Security

Tom Griffin (London, OK):The Guardian brings us news of some important developments in the case of Binyam Mohammed this evening:

It emerged tonight that lawyers acting for Smith have sent the attorney general, Baroness Scotland, evidence about MI5 and CIA involvement in the case, which was heard behind closed doors in high court hearings. In a letter seen by the Guardian, they have asked Scotland - as an independent law officer - to investigate "possible criminal wrongdoing". The move could lead to a criminal prosecution.

The evidence was suppressed following gagging orders demanded by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and the US authorities. The action by Smith, the minister responsible for MI5 activities, is believed to be unprecedented.

A detailed account of the case, 'Human Cargo' (pdf), which includes a harrowing description of Mohamed's CIA sponsored torture in Morocco, is available from Reprieve. 

Those who question the 'database state' are often accused of alarmism. But what if we were to report that a recent series of announcements show that the government is already spending millions on a vast database that will retain digital copies of all variety of tracking and information about the whole population, our phone calls, bank accounts, commercial records as well as personal ones, and that it is creating the authority and powers which allow it to do this by hiding behind EU regulations which it has inspired, to impliment them without a parliamentary debate? Now read on:

Phil Booth (London, NO2ID): Back when Charles Clarke was Home Secretary, not long after the London tube bombings, he pushed EU justice ministers to massively increase communications data retention powers. Terrorism was, of course, at the forefront of everyone's minds - and frequently referred to by Mr Clarke in his championing of mass surveillance. Other countries such as Germany did not see the need for such wholesale interception of personal phone, text, e-mail and internet usage data. They were overruled.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): In a key intervention in the 42 days debate last month, the former head of MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller stated: "arguments can be made to justify any time of detention, just as in other countries, although mercifully not here, they can be made to justify any method of interrogation."

That remark elided key questions about how far the security services are complicit in interrogation practices overseas, questions which were raised anew in a High Court judgement on Thursday.

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya): At the end of her judgement in the BAE case one of the law lords, Lady  Hale, said “- - I would wish that the world was a better place where honest and conscientious public servants were not put in impossible situations such as this - - -“. I would wish that too. I would also wish that people and nations did not seek to advance their interests by violence or the threat of violence. If that were so there would be no need of armaments industries and questions of national security could be dealt with in a more open and satisfactory way.

The impossible situation to which Lady Hale referred was the dilemma confronting the Director of the SFO in deciding, with incomplete information, whether, to quote Lord Bingham, “the public interest in pursuing an important investigation into alleged bribery was outweighed by the public interest in protecting the lives of British citizens”. The incompleteness of information available to the Director is the link to my second wish and my remark about how questions of national security are dealt with.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): "The conflicts of today and the conflicts of tomorrow require that we relearn many of the lessons of our fathers and grandfathers somewhat overlooked in the stasis of the cold war," the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt said on Thursday.

In a speech to Labour's Progress group, Dannatt outlines his proposals for permanent cadres of army stabilisation specialists.

These small units would specialise in the training and mentoring of indigenous forces – the type of tasks conducted by our Mentoring and Training Teams in Afghanistan and Iraq. But I see these organisations as being far more. My vision is that they would form the spine of our enduring cultural education and understanding. I can envisage a multi-disciplined and inter-agency organisation that would be capable of both fighting alongside local forces, and delivering reconstruction and development tasks in areas where the civil agencies cannot operate.

Damian O'Loan (Paris): Allegations of British collusion with torture by Pakistani security services led to calls for an Intelligence and Security Committee investigation on Tuesday. A week earlier the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee published a report into historical enquiries. These events are linked.

Lat year, the British government accepted the findings of a report confirming police collusion with a loyalist paramilitary group involved in murders and other grave offences.The NIAC report may be a step towards allowing further historical inquiries to be suppressed. Why would we not want to learn from our history?

SpyBlog (London): We would have liked to have been able to comment on the latest Intelligence and Security Committee's Annual report, which appears to have been leaked, at least in part to The Guardian newspaper, but it does not yet appear to be online on the Cabinet Office website.

The Guardian is running a story on the cancellation of phase 2 of the delayed SCOPE intelligence sharing computer system: Multimillion pound security project shelved by ministers

Stuart Weir & Andrew Blick (Cambridge & London, Democratic Audit): We now have a UK National Security Strategy that swallows a huge range of global and domestic policies and issues and seeks to make the government's strategy and objectives transparent and more accountable than its predecessors. Just as one swallow doesn't make a summer, this huge governmental swallow won't make the government's counter terrorism policies fully accountable, but even so the document, available on the Cabinet Office website (opens pdf), is of great importance and could prove to be a worthwhile exercise in accountable government, if Parliament proves capable of exercising its oversight function.

Andrew Blick reviews An Uncertain Future: Law Enforcement, National Security and Climate Change by Chris Abbott, ORG.

This report recommends a preventative security policy in the face of climate change.

Andrew Blick (London, Democratic Audit): The position of Permanent Secretary for Security, Intelligence and Resilience is to be split into two. There will now be a Head of Security, Intelligence and Resilience who is also Security Adviser to the Prime Minister; and also a Head of Intelligence Assessment who is Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. This move seems to be a response to the argument implicit in the Butler Review that there was not sufficient collective Cabinet involvement in the consideration of intelligence assessments: in effect a prime-ministerialisation of decision-making around intelligence based issues, which brought with it a greater likelihood of mistakes. It would be interesting to see an assessment of how the new arrangement works once it is up and running. This task might be one for the Intelligence and Security Committee itself - but first this Committee has to be reformed. At present it answers directly to the Prime Minister - clearly an unsatisfactory arrangement. Gordon Brown is promising to bring the Joint Intelligence Committee in line as far as possible with parliamentary select committees: the question is, how will this be possible - how will there be the required separation from the executive for there to be effective scrutinising?