resulted in an arrest in 2008-09 and this decreased to 2.3% in 2010-11. Of these, fewer than one in five arrests were for offensive weapons.”

The fact that arrest rates are similar for black and white Britons suggests problems in how police use the power, the EHRC said: “The lack of a significant difference does not prove that black people are not inappropriately targeted.”

Simon Woolley, a commissioner at the EHRC, said: “Our research shows black youths are still being disproportionately targeted, and without a clear explanation as to why, many in the community will see this as racial profiling.

“Moreover, police data itself questions the effectiveness of this practice. Some forces are using 200 or 300 stops before arresting an individual over a weapon.

“We are encouraged at least that the Met seek to review the practice with a clear objective that avoids the crude measure of racial profiling and focuses on intelligence-led policing.”

The Met is being threatened with a legal challenge over allegations that it discriminates in its use of section 60 stop and search. The commission has previously said it believes the Met’s use of section 60 is unlawful.

The Met said it was reforming its use of the power and would aim to make it more focused on tackling violence and reduce the number of stops carried out.

However, in a statement, the Met’s deputy commissioner, Craig Mackey, who speaks on stop-and-search issues for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “Chief officers support the use of stop and search as these powers are critical in our efforts to tackle knife, gun and gang crimes.

…

Find this story at 12 June 2012

The Guardian, Tuesday 12 June 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

 

 

Ex-police spy Mark Kennedy’s current business activities

Mark Kennedy, who was exposed as a police infiltrator of various movements
in the UK and beyond in October 2010, is still, after the collapse of his
police career, actively seeking to operate as a private consultant. He
appears to be based in the US, although this is not certain.

Kennedy is advertising himself on “LinkedIn”, and his profile can be viewed at
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-kennedy/44/853/198

An extract from this profile is listed here….

“I have many years experience in covert operations and deployments,
intelligence gathering, analysis and dissemination, statement taking,
investigations and case preparation, evidential court apperances,
surveillance and counter-surveillance skills and the use of technical
covert, recording equipment.

I have lectured for law enforcement agencies and services regarding
infiltration tactics and covert deployments and have lectured for the
private sector regarding risk management, the threat from extremist and
protest groups and creating preventative protocols.

My exeperience is drawn from 20 years as a British Police officer, the
last ten of which were deployed as a covert operative working within
extreme left political and animal rights groups throughout the UK, Europe
and the US providing exacting intelligence upon which risk and threat
assessment analysis could be made.

That knowledge and experience is now drawn upon to provide expert
consultation to the public / private sectors to provide investigative
services, deliver informative lectures and training, provide risk and
threat assessments to companies, corporations and their staff from the
threat of direct action in all its forms. It is my intention to provide a
enhance a better understanding of protest, the reasons why protest takes
place and the subsequent appropriate management of protest and
to assist in employing the appropriate pre-emptive policing and security
considerations to mass mobilisations, protest and direct action as well as
real time analysis and responces and to provide post event debriefing to
staff effected by direct action.”

The profile indicates Kennedy is based in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

The profile also reveals that in January 2010, shortly before leaving the
police, he set up a company called “Stanage Consulting”.

Stanage Consulting are registered at
SUITE 2029
6 SLINGTON HOUSE
RANKINE ROAD
BASINGSTOKE
ENGLAND
RG24 8PH

This address is simply a forwarding service -see
http://www.my-uk-mail.co.uk/frequentlyaskedquestions.htm

This forwarding service also hosted another company set up by Kennedy
called “Tokra”, linked to “Global Open”, which has since been dissolved –
for background on this see
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/471916.html?c=on#c277723

The other company listed by Kennedy on his LinkedIn profile is US- based
“risk managers” Densus Group, for whom, since March 2012, he has acted as
a consultant – see http://www.densusgroup.com

To quote from the LinkedIn page again – “The Densus Group provides a range
of specialty consultancy and training, primarily on behalf of government
institutions and private firms in respect of risk analysis and threat
assessment from protest groups and domestic extremism.”

The Densus Group was very interested in the policing of the Pittsburgh G20
summit protests (see
http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2009/09/21/daily42.html?page=all)
and is generally trying to sell its services to corporate clients
concerned with combatting the US Occupy movement and similar groups (see
http://darwinbondgraham.wordpress.com/tag/densus-group/)

Thus, it seems that Kennedy is attempting to establish himself as a
private consultant for corporate agencies, presumably especially in the
US, where he seems to be based (despite a UK-based forwarding business
address). Activists in the US (and elsewhere) should be aware of this.

Find this story at 1 june 2012 

Infiltrators & Informers – an activistsecurity.org project

Infiltrators & Informers is an off-shoot of the UK based ActivistSecurity.org project. Its purpose is twofold:
To provide an archive of individuals involved in protest movements who have been exposed as working for the police, security services and private security firms.
To provide advice and support to groups who are dealing with suspected infiltrators on what best practice is, from verifying their suspicions to exposing them.

Where possible the ActivistSecurity collective will attempt to verify the evidence and give supporting statements if necessary. If you have any questions, please get in touch at info{{at}}activistsecurity.org. We have pgp/gpg keys for secure communication. For a guide to this complicated issue see our pamphlet “Infiltrators, Informers & Grasses“.

See the website at

G4S: securing whose world?

You are not imagining it. The G4S logo really is popping up all over the place — in your local supermarket, on your local street, on police uniforms if you happen live in the English county of Lincolnshire.

And it’s all over the London Olympics, where 25,000 security people will be working under G4S control. The company’s bill, £300 million. (That’s right: £300 million).

The world’s biggest security company, G4S operates in 125 countries. Slogan: Securing Your World.

It’s based in Britain, where it is fast taking over vital public services. . . in policing, running prisons and children’s homes, dominating “asylum markets”, training magistrates, assessing welfare claimants, building and running hospitals and schools. It’s a very big player in the Private Finance Initiative.

G4S is installing smart meters in our homes, guarding our supermarkets, supplying number-plate recognition technology to retailers, the police and the military, performing covert surveillance for insurance companies.

In so many ways G4S is watching us.

Since early 2010 OurKingdom has been watching G4S, shining a light on this company’s extraordinary progress and its cosy relations with government.

Growing from our reporting on the scandal of child immigration detention here in the UK, OurKingdom’s award-winning reporting and analysis has been followed by, among others, the BBC, The Times, The Guardian and the New York Times ↑ .

We have explored human rights abuses and child protection failings. And revisited the horrible death of Mr Ward, the Aboriginal Elder cooked to death in G4S’s care, whose case casts doubt upon often-unchallenged assumptions about the virtues of privatisation.

We welcome fresh submissions, intelligence from within G4S, and reports, like this one, on G4S around the world. Please, let us know how G4S is securing your world.

Find this story at 1 June 2012 

Thousands of police accused of corruption – just 13 convicted

Forces should not probe their own officers, says IPCC chief as shocking figures come to light

The new head of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has questioned the ability of forces to investigate their own officers for corruption after it emerged that more than 8,500 allegations of wrongdoing resulted in just 13 criminal convictions.

Officers – including some from the most senior ranks – were accused of crimes including rape, the misuse of corporate credit cards and perverting the course of justice, but most cases were not substantiated and only a tiny fraction ever came to court.

Dame Anne Owers said that there was scepticism about the extent to which police officers could investigate colleagues’ alleged crimes, and she demanded more resources to supervise inquiries to ensure confidence in the system. “The public is understandably doubtful about the extent to which, in this particular instance, the police can investigate themselves,” she said in a report by the IPCC.

She concluded that the corruption identified over the three years to 2011 was not endemic or widespread. But she accepted that it was “corrosive of the public trust that is at the heart of policing” with the number of cases increasing.

“A serious focus on tackling police corruption is important, not just because it unearths unethical police behaviour, but because of the role it plays in wider public trust,” said Dame Anne, a former inspector of prisons.

The report was published just after it was announced that the IPCC – which looks into allegations of police misconduct and deaths in custody – will itself be put under the spotlight by a powerful parliamentary committee amid concerns over its record. Its investigation teams include former police officers and the Home Affairs Select Committee will assess whether it is able to carry out impartial inquiries.

The IPCC corruption report was ordered by the Home Secretary, Theresa May, because of concerns in the light of the phone-hacking scandal and the role of private investigators. The commission said that it looked at a total of 104 cases and referred less than half of those to prosecutors. It resulted in court cases involving 18 officers, with 13 of them convicted.

The highest ranking officer convicted was Ali Dizaei, the former Metropolitan Police commander, who was sacked this month after his release from prison after serving a three-year term for misconduct in public office and perverting the course of justice.

He was found guilty of framing a man in a dispute over an unpaid bill for work on his personal website in what the court heard was a “wholesale abuse of power”.

Find the story at 25 may 2012

Paul Peachey
Friday, 25 May 2012
© independent.co.uk

Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you (and they include ‘pork’, ‘cloud’ and ‘Mexico’)

Department of Homeland Security forced to release list following freedom of information request
Agency insists it only looks for evidence of genuine threats to the U.S. and not for signs of general dissent

Revealing: A list of keywords used by government analysts to scour the internet for evidence of threats to the U.S. has been released under the Freedom of Information Act

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ’terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ’team’ and ‘Mexico’.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder’ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely’ on the government.

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.

The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center – a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.

In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’.

Threat detection: Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats

They point out that it includes ‘vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.’

…

Find this story at

By Daniel Miller

PUBLISHED: 09:32 GMT, 26 May 2012 | UPDATED: 17:46 GMT, 26 May 2012

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd