10th June 2013
This morning, at his request, The Guardian has revealed that the source of it’s communications surveillance stories has been the former CIA technical worker Edward Snowden, 29. He has fled to a hotel in Hong Kong where he feels he may receive some protection from the arms of US justice. He says that morally he considers he has done nothing wrong. He suggests his former principal is recording communications data for millions of people, innocent and otherwise, which is then stored away. If at some point in the future interest is shown in any of those individuals the techical capability exists to trawl through the details to identify the private information and life style of the person concerned. That system would allow security services to target a person for hidden reasons if they wish and to say leak details of their past activities, to the media for example, in the worst possible light. Mr Snowden contends that in reality American security services are not under any democratic control. He believes voters should have the knowledge to be able to decide for themselves what is the limit of their appropriate activity. As far as he is concerned he does not want to live in a world where everything he does or says is recorded.
Sir Malcomb Rifkind, chair of the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, appeared on the Today programme this morning in relation to the case. He said in this country our intelligence agencies are not allowed to seek any information about individuals without due legal process. I see his committee is travelling to the States shortly to meet with, amongst others, various politicians and officials of the CIA and NSA.
August 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of the first world war. As the planning starts no doubt, the programme had a discussion between Culture Secretary Maria Miller and historian Max Hastings on how the lessons of the conflict should be presented to today’s generation.
Fifty years ago today John Kennedy made a speech, a man on the broadcast suggested, which persuaded the American people they should agree to a nuclear test ban treaty with the Russians. He suggested we do not have similar politicians around today. Their actions seem to be determined by focus groups. Even if they can see the right thing to do when we can’t, they don’t seem to be able to go against the flow.
David Cameron was out and about this morning giving a speech to prepare for the G8 summit at the new London Gateway port on the Thames at Stanford-le-Hope. He said Britain is a small island with a large footprint and we will be making that plain in Fermanagh next week.
I noticed at the weekend, but was too busy to note it at the time, that Mr Cameron attended the Bildeberg meeting in Watford last Friday.
I have written about the construction industry workers’ blacklist operated by the Consulting Association several times, most recently on 18th April 2013. There was a Panorama broadcast on the story this evening. It suggests one man who had been working on the Crossrail project in London was discriminatively sacked, for having union affiliations I think, and has not been able to find work since. It has caused great distress within his family. The Information Commissioner’s office has asked the government if it will give them the power of audit at construction companies so it can finally stamp out any intimidatory practices that may be going on. However Panorama concludes the government needs the industry’s goodwill to help it achieve an economic recovery and is too afraid of it to take any action at the moment.
I don’t watch Channel 4 News at weekends but by chance I did catch a report last night about Conservative MPs, friends of Andrew Mitchell, who are accusing Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe of unprofessional briefings to journalists on the Plebgate affair. In the forefront it seems using FoI requests is David Davis. I have noted in writing myself before that the Commissioner does seem to support his officers in relation to the incident in an apparently biased way. Police still do not appear to have concluded their inquiries nine months after the event. However I suspect if I could see the full picture from inside the Metropolitan force my thoughts might be a bit different. At any rate I don’t think the chief likes being collared by pesky politicians and journalists. And of course those hidden forces always beavering away in the undergrowth don’t help either.
After arson attacks at Muslim sites in London last Wednesday and Saturday he issued a statement late yesterday calling on Londoners not to be divided by the death of Lee Rigby. He said it is a difficult time for London communities. He is putting in place extra police patrols near potentially vunerable locations.
A BBC webpage says that Mr Snowden travelled to Hong Kong on 20th May 2013. I imagine he had with him relevant evidence to support his claims and started to try to get publicity for his story. On 5th June The Guardian decided to start to break his allegations. This evening it is reported Mr Snowden has left his hotel, destination unknown. After leaving the CIA in 2009 Mr Snowden began working for the NSA being emoployed by various outside contractors. Most recently he was working for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii at a salary of £129,000 where he lived with his girlfriend.
I don’t think the possibility should be excluded that Mr Snowden is being manipulated in some way by the Gang. There have been rumours that he has been wondering about going to Iceland, a strong Gang area in my view. Instead he went to the southern tip of China not long before Mr Obama was due to meet it’s leader. A man on PM this afternoon was saying that is all a bit odd. I hope Mr Snowden receives all the outside support that can be mustered for him. I have no doubt his views are genuine.
On the conspiratorial side of things, from Channel 4 News this evening, it appears likely some people in the nine American big technology firms knew they were facilitating the NSA with data even if their chief executives didn’t. The State needed it to be unbundled for them so they could analyse it easily if appropriate. A man on the programme suggested physical government equipment was used on each company’s premises for the purpose. The only firm it seems who resisted official demands was Twitter. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court granted 1329 NSA applications for court orders in 2009 rising to 1856 in 2012. In those years it only refused one. The mere name of the court, it seems to be, indicates that America tends to have an isolationist mindset with the rest of the world, similar in some ways to the Israelis. Stickports.com, an online games website, said on the transmission that it had deliberated sited all it’s computer servers in the EU where regulation is arguably not so partisan.
Tonight’s Newsnight really shows in my view the ramifications of the story. I am from a different generation but young people I feel need to really think about who they are and what they want. When they have that sorted out they will be able to go on and decide how they view privacy. Edward Snowden said he doesn’t want to be listened to and watched all the time. I am not sure all young people would agree with him. Some perhaps do like it, or at least think they do. Possibly, if they had an understanding of the issues raised by my book, they could come to a more considered judgement on how they would like things to go.
Mark Urban makes a good analysis I feel. On that programme he was making a distinction between communications which are well regulated, at least in this country, and metadata which all the fuss is about. 90% of all the data in the world has been created in the last two years. It seems to me there is no point in storing all that seemingly harmless stuff, for which the Americans are just building a storage facility at the Utah Data Center 26 miles south of Salt Lake City, unless you are able to extract one person’s private details when you think you need it. Because the nine companies are global of course it means the person could live anywhere in the world. That is certainly what Edward Snowden tells us. The British government says it is nonsense.
11th June 2013
Last week the Chief Constable of Gwent police, after 30 years in English and Welsh forces, announced she would be retiring. This morning the South Wales Argus has published leaked documents that show she was forced to go by her Police and Crime Commissioner who had no confidence in her. The Independent politician privately said she was hostile to his role, was in charge of a culture more interested in massaging crime statistics that solving wrong doing and her managerial style was dismissive, abrupt and unhelpful.
Today had an early report from Bosnia and Herzegovina where the older generation, I suspect, are stuck in the past whilst youngsters want to move on. There have been demonstrations this week because new babies are not being issued with identity cards due to administrative paralysis. Each community Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats live in their separate worlds, with their own hospitals and electricity companies for example. The leaders like it that way. It is warlord politics. However Bosnia wants to join the EU. It is hoped pressure from that source can encourage them to loosen up a bit.
I wrote about our adversarial court system on 26th May 2013. The Justice Secretary Chris Grayling was on the programme saying that a new court procedure is being brought in for all vunerable victims to make their passage through our legal processes as easy as possible for them. Essentially the idea is that their evidence will be pre-recorded and then played back at the trial. When they are ready they will tell the judge and the defence and prosecution barristers about their experiences; and answer their questions. They do not have to be in the same room as the other three if they do not wish. Danny Shaw tells me we already have statutory authority for that approach in the 1999 Youth, Justice and Criminal Evidence Act. It seems someone thought of the idea a long time ago but it never happened. A six month pilot will now take place in Leeds, Liverpool and Kingston upon Thames to see how the idea goes.
Airtime was given on the transmission to the concept of a grass free lawn. Looking at the video on the webpage of one in a London park it does challenge your preconceptions. You can walk over and lightly mow it. It is colourful, has fragrence and is good for wildlife. I wonder if it will catch on. Not for me though I think.
Another item was about a map of the country which has been produced showing where you are most likely to die, old or young. As you would expect it is poor connurbations which have the worst incidence of premature mortality although Jeremy Hunt said some areas with the same demographics had strikingly different age-at-death rates. For example there is a 20% difference between two neighbouring Berkshire towns, Wokingham and Bracknell with Wokingham being the more advantagous place to live.
I feel it was a good editorial decision to interview Tommy Robinson, leader of the English Defence League on the broadcast. You listen to what he says and you make up your own mind. If we cannot trust your fellow citizen to reach a rational conclusion when people speak on national radio, then we are going nowhere in my view.
For me though it is amazing what a bit of kindness can do. Mr Robinson could have been killed at the Party’s Dewsbury rally on 30th June 2012. I think he probably believes that someone in MI5 acted to protect him on that day as I intimated in my note of 30th April 2013. If so it has made a difference to him. Mr Robinson says he does not consider any of his members were involved in the arson attack on a London mosque last week even though the initials EDL were scrawled on the building. He now understands I suspect that those hidden forces can set you up in such situations.
I probably should not admit this but I am an avid watcher of the Big Bang Theory TV series. Provided there is a suitable gap I do not mind how often I watch nearly every episode. It has a lovely, shy I think, supporting actress and portrays muddled but well intentioned characters. It’s writers have a real insight, I believe, into the ideals we should all be striving for as well as having an appreciation of those hidden forces I write about such a lot. The programme and two of the cast have just won prizes at the Choice TV Awards in Los Angeles.
It is probably early days but from a BBC webpage published this evening arguments for and against the communcations snooping story are taking on distinctly nationalistic lines. With our special relationship we are on the side of the Americans. Europe is aghast with the EU Commission hoping for some answers from the Americans at a meeting in Dublin on Friday. Chinese and Russian media think it is just the sort of dastardly thing you would expect the USA to get up to. A bit like voting in the Eurovision Song Contest really.
It doesn’t seem to me that Mr Erdogan is handling the Taksim Square protests particularly well. After days of calm the police, with their tear gas canisters, have been out in force. Mr Erdogen keeps on talking about terrorists. I feel that is pretty silly. It seems he does not want to think about the real issues. He just wants to do things his way.
The Gang are so set in their ways, in my view. Today we have had a story about a London office sorting out Payment Protection Insurance claims for Lloyds bank still playing fast and loose with customers. The clever twist though, I feel, is that the office was not run by Lloyds themselves but the accountants Deloittes. Opportunities are then present to deflect any criticisms of past and current behaviour which may arise. You could call it, the falling between two stools syndrome. Robert Peston clearly feels however that such niceties are beside the point. When you employ people, or use sub-contracting firms, you ensure they have the same culture as you. If things go wrong you take the blame. Robert hopes the regulator preparing a report on PPI, will not mince it’s words when addressing the poor practices involved, and about changing things for the future.
The Met Police have raided a former police station in Beak Street, central London today occupied by squatters who also planned to have a week of protests in the run up to the G8 meeting next Monday and Tuesday. One of those stories where I expect quite a few people know what it was all about but not me. My guess is it was an MI5 intelligence led operation. Protestors have been out on London streets this evening, either pre-planned or in response to the police operation, but the numbers were not large. Officers were able to keep them in small ineffective groups. BBC TV news this evening showed the Ritz, I think it was, with exta hotel staff strategically placed outside, no doubt for security purposes. Then the storming at Beak Street was a well planned exercise with policemen on the roof beforehand. A film crew was on hand showing a protestor emerge from within the building and appear to run to the edge in an effort to jump off. Fortunately he was tackled by the policemen before he got there and transported down to the ground in a tightly bound secure stretcher. If there had been a successful suicide I have no doubt that would have made a big splash in tomorrow’s papers.
12th June 2013
David Cameron announced in the Commons earlier that he will be meeting Vladimir Putin at Downing Street on Sunday, the day before the G8 summit starts, to discuss Syria. William Hague is in Washington today to talk with John Kerry for the same reason. I wouldn’t be surprised if intelligence agency surveillance crops up in both conversations as well.
The word you always heard during the Northern Ireland troubles was sectarianism. It is cropping up more and more nowadays in the Middle East. Channel 4 News had corresponents in Iran, Lebanon and Qatar this evening for an in depth feature. Although there are over 150 million Shia Muslims in the region apparently there are still at least four times more Sunnis. The programme’s conclusion was that the region has slipped into polarisation between the two sects. Everywhere, that is, except the Shia nation of Iran. There the bogey man, almost entirely due to government propoganda I waould say, is America and the West. A pity I feel that they seem to be missing the point. The programme suggests Iran will be invited to the Geneva peace talks.
Yesterday’s FT thinks things are moving Mr Obama’s way on the American immigration reform debate. It seems various Republicans are concluding that to resist would not be sensible in view of the rising number of Hispanic voters. The difficulty though will probably be in the House of Representative where there is still a lot of resistance.
The same paper notes it is thought about 846,000 people in the States have security clearance to work in the secret intellegence field, 265,000 of them in the private sector with Booz Allen Hamilton being a key player. Apparently over four million individuals have access to classified information. With such numbers you wonder how it can be argued that other citizens should be excluded fron any knowledge of what they do. Of course you will find every type of character within that community. Indeed I suggest the amazing thing about Edward Snowden’s story is not that he wanted to tell it but he found some American and British journalists who were prepared to pass it on for him.
The Gang organisation work with individuals. It is beginning to dawn on me that their intelligence capability is so complete they can always close down virtually any single person their network identifies as a threat. In that context perhaps Mr Snowden was an extremely lucky man, working with others, to achieve what he wanted to do.
A bit further in the paper it is suggested the G8 summit will concentrate on the three Ts, trade, tax and transparency. The author hopes there aren’t too many t-tensions over that.
One of those world government stories was promoted on Today this morning I feel when the Science Minister, David Willetts, was talking about a meeting to take place during the day around the periphery of the main G8 summit. It is at the Royal Society and will discuss the rise in resistance of various diseases to antibiotic treatment. The basic problem is that doctors are over and inappropriately prescribing, vastly increasing the chances of natural superbug mutation. It doesn’t matter of course where in the world that behaviour goes on. It ultimately affects us all in the same way. The era of us thinking we can cut ourselves off from the rest of humanity should, in my view, be over. Getting to the cause of a problem is always the most difficult route. But trying to just deal with the symptons will always be in my view, with the Gang around, a mug’s game.
13th June 2013
A typical Gang influenced story, I suggest, is up on the BBC Kent website this morning. Thanet District Council wanted the prestige of having a passenger ferry company use their port in Ramsgate. A service started in July 2004. However in recent times the business did not do well and, with the agreement of the council, it stopped paying harbour dues in March 2011. Accountants however always assumed those debts would be paid one day so when the ferry company went out of business in April the council had a hole in it’s accounts of £3.4 million. To cover part of that deficit it will have to take £1 million from it’s housing benefit budget. An independent councillor says that is completely reprehensible. The council have been using council taxpayers’ money he says as if they were gambling in a casino.
A BBC webpage informs me that later today the director of America’s National Security Agency will give the whole of the Senate a secret briefing of how his organisation has prevented dozens of terror plots. Even then he says complete details will remain hidden so as not to give succour to the enemy. The page records an Edward Snowden claim that while with Booz Allen Hamilton he could have wiretapped any American, including the president, from his laptop. The general has dismissed the suggestion out of hand. I feel that is unwise of him. I think it would be better if he tried to find out why Mr Snowden believes that, using an intermediary if necessary.
A Congressman for Tennessee has said previously, politicians probably did not pay the attention they should to intelligence regulatory matters. They just assumed that everything was chugging along fine. They were asleep at the wheel.
Mr Snowden has also alleged in an interview with the South China Morning Post that NSA has carried out 61,000 hacking operations against internet usage streams throughout the world. An example he gives is of the Hong Kong Internet Exchange which handles nearly all Chinese domestic web traffic.
Margaret Hodge of the Commons Public Accounts Committee came back to the small size of Google’s British tax bill today. Between 2006 and 2011 it paid us £10 million corporation tax on worldwide revenues of £11.9 billion. Although it is not possible to say with 100% certainty, as Google are entitled to confidentiality in their dealings with HMRC, the committee believe the parent company have set up an artificial structure of subsidiary companies in different countries, such as Ireland, Holland and Bermuda so they pay as little UK tax as possible. I have heard Google’s executive chairman remark he is perplexed by critiscm like that. Google act legally he says. If you are unhappy with us just change the law. However I am not sure it is quite so simple. Especially when you are effectively playing one country off against another.
Sptephen Hester I believe is a really nice, kind man. If a journalist wants to interview him I suspect he will invariably say yes. He was doing that yesterday, and on Today this morning, after the announcement that he will be leaving Royal Bank of Scotland as soon as they can find a replacement chief executive. Normally that would be a straighforward board decision but we own 81% of the company so I feel it inescapable to conclude it is really what the government want. Mr Hester is too polite to complain but he uses expressions like being in the trenches with his people which obviously now will not be possible. He says Mr Osborne has not spoken to him for two to three months. Politics is a nasty game I feel. Something Mr Hester does intimate is that he believes, if the sale of RBS is handled correctly, the British taxpayer should get back all the £45 billion it spent in bailing the company out. If that does not happen I suggest the politicians will be letting us down.
There was an interesting discussion on that programme with a former US state department adviser. He rather side stepped the question about how American people might feel if the Chinese or Russian governments were to use drone strikes in the same secretive way that his country does. However he did point out that al-Qaeda in 2001 comprised some 3,000 people and even though they are not on a conventional battlefield they still need fighting. Apparently the President has said 23 of their 30 top commanders have been killed by drone strikes. On the question of legality he said that Congress were informed of each drone strike. A matter then I feel, until very recent times, of politicians keeping the secrets of others from the people who vote for them.
Another example of divide and rule, in my opinion, on the broadcast was the row between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter’s building of a hyrdo electric dam in it’s territory. The river concerned is the Nile which then flows through Egypt. Apparently the project will only reduce river flow by 2% but Egytian politicians have really got their dander up. Some apparently have secretly said they should consider bombing the dam. We really need some authoritative body to bang the heads of the two sides together. Unfortunately no suitable organisation like that currently exists.
A 41 year old man was arrested at Westminster Abbey at lunchtime on suspicion of criminal damage after paint was sprayed at a portrait of The Queen on display in the Chapter House. The campaign group Fathers4Justice says the man is a member but they have not supported any protest. Rather intrigingly within two hours the group said this Sunday, Father’s Day, is a very emotional time and the protest was a desperate plea for help. It is almost as though they had the statement pre-prepared. It reminds me of the time when two Fathers4Justice members, dressed as superheroes, climbed onto the roof of Harriett Harman’s home in south London, that time in an official protest, in June 2008 when she was Minister for Women and Equality. Ms Harman and her husband were in the house at the time. The protestors critiscised her for having such lax security arrangements. In 2004 one of the group climbed onto a ledge at Buckingham Palace wearing a Batman costume. They must all be completely loopy if you ask me.
On Tuesday a suicide attack in Kabul killed at least 16 people and injured more than 40 outside their Supreme Court. The day before isurgents attacked and shut down the city’s airport before they were killed. Yesterday the American general in charge of assisting forces in the country gave an interview to the BBC saying saying that the international community must not turn it’s back on the country when Isaf troops withdraw next year. He thinks the Taliban must be brought into the political process, if not the many criminal gangs who also now operate there. The country deserves our support.
Stephen Dorrell was on the World at One at lunchtime talking in his capacity as chair of the Health Select Committee. The government wish to draw up performnance tables for the medical profession, in the same way as the Doctor Foster statistics are produced no doubt, but it seems some consultants are refusing to cooperate. They say apparently they are not able to comply under the provisions of the 1998 Data Protection Act. Mr Dorrell was saying he would hope professional people like doctors and surgeons wished to be transparent with the general public. They should be responsible and accountable. If their regulators, the General Medical Council and the Royal College of surgeons, also see a problem then the Data Protection Act itself should be changed.
Gillian Tett recorded, in her article in last Saturday’s FT Magazine, that America spends 18% of it’s GDP on healthcare. In the tiny island state of Singapore the percentage however is only 4.6%. Yet in many respects the standard of treatment there far outstips that of the States. It is innovative, unbureaucratic and risk taking in the interests of the patient. Like America it’s system is insurance based but it’s premuim per capita is only 2% of what Americans pay. You do not have to be a genius to work out there is something wrong there. The answer I believe is that the America system exists to benefit those who operate it, not the patients.
In his piece there Simon Kuper feels that western culture is taking over the world. He doesn’t think that is a bad thing. We have a lot to be proud of. He suggests that unfree countries rarely develop lifestyles that are envied abroad. Russian and China actively discourage their populations from producing ideas for our global conversation. I suspect that might be as much about confidence as anything else.
The trial of Dale Cregan, the murderer of two Manchester policewomen, ended today. Like Mark Bridger he will spend the rest of his life in gaol. The Labour Party Police and Crime Commissioner for Greater Manchester was on PM this evening. He asked for the residents of the city to stand up to Organised Crime. It is only through doing that that they will be able to clean up their society. If you bury your head in the sands and pretend they don’t exist things will get worse not better. I believe Mr Cregan was only enticed to do what he did because Manchester is a stronghold of the Gang. If they had been weaker it probably wouldn’t have happened. I thoroughly support what the Commissioner said.
Yesterday’s FT reports that a group of 85 internet companies and privacy organisations have launched an American pressure group called StopWatching Us to call for a review of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Apparently 62% of Americans are happy to lose some personal privacy for the assurance of knowing that terrorist threats are being investigated.
There is a special article in the paper saying that in 1975 the New York Times published a piece alleging that American intelligence agencies were carrying out illegal domestic spying. That lead to the Church Report with the CIA being ordered to stop assassinations and to cease spying on Americans. A new regulatory oversite regime was introduced. Mr Snowden of course alleges that that snooping on Americans is now happening again; that the wheel has turned full circle.
From a BBC webpage published this afternoon I see that Newsbeat have interviewed the president of the Film Distributors’ Association, Lord Puttnam. Some in the sector, both here and in the Sates, are concerned that big film makers are swallowing up the industry. They are only interested in blockbusters, charging high seat prices and monopolising cinema runs to produce decent returns on their investments. Small operators are being pushed out.
In today’s FT is an article on an exercise carried out by the Fair Tax Campaign. They have graded companies on the transparency of their accounts, the amount of tax they pay in relation to profits and and whether they use tax havens. The better companies get higher scores. WH Smith, Sainbury’s, Home Retail Group and Carphone Warehouse received two. Greggs and Majestic Wine marked 14.
14th June 2013
It is a real coincidence that President Obama met President Xi two days after the breaking of the NSA communications snooping story. Whether human beings were involved with that I do not know. Others will. If the two men had not hit it off the news this week I feel could have been very different.
Hopefully it will be a bit like a dam bursting. Perhaps the tribal, almost gang like, nature of American politics can now change. You don’t have to be a Democrat or Republican to have a particular view on phone hacking, if it exists there, or phone tapping. You just say what you think according to your own set of values. Let the debate begin.
These was, for me, a lofty article by John Gapper in last weekend’s FT bringing some important strands together. Americans had been thinking of themselves as victims with the Chinese conducting cyber warfare against them. If anything, it has turned out, it was working the other way round. Google, Microsoft and Apple are much more important global companies than Huawei yet is seems likely the NSA were mining the systems of the American companies for as much intelligence data as they wanted.
John informs me that the NSA, with it’s headquarters in Fort Meade Maryland, and directly employing staff of 30,000, was created in 1952. It’s new data centre in Utah is costing $2 billion. It would have been responsible for America’s Stuxnet worm programme. It’s general legal counsel in February 2013 denounced pervasive false myths that it was indiscriminately vacuuming up and storing global communications. However apparently he chose his words carefully trying to focus on the protected privacy of Amererican citizens alone, with the key word no doubt being indiscriminate. Even then I suspect he was wrong. Americans at home and abroad can, and will in certain circumstances, have all their communications listened to just like the rest of us.
The editorial there tells me about the Protect America Act which I see was signed into law on 5th August 2007, a significant date I suggest as far as my own story is concerned. It ammended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to enable the NSA to take computer based information from the nine companies without the need for periodic warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, if it reasonably believed it’s targets to be outside of the USA. The of course meant it just came down to the NSA’s, possibly defective, opinion. Warrants for internal phone tapping did apply. It reports the American administration has said it will declassify some of it’s intelligence procedures. In true FT style it puts forward a suggested solution, modelled I think on the type of system we will probably end up with for press regulation. It suggests an independent government oversight body is set up by statute to evaluate and approve all American state surveillance.
The front page of the edition reports the Conservative MP David Davis as saying he worries that US agencies have been monitoring the communications of his fellow MPs and then passing it on to our intelligence agencies. A remark like that srikes me as coming from someone who looks upon himself as an outsider within the body to which he belongs.
Edward Luce also writes an article from America on the subject. He says the 2007 Patriot Act came about because the New York times discovered in 2006 that the NSA were phone tapping Americans without court orders. It seems however the FBI do not operate under the same restrictions as the NSA. They can carry out any surveillance they wish, including listening to phone calls, once they have written a national security letter, whatever that means. American secret intelligence programmes cost the country at least $80 billion a year. Edward also delves back into history. It seems that paranoia was not far under the surface at the CIA and FBI in the 1960s and 70s. After the Bay of Pigs incident apparantly the CIA attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding, Havana no doubt, cigar. Similarly it seems the FBI were tapping the phones of Martin Luther King, and John F Kennedy when he was president, without their knowledge. The Watergate scandal in 1975 I think lanced the boil. It was only then a bit of calm returned to that world.
A BBC webpage reports today that on Monday at least three Far East airlines received a letter from the Home Office suggesting they should not agree to fly Edward Snowden to Britain if he asks them to. I had better not use the word threaten but it points out that if they did, and we did not want him, they could be liable for the costs of his subsequent detention and removal. A typical charge apparently is £2,000.
It looks as though it will cost about £5,000 to repair the damaged portrait of The Queen. That figure was in the charge when a 41 year old man from Doncaster appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court this morning.
I see our Treaty with Jordan is one of mutual legal assistance which means, I presume, that either country can sit in on any subject procedings involving the two nations. Our part of the agreement should become law on 21st June. Jordan’s bit passed through their parliament on Wednesday and now needs to be signed by the King. After all that, if he keeps to his word, Mr Abu Qatada will be leaving our shores.
Sarah Montague was half presenting Today this morning from the TED conference in Edinburh. It’s purpose is to promote innovative ideas for the benefit of us all. Early Sarah was speaking to a man who has invented the nanopatch. When fully tested on humans it will replace injections and be one hundred times cheaper than them as it uses one hundredth of the medicine for the same effect. It does not need refrigeration. That will have massive implications in the third world. It has a spring loaded applicator which breaks, by less than a hair’s width, the outer layer of the skin. Then the vaccine is absorbed directly into the body where it does most good.
It came through yesterday evening that President Obama has decided Syrian forces have crossed his red line and therefore America is now willing to provide the rebels with direct military support. I suspect the timing of the announcement is to allow some private discussions between world leaders, with Mr Putin at Downing Street on Sunday and a group of eight in Fermanagh over the two days after that, to see if they can thrash out an agreed way forward. The President obviously feels sufficiently confident that his intelligence is not faulty, to allow him to jump off the fence. The White House say the Syrian regime have used chemical weapons, including sarin, on a small scale multiple times killing between 100 and 150 people.
The turning point I feel was when Hizzbollah openly moved their men into Syria to help the regime. It might well be they have a much more determined fighting spirit than conscripts in the Syrian army. With the air bombardment against them as well it just was not possible for the opposition forces to hang onto Qusair. The same thing would have happened to Benghazi I believe in March 2011 if French fighter jets had not saved the city in the nick of time. I think the President has done the right thing. But it did take him a long time.
It is amazing how people seem to lose sight of the bigger picture sometimes. The UK French ambassador was on the programme this morning because they feel threatened they are losing their Gallic traditions. It is hoped to launch formal EU-US trade talks at the G8 summit on Monday. However France is blocking that. I think it wants to protect the cultural integrity of it’s film and TV industries but, I must say, I really don’t know what that means in practice. Talk about lacking in confidence.
The surgeons’ data protection story has moved on. A relaxed president of the Royal College of Surgeons was on the broadcast saying that virtually all his colleagues are quite happy in principle to forego their privacy, which would normally be available to them under the Data Protection Act, by revealing the success rates of their operations. It is just that they wish the data to be correctly weighted and therefore accurate before publication. That will be no problem to sort out then.
Jack Straw was on the edition twice, once saying we must do constructive business with Iran once their voters have given their democratic mandate and then in the news because he was co-author of a letter written to The Times. The latter, penned by three former Labour home secretaries, three senior Tories and one Liberal Democrat, called for the government to pass it’s Communications Bill. That of course will put on an open footing what the Americans, perhaps in a less transparent way, have been doing for years. Mr Straw opinions that there should be a majority in the House of Commons to get the provision, revised if necessary, into law.
From a BBC webpage I see the letter says that, after such an event as the killing of Lee Rigby, security forces need to have the ability to trawl though old internet traffic to see if they can work out how it was planned. With appropriate safeguards I think that would be a good idea. It would help to keep us safe. Although I did not see it go out live the page also includes a clip from Newsnight which interestingly says the emergency forces have psychological expertise available to them. I think that is a good thing too.
Indeed to store internet data, such as this webpage, is no more than the British Library already have authorisation to do, as I record in my note of 5th April 2013. The only difference is we arbitrarily trust their officials to deal with that information responsibly, the security forces perhaps we do not. I would be the first to say that is entirely understandable, and in some ways wise. Even so I feel it is something for Liberal Democrat politicians to reflect on.
The programme just managed to sqeeze in a professor from California before the 9am pips, speaking at the TED conference . I am very pleased they did that as I believe her subject might well be the very kernel of the Gang story. Throughout her career she has been investigating people’s memories. She says in that time, for experimental purposes, she has changed the memories of 20-30,000 individuals. The approach it seems is to introduce them to someone they trust, such as a reasearcher or psychiatrist, and make plausible suggestions to them based on interpretations of their past experiences. Over a period of time they come to believe things they did not believe before as a result of having false memories created in their minds. Her recent research has been into creating rich false memories such as implanting thoughts to encourage you to eat less. If that lowers obesity in our society I don’t think you could say it is a bad thing. Provided it is all done out in the open, and the motive is good, those are the essential things it seems to me.
The importance of the last paragraph, in my view, is that it shows how the Gang are able to influence our thought processes. The solution to combat them is also very plain I feel. The key word is trust. If you have false trust in someone they can manipulate you in extremely devious ways. Being paranoid towards innocent people doesn’t help either. However if we knew about the hidden society in our midst the vast majority of us would be able to deal with them quite adequately when they play their silly games; to recognise bad people from good people. That is one reason why, I believe, it is important to get my story known about.
On 29th May 2013 I wrote that we are all politicians now. That phrase came into my mind when I listened to Sir Hughe Orde interviewed on PM this afternoon. He has requested a meeting of the Home Secretary with his presidential team to discuss the workings of the new PCCs with her and decided he wanted to appear on the radio. I am not going to be unkind or go into detail but I do think it appropiate to point it there was no necessity for him to do that.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has seen the Pope today at the Vatican, the first time they have met. I don’t think it was for any particular reason, just a get to know you session.
On Monday a 14 year girl went missing near Doncaster. This afternoon she has been found safe and well near Euston Station by plain clothes officers from British Transport Police in the company of a 35 year old man. I think that will probably be a job well done by MI5.
Iran comes over as a society cotrolled by religious leaders. They have banned all candidates for today’s presidential election to replace Mr Ahmadinejad except six. However in the last few days apparently liberal campaigners have got behind one, the cleric Hassan Rouhani, significantly less conservative than the other five. 50 million people are eligible to vote.
15th June 2013
The situation we have now reached perhaps reminds me of how we reacted when CCTV cameras started to become the norm in this country, as I mention in appendix 11/3 of my book. I see I say there that privacy is a perception thing. It is in the eyes of the beholder. That period was the beginning of a brave new world for us. We were not sure if we wanted what was obviously happening. As time went on however we realised the lenses were not threatening at all. Provided we are law abiding citizens the camera images are created to keep us safe. I think in the same way it will probably not take us too long to get used to the idea that all our communications are stored away in the clouds somewhere, out of our control. If they were written or posted in innocence we will have nothing to worry about.
A few weeks ago local news reported about an Albanian man living here who was shot dead in the street in Hove. It was said to be a family feud between two Albanian famlies. A locally published BBC webpage from last night reports that a man, presumbaly Albanian, has been arrested in Milan on suspicion of the murder. That indicates to me the families concerned are affiliated to Mafia groups, as opposed to the America Gang. The other thing I notice is that the investigation is being handled by the Sussex and Surrey Major Crime Team. That must mean, like Kent and Essex forces, they feel they are more effective in fighting crime as a joined entity.
The BBC report this morning there was an hour long video conference call last night between the leaders of America, Britain, Germany, France and Italy to discuss the Syrian situation ahead of Monday’s G8 meeting.
I watched Google’s chief legal officer on Channel 4 News on Tuesday evening say he had written to the American goverment asking for permission to disclose to the public rough details of the data information they have to provide to officials under American law. The request has obviously been granted to all the nine companies. This morning Facebook reveal they received approaching 10,000 requests from US authorities in the second half of 2012 for the user data of some of their account holders, with which they complied. Nearly 19,000 accounts were involved. They believe they were asked for the information for such reasons as investigations into local crime and national security.
Thanks to an aside on Today from Thursday morning I have been able to look up this Guardian report. We are moving forward. Our really odd weather is beginning to come an acceptable topic of polite conversation. Deciding not to think about the subject is unlikely to make it go away. Next Tuesday the Met Office is hosting a meeting at it’s Exeter headquarters of about 20 experts from UK climate research institutions. They will put their heads together to see if they can find any rationale for our unpredictable climate extremes over recent years.
There was quite a shocking report on the World at One yesterday to coincide with Afghanistan taking responsiblity for military combat operations on it’s own soil next week. 3,000 army and police personnel were killed last year, mostly by hidden roadside bombs going off when the perpetrators themselves were out of harm’s way. The death rate this year is higher. It is just a numbers name as far as the Taliban are concerned. They are killing and maiming men faster than they can be replaced. Absolutely horrible. And we thought the horrors of war are over.
It has been announced today that the Home Office have provided funding for the investigation into the disappearance of Madeline McCann, whilst on holiday with her parents in the Algarve in May 2007, to be taken over by the Metropolitan Police. The Portuguese inquiries have stopped but presumably they have provided us with an assurance they will continue to share all records in their possession.
A policeman in the Diplomatic Protection Squad has been arrested today in the plebgate affair on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. A lady civilian has also been charged. Some might say that action took an extremely long time.
Doctor Rouhani has won the Iranian presidential election by a mile on an excellent turnout of 72%. I heard it said on PM this afternoon that he had played a very smart game. He waited until he was certain he would appear on the ballot paper in the voting booths, about a week ago I think, and then made it clear what his concilatory views are. Key reformists openly backed him. People flocked to support him. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if western intelligence agents, without him and others knowing who they were, suggested that strategy for best results. I hope Ayatollah Khamenei does not feel upset or threatened in any way. There is no need for him to. His citizens are just telling him what they want. It cannot be much fun for anyone living under the strict economic sanctions in place.
To build up a bit of positive momentum for Monday no doubt David Cameron has announced an agreement with the UK’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies to combat tax evasion after meeting their representatives in No 10 Downing Street today. The idea is that each jurisdiction will have a register of companies recording who their true owners are.
One of the lessons of the Leveson enquiry I believe was that some policeman were too close to some ousiders. In July 2011 the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police announced he was resigning because of his association with a man who ran a public relations company called Chamy Media, even though I believe the top policeman had done nothing wrong. However he knew it looked bad. The same sort of relationships appear to be emerging in the American communications snooping story.
Yesterday’s FT tells me the chief American spook, James Clapper director of national intelligence, was asked by a Senator at a hearing in March 2013 if the American government collected information on millions of their citizens. For some reason it was not a rhetorical question which surprises me. Anyway the answer came back as no, which has now landed Mr Clapper in a bit of hot water. Since he retired from the air force in 1995 the former lieutenant has alternated between senior positions in the government bureaucracy and private sector jobs in the field, including with Booz Allen Hamilton. It is impossible therefore, in my view, for him not to have allegiances to both camps, one of which I suggest wants to make as much money out of the intelligence game as possible.
The same page in the paper passes on an American Supreme Court decision that a newly discovered DNA sequence cannot be patented. However if it is modified, for medical research say, then it can be. Apparently the US biotechnology industry into synthetice genetic products is worth $83 billion annually.
We call it positive discrimination, in the States it is affirmitive action. With racial segregation in the country lasting until the 1960s it is now used in many walks of American life to even up the scales. However the American supreme court, as reported on Today this morning, are shortly to rule whether it is legal. According to Wikipedia in 2010 Whites made up 72% of the American population, Blacks 12%, Hispanics 16% and Asians 4% with the last category being the fastest growing. I don’t think I currently have a view either way.
David Cameron has remarked himself that he choses his words carefully. I was interested therefore to see him on this evening’s news speaking of corrupt governments and companies in relation to the tax havens story. That is strong language. It would be nice to think he is starting to unveil an elephant in the corner of the room for us, especially when you think of recent revelations about the workings of the Anerican state.
16th June 2013
I consider it was extremely childish of the Gang leadership to arrange for a BBC producer to find a threatening note in the toilet of a Egyptair plane flying to the States yesterday afternoon. It had to be diverted to Prestwick, 326 passengers and crew including children and babies were confined for several hours, then all had to be individually questioned and the plane searched, before their journey could continue. And the whole scenario was play acted for some odd concept of self importance. The Gang don’t care about the rest of us at all.
I see that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has congratulated Mr Rouhani on his election victory. He urges everyone to help the soon-to-be president of the whole nation. I feel that is a very positive sign.
Not for the Gang though of course. I think they will be extremely rattled by the outcome. Indeed the knee jerk reaction is there already I suspect. The BBC report this morning that North Korea do not want to talk to South Korea after all. They propose high level talks with America. I can’t see the President falling precipitously for that one. Mr Obama is an extremely cautious man. Long may he remain so. The characteristic has held him in good stead. He will make up his mind in the fullness of time.