Anyone remember that classic sketch from Monty Python? No, not the one about The Parrot, nor The Cheese Shop or The Lumberjacks. Rather, the one about spies? For those of you who don’t, let me recount this little gem of televisual merriment…
The impossibly gangly John Cleese was passing himself off as a spy ‘interviewing’ a new recruit. “Why do you want to join the Secret Service?” said Cleese in clipped Oxbridge English. “Can you keep a secret?” The interviewee dutifully responds: “Yes”. “Good,” sighed Cleese with some relief (prior to conducting his own investigations some years later in relation to The Kipper and The Corpse). “In that case, you’re in, then!”
Over the years, certain British spies have mirrored some of the plotlines in early Bond films by proving themselves about as adept at keeping secrets as Rafa Benitez is at closely guarding what he really thinks of Sir Alex Ferguson.
Nonetheless, the old stiff upper lip had to be maintained, and MI5 – otherwise known as the Security Service – along with its cousin MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service) always defined their work by insisting on nothing less than total secrecy.
Anonymity and invisibility abounded in equal measure. There was a fair amount of denial going on, too. Unless your name was Anthony Blunt, that is, in which case the oral zip busted in a big way.
Who can ever forget the Spycatcher debacle of the mid-1980s, and the revelations by former MI5 assistant director Peter Wright that did untold damage to so many reputations? Alas, the Conservative Government’s vain attempts to smooth over the cracks caused by Wright’s outbursts merely poured acid on to an already gaping wound.
Living in a world of denial
Official Government policy in the past would have had us all believe that MI5 and MI6 didn’t even exist. On the surface, at least, there appeared no middle ground between 100% secrecy – can there ever be such a thing, certainly in this day and age? – and total, outright disclosure. Then, in the early 1990s, something began to change. A spirit of openness slowly emerged.
It was kick-started, at least in part, by – then – Prime Minister John Major publicly acknowledging the existence of MI6 in 1992 (around about the same time, in fact, that MI5 unveiled a new website on which the organisation insists: ‘The service doesn’t kill people, and nor does it arrange assassinations’).
Maybe Major wanted to dissociate peoples’ old views of the Government’s intelligence regime from what he believed they needed to focus on during his term of office (possibly in much the same way that he would have wished to prevent Spitting Image from portraying him as a bland, gun metal grey-coloured politician with a constituency in Cambridgeshire who never said anything and apparently ate Birds Eye frozen peas for a living).
Prior to Dame Stella Rimington’s appointment as the head of MI5 that very same year, the supremo’s name at this (necessarily) most clandestine and covert of organisations remained a classified secret to the outside world.
I well remember Rimington’s predecessors always appearing in the national newspapers as silhouetted portraits. Outlined and shadowy figures inhabiting a surreal world wherein the spies spied and the villains attempted to dodge the largest of magnifying glasses or pair of binoculars.
Dame Stella decided she’d had enough of this cloak-and-dagger, ‘Inch High Private Eye’-style approach and decided to identify herself by having a picture taken for all the media (and, by default, the general public) to see. It’s reasonable to surmise there must have been a fair few sharp intakes of breath down on the banks of the Thames when Rimington overtly proved that, unlike Lady Thatcher, she was definitely one for turning.
The final taboo has been broken
To the vexation and voiced disquiet of Whitehall, Jonathan Evans has now broken the so-called ‘final taboo’ by leveraging MI5’s Centenary Year as the perfect promotional and educational vehicle for giving an on the record interview to the national press.
Evans’ predecessor Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller made plenty of public speeches while in office, of course, but never once presented herself in person to the tabloids and the broadsheets.
So what have we subsequently learned from Evans about himself, his organisation and the world around us?
First of all, if the picture released to the press is anything to go by (photographers were not allowed inside MI5 headquarters, so some things are still sacrosanct), there’s a desire for informality.
Here’s a 50-year-old, dressed-down classical studies graduate of the University of Bristol decked out in short-sleeved, checked shirt. No tie. Laptop as open as the collar. A populist glass of mineral water sits at the ready. Long gone are the starched, crisp white shirts and shots of stiff gin or whiskey we were always led to believe were the norm.
Evans has taken the aforementioned spirit of openness to a new level, using his interview to cover everything from Al-Qaeda and whatever might be left of the IRA through to the Mumbai massacre and the 2012 Olympic Games.
On the subject of Al-Qaeda, Evans broke with secrecy traditions to voice his beliefs and concerns. He disclosed that Al-Qaeda’s high command (based along Pakistan’s North West frontier) remain fully intent on using indoctrinated British citizens to carry out attacks on British soil.
Indeed, there are individuals at large in Britain willing and able to do so. Naturally, this entails the police and security services keeping tabs – and constant surveillance – on “thousands of suspects” (in truth around 2,000, if reports are to be believed). That relentless surveillance and the successful prosecutions in our Courts (of which more anon) is, in Evans’ view, forcing the terrorists to “keep their heads down”.
The past 18 months have seen fewer cases where terrorists have moved from facilitating and supporting terrorism to planning attacks. Although Al-Qaeda harbours what Evans referred to as a “semi-autonomous, structured hierarchy” in the UK, MI5 has “probably seen less ‘late stage’ attack plans across the past two years”.
Successful convictions: a warning for would-be terrorists
Evans stated that there have now been 86 successful convictions since January 2007. Half of those caught have pleaded guilty. “This has had a chilling effect on the enthusiasm of the terrorist networks and cells,” suggested Evans.
“However, there’s a significant number of individuals in active sympathy. They are fundraising, and helping people to travel to Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan itself. Sometimes they provide equipment, support and propaganda.”
Three out of every four Al-Qaeda and Islamist-related attacks in Britain apparently have a link to Pakistan, with potential jihadists also making their way to Iraq via Dubai or other equally circuitous routes. At present, Evans believes there’s what he refers to as a “capability war” going on between the terrorists and his own organisation.
He suggested that the Al-Qaeda suspects have determined never to speak to each other in or near buildings, having learned lessons from Court cases wherein surveillance methods were disclosed during the prosecution process.
Commenting on how terrorist organisations use the Internet in a bid to recruit young Muslims in Britain, Evans didn’t pull any punches whatsoever. “It’s a form of child abuse,” he said. “These youngsters become vulnerable to Al-Qaeda propaganda that seeks to take advantage of dramatic images of people suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most recently from images portraying the Israeli military strikes in Gaza.”
There can be little doubt the latter fuel the extremists in our midst with yet more ideological ammunition.
It emerges that there were indirect connections between the terrorists in Mumbai last November and those in Britain (billing records were unearthed revealing telephone calls involving the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group suspected of being behind the Mumbai atrocity), but no evidence exists to suggest that there’s a national security issue for us to bear as a result. Not yet, anyway.
“Alarming statements have been made, but we’ve not found any connections of national security significance to ourselves,” is what Evans is quoted as having said.
All-in-all, Evans proceeded to paint a more sanguine and somewhat less alarming picture of the terrorist threat than ministers have done of late, but then that’s probably no great surprise. Our politicians are far too full of themselves to notice what’s going on in the real world around them, preferring to grab headlines – and, by consequence, votes at the ballot box – by dint of spin and deception.
Both MPs and senior Whitehall mandarins have stoked the extremists’ fires by claiming that the threat level on home shores is close to being raised to critical – its highest notch – but Evans dismissed any such notion with apparent disdain. Is it a classic double bluff, though?
Upsurge in dissident plots
Evans is obviously – and rightly – concerned over the recent upsurge in dissident Irish Republican plots, with sophisticated booby-trap bombs fashioned with the intention of seriously wounding or killing police personnel (and, one presumes, equally innocent civilians).
The MI5 head acknowledges that, following on from this, the 2012 Olympics in London are a target. He believes any threats to that event will arise from extremists and factions already known to MI5 rather than any dedicated team set up specifically to ‘hit’ the Games. In other words, let’s go after Donald Rumsfeld’s “known knowns” rather than the red herring “known unknowns”.
Like myself and many other security practitioners, Evans is well aware the economic downturn might well make Britain that bit more vulnerable to radicalism, espionage and terrorism. For Evans, it depends on whether or not the recession turns out to be “a watershed moment”.
One that affects British society on a level far greater than at present. “Although there’s no direct relationship between economic distress and extremism,” said Evans, “the security repercussions should the West become less economically dominant must be borne in mind.”
Discussing MI5 itself, Evans told journalists that his staff are “on the streets every day trying to keep the nation safe”. Their current average age is a sprightly 40, while the numbers of those employed are predicted to rise above 4,000 come 2011.
About-turn on recruitment policy
The fact that Evans is being so open with his views is, although a mild shock to the system, more or less what we should have expected. He’s merely opening further the door kicked ajar by Rimington and Manningham-Buller, and pushed back on its hinges by the organisation’s all-new recruitment policy.
Out with the aforementioned starched collars have gone many of the white male Oxbridge graduates from the chattering middle classes, to be replaced by members of the fairer sex (who make up 40% of all MI5 employees) with razor sharp brains. The security sector could learn a thing or two here, surely?
At the present juncture, one wonders what the reaction from Government, the police service and all other interested law enforcement and security agencies is following Evans’ decision to ‘go public’?
One suspects it’s best not to support any knee-jerk reactions like those espoused by celebrated spy writer Chapman Pincher in the wake of Dame Stella Rimington publishing her memoirs. Pincher used the pages of The Daily Mail, you might recall, to pose the question: “Is Dame Stella the most treacherous woman in Great Britain?”
Pincher surmised that Rimington would be the last woman to be appointed to the job “for many years” as a result of what she’d said. Little more than 12 months down the line, Manningham-Buller was in the chair and Pincher was forced to eat a rather large slice or two of humble pie.
For sure, there’s a much stronger political imperative to be found inside the desire for (and manifestation of) enhanced visibility. Ever since politics became dominated – if not entirely driven and directed – by the media, intelligence (and I’m not talking about that which sits between our collective ears) has been found at its core.
In all walks of commercial and political life, there’s now an overriding desire for transparency and – in the midst of a recession – accountability for the expenditure of public monies. Given that is the case, MI5 and MI6 simply have to be seen to show how relevant and effective they really are in the modern law enforcement landscape.
An admittance of what has gone before
It has often been said that, in order to comprehend and plan for the future, we must first learn from our past. Both MI5 and MI6 have, at last, bought into that edict. In October, MI5 marks its Centenary with Professor Christopher Andrew’s official history of the organisation while, in due course, Professor Keith Jeffery is to pen a similar tome on behalf of its ‘partner in spying’.
If the ordinary, law-abiding citizens of this country are at last allowed to view those who spy on our behalf and discover what they’re actually doing on a day-to-day basis to ensure our safety, it may well turn past myths into present day reality – and, in turn, make us all feel a little safer when we stride forth from the security of our domestic havens.
Who knows, Ladies and Gentlemen. By seeing our spies a little more clearly, we might also catch a view of ourselves and how it is we behave towards the outside world. If that induces a wake-up call for the majority of our power-crazed politicians, gluttonous senior bankers and short-sighted business leaders, so much the better.
After all, it’s they who should know better than most that wagging, uninformed and untethered tongues can be the downfall of that most strong of empires.
Big Brother really is watching you
There’s never a good time to deliver bad news, is there? Conversely, there are several windows our political masters can use to try and slip some nugget under our noses in the hope that no-one will ever see it.
One of them being the first few days of the New Year, when we’re all still rocking and reeling from over-indulgence on fine foods and wines, coming to terms with returning to work and the now-expected mass hikes in travel costs, and trying to figure out just how monumental January’s credit card bill might be.
Buried in the national newspapers on 4 January was a juicy snippet that seemed to pass by almost unnoticed (but far be it from me to suggest that’s why it appeared when it did).
So the story goes, our beloved Home Office has quietly and confidently adopted a new plan that will allow police services right across Britain to routinely hack into peoples’ personal computers – without the need for a warrant before they do so.
You’ll not be surprised to learn that this latest and unashamedly sinister move towards a totalitarian state lorded over by Big Brother Brown follows a decision by the European Union’s (EU) Council of Ministers in Brussels. Yes, it’s them again.
They Who Must Be Obeyed have given police across the EU carte blanche to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British police officers to hack into someone’s UK computer and pass over any material gained by doing so.
Material gathered via this so-called ‘remote hacking’ (which allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at their home, in the office or even when they’re working or surfing remotely in a hotel room) includes the content of all e-mails, details of web browsing habits and instant messaging patterns.
The suggestion is that these remote searches may be carried out if a senior officer “believes that it’s proportionate and necessary” to do so in order to prevent or detect serious crime (defined on this occasion as any offence attracting a jail sentence of three years or more).
Although – at least until now – extremely rare occurrences, remote searches have in fact been possible since 1994 when a judicial – if not to say judicious – amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 made hacking legal but only if it’s authorised and conducted by an appointed agent of the state.
The police justify these intrusions by claiming that such methods are necessary for covertly investigating suspects (including paedophiles, fraudsters, identity thieves and, of course, terrorist cells) who use cyberspace to carry out their acts of criminality. I’ve no problem with that, but…
Civil liberties groups up in arms
The news has severely angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs en masse. I’m not surprised, and I have to say it’s these factions with whom I would side in any argument that might develop on Question Time.
Surely the broadening of what can best be described as ‘intrusive surveillance powers’ ought first to be regulated by a new Act of Parliament, and a fair few Court warrants besides?
That makes perfectly good sense, does it not? Then again, the current Government isn’t exactly famous for asking the electorates’ opinion on anything before forging ahead with its own grand plans.
Never a shrinking violet on such matters, Liberty director and Human Rights champion Shami Chakrabarti has been quoted as stating: “These are very intrusive powers. As intrusive as someone busting down your door and coming into your home. The public will want this to be controlled by new legislation and judicial authorisation. Without those safeguards, this EU law is nothing if not a devastating blow to any notion of personal privacy.”
The move certainly holds parallels with the recent warrantless and disgusting police upheaval of the House of Commons office and homes belonging to Conservative MP Damian Green: “It’s like giving police the power to ‘do a Damian Green’ every day of the week, but this time without anyone even knowing they are,” added Chakrabarti.
As Security International’s Chris Brogan might say, it smacks of the EU “driving a coach and horses” through the privacy laws. Too true it does. Not for the first time, either.
Is every man’s home really his castle?
Glibly and gladly accepted by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Co, this latest dictatorial statement of intent from the EU is all about the state secretely sneaking around our living rooms. What if the police desperately need a conviction?
Who’s to say that, if the Government doesn’t like the cut of your jib, they’ll not ask the police to seed dodgy content on your computer and then arrest you for harbouring it? It’s not impossible, and as things stand there’s nothing you can do about it.
The real issue for many of us hard-working, tax-paying and law-abiding citizens is that not only do we now fundamentally distrust the state, but we have to protect ourselves against it without ever having done anything wrong in our lives.
In addition, does this new EU missive mean that anti-virus applications will be designed so as not to prevent legal viruses from hereon in?
Are opposition MPs’ computers going to be hacked because they’ve openly disagreed in the House with Labour’s political policy? Will the police use unmarked cars to park outside peoples’ homes and hack into designated individuals’ hard drives using the wireless network? What next? Quiet abductions by the Boys in Blue in the middle of the night, one suspects.
Those in favour of this latest development will suggest that if we truly believe the Government and the police service will abuse our rights, then we’ll have lost all faith in the system regardless.
‘Suggesting that the police have no right to intrude on your PC borders is the same as saying that being arrested is against your Human Rights’ is the mantra. Only fear as you already do. To a degree, I can see that argument.
From my perspective, Benjamin Franklin’s most famous quote sums the situation up with great aplomb. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Until next time.
Brian Sims, Editor, SMT Online