Back to the old dark ways

A step back for civil rights as Blair repeats mistakes of the 1970's Callaghan government.

Britain's Labour government was elected on undertakings to introduce freedom of information, abandon secrecy, and promote electronic commerce and the information society. In one day, the promises all flushed away.

Last week Prime Minister Blair was on the news, trying to reassure the left that his "New Labour" party hasn't left behind its traditions. I agree he's right but for all the worst reasons. Blair's government is now repeating the worst mistakes for civil rights of its Labour predecessor in the 1970s, under Prime Minister James Callaghan.

A bad day for civil rights

All the big mistakes emerged on just one day, last Tuesday. That morning, a journalist was indicted and now faces two years in prison for writing about government computer surveillance systems. "Freedom of information" was turned into a sick joke as Home Secretary Jack Straw appeared before a parliamentary committee. The police held a press conference to announce new plans for dealing with crime involving computers. In the middle of it all, the Home Secretary also launched plans to implement most of the ENFOPOL 98 tapping requirements in Britain.

If the "Interception of Communications" law goes ahead as he wants, ISPs will all have to install tapping hardware or software into current or new systems. Worse is to come. Within the next few days, the government will unveil plans for compulsory disclosure of crypto passwords and phrases when the police ask for them. Refuse, and face two years in jail.

Until last Tuesday, these dark features of the British political landscape had seemed like a bad, distant dream. For me, the use of official secrecy laws against journalists is worst part of all. I feel strongly because, over the last 30 years (until now) I was the only journalist to be prosecuted for my research work and publications.

The Official Secrets Act itself is a British imperial hangover

The Official Secrets Act itself is a British imperial hangover. It was first passed in 1911, after secret service agents whipped up a propaganda storm. They spread rumours that German hunting parties in the north of England were really secret agents, spying on naval bases.

Only Labour governments indulge in such folly. In the 1960s, it was Labour who prosecuted journalists for leaking a report revealing that government had lied to Parliament about arming the Nigerian federal government during the Biafran war. All the defendants were acquitted. In 1974, Labour returned to power with a pledge to repeal the notorious parts of the Official Secrets Act.

The pledge lasted less than 3 years. In 1977 another journalist, a former Army corporal and I were arrested and charged under the same law. Our 1978 trial at the Old Bailey, known as the "ABC" case, became a humiliating and divisive embarrassment for Labour. The secrets that were supposed to need protection turned out to be as exciting and well-concealed as the high British Telecom Tower in the centre of London. Yet for two years I faced charges carrying a total of 30 years imprisonment.

In 1977, Labour had done nothing to curb the power of the Security Service, MI5. MI5 was then under the control of a far right wing tendency, determined to prevent Watergate style investigative journalism taking root in Britain. Many of today's Ministers and leaders were then under surveillance, including Peter Mandelson (allegedly a Communist), Home Secretary Jack Straw ("Communist Associate"), and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (who I believe was recorded as a "Trotskysist Associate"). More romantically, my own secret MI5 file labelled me an "Unaffiliated Revolutionary".

New Labour, old mistakes

A young barrister called Anthony G Blair was then as unknown to MI5 as he was to the British public. But he did his best soon afterwards, writing a pamphlet for the NUJ, castigating the Official Secrets Act and its abuse in our "ABC" case. A few years later in 1984, Blair was just elected to Parliament, and keen to rise. I remember him rushing round to see me at home one evening, keen as mustard and anxious for leaks. He wanted to get hold of secret information leaked from the Bank of England to help him in his opposition job as a junior financial spokesman. The documents he wanted described how much money the Bank had secretly pumped £100 million into a failed City bank.

Labour Ministers of the 1970s repeatedly spurned changing their then practice of extra-legal telephone tapping, a view soon shown to have perpetuated a significant breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. Labour also sanctioned a policy of "acquiescing in the breaking of the law" by MI5. The minister concerned did not admit this until 5 years out of office. Then he conceded that "many of the things that they (MI5) have to do are illegal". Meanwhile, through the 1980s, people like the now Foreign Secretary Robin Cook were in the forefront of criticising oppressive intelligence activity.

When they look back, the Labour ministers of that era are full of regrets. The former Home Secretary tut tuts about being misled. One of the law officers responsible never stops saying sorry. Prosecuting us in the "ABC" case, says Arthur Davidson QC, "was the worst decision I have ever taken in my life".

Diary, 29 June 1999 : a day in the politics of British secrecy and surveillance

8.00 am. What has changed in twenty years ? The morning Guardian newspaper is full of the paper's campaign against Straw's Freedom of Information bill. With 22 provisions exempting almost everything people might want to be know about, the Freedom of Information Campaign chairman Professor James Cornford has said that "if this bill is enacted in anything like its present form it will become as notorious and disreputable as the Official Secrets Act of 1911".

FoI Campaign director Maurice Frankel observed, Straw's draft Bill "achieves the remarkable feat of making the [open government] code, introduced by a [Conservative] government opposed in principle to Freedom of Information appear a more positive measure than legislation drawn up by a government committed to the issue for 25 years". One part of the new FoI law - Section 44 (7) - says that any public authority that broke the law would be entitled to withhold information from the public and the Information Commissioner on the grounds that it would "expose the authority to proceedings for that offence".

10.00 am, Bow Street Magistrates Court. The Official Secrets Act rides again. Tony Geraghty, a former Sunday Times reporter, and Lt Colonel Nigel Wylde, a retired army officer are indicted under the Official Secrets Act the first case of its kind since my own. The core kernel of their alleged offence is that five pages of a 1998 book by Geraghty, the Irish War, reveals details of computer surveillance systems in use in Northern Ireland and parts of Britain. Labour's Attorney General has consented to their prosecution, the court was told. Yet the book is still on sale, while the offending portions can be read on the net.

The systems revealed in Geraghty's book, codenamed VENGEFUL (a vehicle surveillance network), and CRUCIBLE (the personal information system), have been publicly known for years. Nothing in Geraghty's book is secret. I published a book describing them at the height of Thatcher's war against intelligence disclosures. The existence of the VENGEFUL system was first revealed in 1974.

11.00am, National Criminal Intelligence Service HQ. Close to the new palace of British intelligence (MI6) at Vauxhall Cross, the head of the National Criminal Intelligence Service backs up the Home Office's desires to introduce a new law, which will criminalise who wants to keep secret their information encrypted on a personal computer. The Home Office and the DTI have suggested that failure to hand over personal encryption keys on demand should be an offence. NCIS director John Abbott says that the penalty for failing to hand over keys should be the same as that for the primary offence under investigation.

3.30pm, The Home Office. Jack Straw announces his review of the Interception of Communications Act (IOCA). Just four days earlier, it was revealed that he and Donald Dewar were now issuing 2000 warrants a year issued for telephone tapping. During even the Thatcher years, 500-600 warrants a year was the norm. Now, the scale of surveillance is rising exponentially. The "Commissioner for the Interception of Communications" has admitted that this is the result of "the greater interception facilities now available" in modern telecommunications systems.

Even these figures do not reveal the actual number of people whose calls are being intercepted, let alone the huge numbers of people and organisation whose foreign communications are surveilled under general warrants issued by the Foreign Secretary to the electronic intelligence agency GCHQ. Ex-intelligence sources have revealed that these warrants have been used to targets charities like Amnesty International and Christian Aid, and personalities including the Catholic Bishops of eastern Europe, even Mother Teresa ... even the Pope.

6.00pm, BBC TV News. Tony Blair's on the news from Birmingham, reassuring us that Labour has not left its traditional values behind. He's quite right. New faces, the same old blunders.

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