TOUT & RECONCILIATION PROCESS

A Nation of Snitches

By Chris Hedges
 

A Transportation Security Administration sign at Los Angeles’ main rail terminal, Union Station, urges that suspicious activities be reported to authorities. It declares, “If You See Something Say Something.” (AP / Damian Dovarganes)

May 11, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Truthdig" - A totalitarian state is only as strong as its informants. And the United States has a lot of them. They read our emails. They listen to, download and store our phone calls. They photograph us on street corners, on subway platforms, in stores, on highways and in public and private buildings. They track us through our electronic devices. They infiltrate our organizations. They entice and facilitate “acts of terrorism” by Muslims, radical environmentalists, activists and Black Bloc anarchists, framing these hapless dissidents and sending them off to prison for years. They have amassed detailed profiles of our habits, our tastes, our peculiar proclivities, our medical and financial records, our sexual orientations, our employment histories, our shopping habits and our criminal records. They store this information in government computers. It sits there, waiting like a time bomb, for the moment when the state decides to criminalize us.
Totalitarian states record even the most banal of our activities so that when it comes time to lock us up they can invest these activities with subversive or criminal intent. And citizens who know, because of the courage of Edward Snowden, that they are being watched but naively believe they “have done nothing wrong” do not grasp this dark and terrifying logic.
Tyranny is always welded together by subterranean networks of informants. These informants keep a populace in a state of fear. They perpetuate constant anxiety and enforce isolation through distrust. The state uses wholesale surveillance and spying to break down trust and deny us the privacy to think and speak freely.
A state security and surveillance apparatus, at the same time, conditions all citizens to become informants. In airports and train, subway and bus stations the recruitment campaign is relentless. We are fed lurid government videos and other messages warning us to be vigilant and report anything suspicious. The videos, on endless loops broadcast through mounted television screens, have the prerequisite ominous music, the shady-looking criminal types, the alert citizen calling the authorities and in some cases the apprehended evildoer being led away in handcuffs. The message to be hypervigilant and help the state ferret out dangerous internal enemies is at the same time disseminated throughout government agencies, the mass media, the press and the entertainment industry. 
“If you see something say something,” goes the chorus.
In any Amtrak station, waiting passengers are told to tell authorities—some of whom often can be found walking among us with dogs—about anyone who “looks like they are in an unauthorized area,” who is “loitering, staring or watching employees and customers,” who is “expressing an unusual level of interest in operations, equipment, and personnel,” who is “dressed inappropriately for the weather conditions, such as a bulky coat in summer,” who “is acting extremely nervous or anxious,” who is “restricting an individual’s freedom of movement” or who is “being coached on what to say to law enforcement or immigration officials.”
What is especially disturbing about this constant call to become a citizen informant is that it directs our eyes away from what we should see—the death of our democracy, the growing presence and omnipotence of the police state, and the evisceration, in the name of our security, of our most basic civil liberties.
Manufactured fear engenders self-doubt. It makes us, often unconsciously, conform in our outward and inward behavior. It conditions us to relate to those around us with suspicion. It destroys the possibility of organizing, community and dissent. We have built what Robert Gellately calls a “culture of denunciation.”
Snitches in prisons, the quintessential totalitarian system, are the glue that allows prison authorities to maintain control and keep prisoners divided and weak. Snitches also populate the courts, where the police make secret deals to drop or mitigate charges against them in exchange for their selling out individuals targeted by the state. Our prisons are filled with people serving long sentences based on false statements that informants provided in exchange for leniency.
There are no rules in this dirty game. Police, like prison officials, can offer snitches deals that lack judicial oversight or control. (Deals sometimes involve something as trivial as allowing a prisoner access to food like cheeseburgers.) Snitches allow the state to skirt what is left of our legal protections. Snitches can obtain information for the authorities and do not have to give their targets a Miranda warning. And because of the desperation of most who are recruited to snitch, informants will do almost anything asked of them by authorities.
Just as infected as the prisons and the courts are poor neighborhoods, which abound with snitches, many of them low-level drug dealers allowed to sell on the streets in exchange for information. And from there our culture of snitches spirals upward into the headquarters of the National Security Agency, Homeland Security and the FBI.
Systems of police and military authority are ruthless when their own, such as Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, become informants on behalf of the common good. The power structure imposes walls of silence and harsh forms of retribution within its ranks in an effort to make sure no one speaks. Power understands that once it is divided, once those inside its walls become snitches, it becomes as weak and vulnerable as those it subjugates.
We will not be able to reclaim our democracy and free ourselves from tyranny until the informants and the vast networks that sustain them are banished. As long as we are watched 24 hours a day we cannot use the word “liberty.” This is the relationship of a master and a slave. Any prisoner understands this.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his masterpiece “The Gulag Archipelago,” which chronicles his time in Josef Stalin’s gulags and is a brilliant reflection of the nature of oppression and tyranny, describes a moment when an influx of western Ukrainians who had been soldiers during World War II arrived at his camp, at Ekibastuz. The Ukrainians, he wrote, “were horrified by the apathy and slavery they saw, and reached for their knives.” They began to murder the informants.
Solzhenitsyn continued:

“Kill the stoolie!” That was it, the vital link! A knife in the heart of the stoolie! Make knives and cut the stoolie’s throats—that was it!
Now as I write this chapter, rows of humane books frown down at me from the walls, the tarnished gilt on their well-worn spines glinting reproachfully like stars through the cloud. Nothing in the world should be sought through violence! By taking up the sword, the knife, the rifle, we quickly put ourselves on the level of tormentors and persecutors. And there will be no end to it. …
There will be no end. … Here, at my desk, in a warm place, I agree completely.
If you ever get twenty-five years for nothing, if you find yourself wearing four number patches on your clothes, holding your hands permanently behind your back, submitting to searches morning and evening, working until you are utterly exhausted, dragged into the cooler whenever someone denounces you, trodden deeper and deeper into the ground—from the hole you’re in, the fine words of the great humanists will sound like the chatter of the well-fed and free.
There will be no end of it! ... But will there be a beginning? Will there be a ray of hope in our lives or not?
The oppressed at least concluded that evil cannot be cast out by good.

The eradication of some snitches and intimidation of others transformed the camp. It was, Solzhenitsyn admits, an imperfect justice since there was no “documentary confirmation that a man was an informer.” But, he noted, even this “improperly constituted, illegal, and invisible court was much more acute in its judgments, much less often mistaken, than any of the tribunals, panels of three, courts-martial, or Special Boards with which we are familiar.”
“Of the five thousand men about a dozen were killed, but with every stroke of the knife more and more of the clinging, twining tentacles fell away,” he wrote. “A remarkable fresh breeze was blowing! On the surface we were prisoners living in a camp just as before, but in reality we had become free—free because for the very first time in our lives we had started saying openly and aloud all that we thought! No one who has not experienced this transition can imagine what it is like!
And the informers … stopped informing.”
The camp bosses, he wrote “were suddenly blind and deaf. To all appearances, the tubby major, his equally tubby second in command, Captain Prokofiev, and all the wardens walked freely about the camp, where nothing threatened them; moved among us, watched us—and yet saw nothing! Because a man in uniform sees and hears nothing without stoolies.”
The system of internal control in the camp broke down. Prisoners no longer would serve as foremen on work details. Prisoners organized their own self-governing council. Guards began to move about the camp in fear and no longer treated prisoners like cattle. Pilfering and theft among prisoners stopped. “The old camp mentality—you die first, I’ll wait a bit; there is no justice so forget it; that’s the way it was, and that’s the way it will be—also began to disappear.”
Solzhenitsyn concluded this chapter, “Behind the Wire the Ground Is Burning,” in Volume 3 of his book, with this reflection.

Purged of human filth, delivered from spies and eavesdroppers we looked about and saw, wide-eyed that … we were thousands! That we were … politicals!That we could resist!
We had chosen well; the chain would snap if we tugged at this link—the stoolies, the talebearers and traitors! Our own kind had made our lives impossible. As on some ancient sacrificial altar, their blood had been shed that we might be freed from the curse that hung over us.
The revolution was gathering strength. The wind that seemed to have subsided had sprung up again in a hurricane to fill our eager lungs.

Later in the book Solzhenitsyn would write, “Our little island had experienced an earthquake—and ceased to belong to the Archipelago.” 
Freedom demands the destruction of the security and surveillance organs and the disempowering of the millions of informants who work for the state. This is not a call to murder our own stoolies—although some of the 2.3 million prisoners in cages in America’s own gulags would perhaps rightly accuse me of writing this from a position of privilege and comfort and not understanding the brutal dynamics of oppression – but instead to accept that unless these informants on the streets, in the prisons and manning our massive, government data-collection centers are disarmed we will never achieve liberty. I do not have quick and simple suggestions for how this is to be accomplished. But I know it must.

IRISH PISH PARROT PROCESS DEAD

A PISH PROCESS WITHOUT TRUTH & RECONCILIATION IS NOT A PEACE PROCESS AMADAIN

Manus Deery: Family angry after coroner suspends inquest

Manus Deery, 15, was shot dead in the Bogside in May 1972

The sister of a Londonderry teenager shot dead by a soldier in the Bogside 40 years ago has said she is angry that his inquest has been suspended.

Earlier this year, Attorney General John Larkin ordered a new inquest into the death of 15-year-old Manus Deery who was killed in 1972.

On Thursday, it was suspended along with 14 others by Northern Ireland's senior coroner John Leckey.

Mr Leckey said Mr Larkin may have exceeded his powers.

Helen Deery said the family was given fresh hope when it was announced in June there would be an inquest into her brother's killing.

"We were delighted and so were the witnesses because they were given the opportunity to stand up and tell the truth," she said.

"It was our chance to lay him to rest but that has been denied now as well.

"As a family we are gutted, it has been postponed for 40 years, why any longer?"

Helen Deery questioned why John Leckey decided to postpone the inquests.

"I don't think he had the right to do that at all. These inquests should have been done 40 years ago.

"What do I tell my grandchildren? Are we second-class citizens still and where is the peace process?

I would ask John Leckey to overturn his decision, it is a disgrace.

Helen Deery, Manus Deery's sister

"We had great hope in the summer when we heard there was going to be an inquest.

"It was brilliant for the family, but now again that has been pulled away from us. It seems to be a stalling process.

"I would ask John Leckey to overturn his decision, it is a disgrace. "It shouldn't be within his power.

"He can't deny an inquest into the killing of a 15-year-old boy."

Manus Deery, 15, was shot dead in the Bogside in May 1972.

The Army maintains that a soldier in a lookout post on Derry's walls fired at what appeared to be a gunman about 200 metres away, missed, and that the ricochet fatally injured the teenager.

His family have always disputed the Army's version.

SWITZIRELAND Orange Spongers & Sinner Bottom Feeders ?

The longing of the Irish Spirit towards liberation and freedom, will eventually be realized, inevitably, sooner or later, in some lifetime or other. This Spirit is like the river Shannon, flowing back to the Atlantic Ocean. It will continue to evolve, in all Irish traditions and cultures, to a greater level of awareness, while the remainder will return to Source. This Spirit is inclusive of both quality and abundance, which is the birthright of everyone from the island of Ireland, who seeks it and asserts it.

PEACE PROCESS TO IRISH SETTLEMENT PROCESS IRELAND

Speaking with many people from across the political divide in Ireland currently, the general consensus privately, is that the Irish Peace Process, is currently dying a slow death. One of its principal architects Gerry Adams in a statement recently stated, “The political process is in trouble. I believe that the political process faces its greatest challenge since the Good Friday Agreement negotiations in 1998. The anti-Good Friday Agreement axis within unionism; the pro-unionist stance of the British secretary of state Theresa Villiers; the refusal of Downing Street to honour its own obligations, are combining to create the most serious threat to the political institutions in the North in recent years.

“The result of all this is directly undermining power-sharing and partnership government. The unionist leaderships have been encouraged in their posture by a British government that has not been fully engaged with the political process for four years.” He added, that traditional pro-British Unionist were unwilling to participate positively in any of the Agreement's institutions, stating that “Instead it has adopted a tactical approach aimed at serving the political agenda of a fundamentalist rump in their party rather than the needs of the whole community,”

Again yesterday, Adams made a veiled attack, on the current Fine Gael regime in Government in the South of Ireland, which has traditionally protected the Unionists in the North, stating, "An anti-agreement axis has now emerged. There needs to be a pro-agreement axis and the two Governments need to be very, very focused on delivering on the agreement.” 

The Irish Government has been too passive in my view and the Taoiseach(Irish Prime minister) could well emulate the example of Albert Reynolds (Another Peace Process architect who died last week)  to get involved and press ahead but particularly to keep the British Government to its obligations.”

The traditional Unionist Leader in the north Peter Robinson statement in reply, "Once more we see the self-serving attempt by Sinn Fein to distract public attention from real problems by blaming everyone, except itself, for what it asserts is a crisis that impacts on the political institutions."

Last week Hilary Clinton 's aide “Today, too many in Ireland take two decades of a ceasefire for granted. They still focus on their own sense of victimhood of the past and fail to forge a new united community that can not only solidify the peace, but even build shared prosperity. A look back at the hard-fought ceasefire may encourage some broader thinking about the responsibility of leadership to build a better shared future for the people of Ireland.”

The British Conservative Government and their Vice Royal in Ireland, since coming to power, other than enforcing a heavy censorship of international media coverage of the ongoing low intensity war In Occupied Ireland, have irresponsibly taken a hands off approach with the Peace Process and essentially have failed to understand the critical small print of the dying Good Friday agreement.

In a recent statement the leader of Republican Sinn Fein, the traditional  Irish Republican voice, leader Des Dalton stated, "We are being asked to abandon the high ideals, that inspired that revolutionary generation of a century ago and instead embrace the mythology of empire. It is evident that in the decade of centenaries, the political establishments of Leinster House, Stormont and Westminster, are determined to draw a line under Irish history. By demonising and isolating Irish Republicanism and refusing it access to public debate, they hope, that it will simply fade from the public consciousness, robbed of historical or political legitimacy. Quoting from a Ronan Fanning article in the Irish Times, he added,  “…the propagation of a bland, bloodless, bowdlerised and inaccurate hybrid of history, which if carried to extremes, is more likely to provoke political outrage than to command intellectual respect, let alone consensus.”

The Freemasonry of the Orange Order are now front and centre in Unionism, Fine Gael and British politics. Its Chaplain, Rev Mervyn Gibson, the most influential person in all-party talks on flags, parading and the past, is even more influential after the DUP and UUP scuttled the talks by the recent US Government to try move the dying process on, with its envoys Richard Haas and Meghan Sullivan sent packing by the Orange Order, exercising its trump card, the Orange veto.This is one of many critical factors, that was not dealt with by The Peace process. Another was the issue of large numbers of political prisoners still languishing in British Gaols, in both parts of Ireland. This threatens to explode again at any moment, in the same way that, the Hunger Strike of Bobby Sands and the 11 other Irish Republicans, who starved to death on Hunger Strike, changing the face of Irish politics and giving the platform to Adams voice, to be serious player he now is in Irish politics.


Now however, the Orange Order have demonstrated themselves to be the real voice of traditional Unionism, while Adams clearly does not speak for traditional Irish Republicans. What Nancy Soderberg and the British Conservative Party in London have failed to grasp, is that the Good Friday Agreement will not stick, without a proper foundation, in the context of both the Orange and Green traditions of Ireland. These traditions are deep in the psyche of the majority of Irish people's consciousness. One of the principal lessons of the last 800 years of irish History, which Ms Soderberg in the context of Ireland and many American citizens in the context of their own short history, fail to understand is "Old Europe."


In light of all of this, one does not have to be particularly bright to observe, that the Peace Process is past its sell by date, on the ground in Ireland. It clearly needs to evolve into something more comprehensive and inclusive, with respect to the matter of Orange/Green traditions and their real voices. Clearly again for a more permanent solution, the "Peace Process needs to evolve from a superficially contrived short term fix into a bedded down into comprehensive Settlement Process of solution. Everyone is going to have to think and act outside the box for a solution. This is called the Vision of States persons something the island of Ireland clearly lacks. This requires an honest broker, with enough clout and integrity, to stand up to both the internal and external bullies, that are generating the fear, that is prolonging the conflict, in which no civilized citizen from either tradition, can breathe the fresh air of liberty, equality and fraternity.


Settlement Process

The English Oxford dictionary  defines "settlement"as "An official agreement intended to resolve a dispute or conflict." Obviously in any permanent settlement, compromise is critical and nobody is going to achieve their ideals.This needs to be first accepted by everyone at the negotiating table, however painful.The alternative is a war for total victory, the consequence of which, no sane mind can countenance. Most fair minded traditional Irish republicans will acknowledge, that the Orange tradition has made considerable sacrifices, with respect to their own identity, particularly in the context of both World Wars and the recent ongoing war in Ireland, with tens of thousands losing their lives in all of this.This is a considerable factor in their tradition and identity. Any agreement that ignores this reality is doomed.


Likewise within the "green tradition" millions of Irish have died, as a result of British colonialism. This reality cannot simply be airbrushed out of Irish history by revisionism because it is deeply embedded, consciously or unconsciously, within the Irish psyche, on the same scale as the Jewish Holocaust is with Israelites. Ireland lost several million citizens in it's own holocaust, which also must be addressed within any credible settlement.There are  many other pressing, critical social issues within Ireland, such as Irish people's access to its own natural resources such as water, a Bill of Civil Rights, People before Profit, transparent genuine, direct, Democracy, with modern technology, such as the internet, with real checks and balances, that ensure ordinary people have real voting power, as a defence, against unregulated corporate monopolies, hijacking the constitutional process, with political bribery and the current endemic corruption of the present systems within all parts of Ireland.


In any objective political perspective , of the relatively small island of Ireland, with its current political realities, it is crystal clear, that a Federal solution ,similar to many other European countries, is really the only feasible solution to the current reality, with an arrangement, where Unionists in Ulster can protect their identity and traditions, within possibly a British Commonwealth arrangement, customized specifically, to facilitate their specific traditions and arrangements and possibly protect them along with their British brethren, from the creeping, fascist monopoly of Europe. This of course will be anathema to many traditional Irish republicans, with the exception of eccentrics like Martin McGuinness, but it will take compromise, fair mindedness and sacrifice, in any credible settlement, that is based on reality, as opposed to the horrific alternative. It will require people who genuinely love the people of Ireland from all traditions and a progressive ability, to think outside the box.

Of course many will argue, that the changing demographics on the ground will change all of anyway this but in a Spirit of true reconciliation, all minorities, including immigrant aspirations, must be respected in any genuine modern democracy. Traditional Irish Republicans like Ruarai O'Bradaigh, recognized this and presented drafts for a comprehensive agreement, that factored in much of this compromise, in a Spirit of Abundance, which has traditionally been a much acclaimed Irish characteristic, at least until recently. It is time for everyone to get real, put their ego's and personalities to one side and make this comprehensive, inclusive, settlement a reality, based on civilized principles of human progress.

This author formally does not belong to any political organization and offers this proposal in a spirit of unity not division. Because of fascist censorship in Ireland presently, I sincerely also ask  those readers who agree with the outlines of this proposal, to share it wherever you can. If you belong to a political party, trade union or political forum or platform, please take up this proposal and make it as inclusive as possible. If you are overseas or non Irish, we need your help desperately as some of our best and brightest have lost their lives or are overseas. We need all of both from the Irish diaspora and other nationalities help us build this peacefully without being bullied, into a comprehensive, inclusive, lasting settlement.

Please Share as much as you can if you agree, help make this happen.

mise le meas

brionOcleirigh

BRIT DIRT WAR CONTINUES DESPITE IRISH PEACE PROCESS

in the middLE OF A  bRITISH SECRET SERVICE dIRTY TRICKS op OF ID HACK, DISINFO & a DISCREDIT CAMPAIGN, i HAVE BEEN CHECKING AROUND FOR ANYTHING RELEVANT. THE FOLLOWING IS WHAT i HAVE FOUND SO FAR.

The Dirty War by Martin Dillon uncovers a real-life underground world of double and triple agents - many of whom have shared their stories with him. It exposes the covert strategies and tactics used in political conflicts, including the use of State terrorist agents and the 'enforcers' used by State terrorists to seek out collaborators in their ranks.

The Guardian, UK: The Dirty War makes Cold War duplicity a la Deighton and Le Carre seem positively endearing.'Financial Times, London: 'Dillon's exhaustive work, The Dirty War, covers the whole panoply of dirty tricks and conspiracies, black propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, conflicts between MI5 and MI6, double agents and sectarian murders. It is grippingly written with the pace of a thriller and the book scores highly because of Mr. Dillon's detachment'.

UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance of residents’ Facebook and Google use

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17-JUN-2014

Britain’s top counter-terrorism official has been forced to reveal a secret Government policy justifying the mass surveillance of every Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google user in the UK.

This disturbing policy was made public due to a legal challenge brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Pakistani organisation Bytes for All, and five other national civil liberties organisations1

The statement, from Charles Farr, the Director General of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism, claims that the indiscriminate interception of UK residents’ Facebook and Google communications would be permitted under law because they are defined as ‘external communications’.

Farr’s statement, published today by the rights organisations, is the first time the Government has openly commented on how it thinks it can use the UK’s vague surveillance legal framework to indiscriminately intercept communications through its mass interception programme, TEMPORA.

The secret policy outlined by Farr defines almost all communications via Facebook and other social networking sites, as well as webmail services Hotmail and Yahoo and web searches via Google, to be ‘external communications’ because they use web-based ‘platforms’ based in the US.

The distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ communications is crucial. Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (‘RIPA’), which regulates the surveillance powers of public bodies, ‘internal’ communications may only be intercepted under a warrant which relates to a specific individual or address. These warrants should only be granted where there is some suspicion of unlawful activity. However, an individual’s ‘external communications’ may be intercepted indiscriminately, even where there are no grounds to suspect any wrongdoing.

By defining the use of ‘platforms’ such as Facebook, Twitter and Google as ‘external communications’, British residents are being deprived of the essential safeguards that would otherwise be applied to their communications - simply because they are using services that are based outside the UK.

Such an approach suggests that GCHQ believes it is entitled to indiscriminately intercept all communications in and out of the UK. The explanations given by Mr Farr suggest that:

• GCHQ is intercepting all communications - emails, text messages, and communications sent via “platforms” such as Facebook and Google – before determining whether they fall into the “internal” or “external” categories
• The Government considers almost all Facebook and other social media communications, and Google searches will always fall within the “external” category, even when such communications are between two people in the UK
• Classifying communications as “external” allows the Government to search through, read, listen to and look at each of them. The only restriction on what they do with communications that they classify as “external” is that they cannot search through such communications using keywords or terms that mention a specific British person or residence.
• Even though the Government is conducting mass surveillance - intercepting and scanning through all communications in order to work out whether they are internal or external - they consider that such interception “has less importance” than whether a person actually reads the communication, which is where the Government believes “the substantive interference with privacy arises”.
• The Government believes that, even when privacy violations happen, it is not an “active intrusion” because the analyst reading or listening to an individual’s communication will inevitably forget about it anyway.

The legal challenge is brought following revelations made by Edward Snowden about the UK’s global digital surveillance activities. Farr is the government’s star witness in the case, which will be heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal between 14 and 18 July 2014. Read our arguments here.

In addition to Farr's statement, we are publishing the witness statements from Dr Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International, and Eric King, Deputy Director of Privacy International. Additional evidence submitted by Privacy International, from Dr Ian Brown, Oxford Internet Institute, and Cindy Cohn, Legal Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, can be found here and here.

Eric King, Deputy Director of Privacy International said:

Intelligence agencies cannot be considered accountable to Parliament and to the public they serve when their actions are obfuscated through secret interpretations of byzantine laws. Moreover, the suggestion that violations of the right to privacy are meaningless if the violator subsequently forgets about it not only offends the fundamental, inalienable nature of human rights, but patronises the British people, who will not accept such a meagre excuse for the loss of their civil liberties.”

James Welch, Legal Director of Liberty said:

The security services consider that they’re entitled to read, listen and analyse all our communications on Facebook, Google and other US-based platforms.  If there was any remaining doubt that our snooping laws need a radical overhaul there can be no longer. The Agencies now operate in a legal and ethical vacuum; why the deafening silence from our elected representatives?”

Michael Bochenek, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International said:

British citizens will be alarmed to see their government justifying industrial-scale intrusion into their communications. The public should demand an end to this wholesale violation of their right to privacy.”

Shahzad Ahmad, Country Director, Bytes for All

We’ve always believed that Tempora enables unlawful profiling of people living outside UK. Now we’ve come to learn that GCHQ are also subjecting UK residents to this intrusive spying. Such an action by UK intelligence agencies is sheer violation of people's privacy, security, freedom of expression, and assembly. Such attempts by established democracies are setting extremely worrisome precedents for repressive regimes all over the world."

---

Note to Editors:
 

Law:

• Under s.8(1) Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (‘RIPA’), internal communications between British residents located within the UK, may only be monitored pursuant to a specific warrant. These specific warrants should only be granted where there is some reason to suspect the person in question of unlawful activity.
• ‘External communications’ may be monitored indiscriminately under a ‘general warrant’ pursuant to s.8(4) RIPA.

Parties:

• Privacy International is represented by Bhatt Murphy Solicitors, Dan Squires (Matrix Chambers) and Ben Jaffey (Blackstones Chambers)
• Amnesty International is represented by Kirsty Brimelow QC and Jude Bunting (Doughty Street Chambers)

Contacts:

• Privacy International - Mike Rispoli, Communications Manager, mike@privacyinternational.org; +44 (0) 7557793878
• Liberty – Contact the Press Office on 020 7378 3656 or 07973 831128
• Amnesty International – Max Tucker, Press Officer Global Campaigns, Thematic Issues and UN,max.tucker@amnesty.org; +44 (0) 7983563983
• Bhatt Murphy - Shamik Dutta 0207 729 1115

Footnotes

• 1.Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Legal Resources Centre, South Africa

RELATED PROJECT(S): 

EYES WIDE OPEN

ISSUES: 

ANTI-TERRORISM

COMMUNICATIONS SURVEILLANCE

DATA PROTECTION AND PRIVACY LAWS

COUNTRIES: 

UNITED KINGDOM

DOWNLOADS: 

 WITNESS_ST_OF_CHARLES_BLANDFORD_FARR.PDF

 ERIC_KING_WITNESS_STATEMENT.PDF

 GUS_HOSEIN_WITNESS_STATEMENT.PDF

 STATEMENT_IAN_BROWN.PDF

 OPEN_GOVT_RESPONSE.PDF

 PI_JULY_HEARING_SKELETON.PDF

'THE SPOOKS RUN THE COUNTRY' - SIR DAVID HARE

Sir David Hare

According to the British playwright Sir David Hare: 'The security services are running the country.'

In The Guardian, Hare is quoted as saying: "The reason I'm writing about the security services is that there is no democratic control of them whatsoever. 

"And now it seems the judiciary is joining in."



Hare has written three films for the BBC about an MI5 agent who is fed up with MI5's abuse of power. 

The second of these BBC plays, Turks and Caicos, to be broadcast in March 2014, is about the MI5 agent hiding on a Caribbean island.

There he meets a CIA agent who is infiltrating a group of New Jersey businessmen. 

The businessmen have built secret detention and torture camps for the US government.

But they have overcharged the US government.

Soon a body is found floating in the sea.



According to Hare: "There certainly isn't anybody in government with the guts to stand up to the security services and their effective free rein to do whatever they like. 

"That's what these films are about - our powerlessness."

Hare interviewed a large number of British spies.

He says that many of them are as worried about what's happening as he is.

"There are people inside MI5 who think what has happened in the last 10 years is absolutely disgusting", says Hare.

David Dees Illustration.

According to Hare, what is in his play is happening in real life.

He says: "The American security services have been ripped off for such huge sums of money, a lot of them for phantom projects that don't even exist. 

"They've been taken to the cleaners. 

"Apart from anything else, the war on terror has been the biggest criminal racket for the last 10 years." 


UK spy Stephen Ward. MYSTERIOUS STEPHEN.

In 2000, MI5 invited Hare to give a talk about the theatre. 

Hare says: "When I went in in 2000, they had toffee accents, accents from years ago, and Le Carré was entirely accurate about how public school, white, posh and archaic it all was. 

"It was empire - it still had the feeling of empire."

Hare's trilogy includes a UK prime minister who is a bit like Tony Blair, a man who intends to become very rich.

According to Hare: "Politics is just a function of business now."

The security services reportedly run child brothels as a way of controlling the top people. 

Hare appears to be puzzled by the fact that the public are not more enraged by the actions of their politicians.

He says: "The only argument we seem to be having in the United Kingdom is going on in Scotland...

"The Scots are saying we don't want to be organised in this monetarist, austere, anti-public kind of government." 

CIA torture and mind control of children

Perhaps some of the spooks at the Guardian and at the BBC believe that "what has happened in the last 10 years is absolutely disgusting".

Sir David Hare may be their spokesman.

There is a belief that a faction within the CIA is at war with the National Security Agency.

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The Starman, and Scottish Independence

US contemplates sanctions against Israel boycotters.

Ukraine president announces concessions- state sponsored terrorism at work