Category Archives: Intelligence

Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Intelligence, Military, National Security, Politics, Society, United States

Reconfiguring Defence for reasons of a changed world…

DEFENCE & FUTURE OVERSEAS PARTNERSHIPS

Over the course of the last half-century defence spending has attracted and been a hot issue of contention. This has been brought to the fore in recent times, through government rounds of budget and expenditure reductions. Most notably, the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review and the cuts to overall manning levels to the armed services have brought the issue into sharp focus. Critics argue this has seriously skewed our defence posture and capability towards mammoth (and massively expensive) commitments such as upgrading and maintaining Trident and the development of new aircraft carriers.

Last month, former US defence secretary, Robert Gates, asserted that defence cuts in Britain have left the UK unable to be a ‘full partner’ in future military operations with the United States. As a result of defence cuts, Mr Gates believes that the UK no longer has ‘full-spectrum capabilities’. This, he says, will affect the UK’s ability to be a full partner and will change the dynamics of how operations are conducted in the future. His comments came in the wake of remarks by General Sir Nicholas Houghton, the Chief of the Defence Staff, who said that manpower is increasingly being perceived as an ‘overhead’ and that Britain’s defence capabilities have been ‘hollowed out’.

It is right that these cuts have been questioned in the UK. The concerns over the knock-on direct and indirect effects on local economies, and the dangers of global military over-stretch, have been well aired. At the same time, however, many have long queried the need for such a large and over-bloated defence budget, particularly when our appetite for overseas engagements in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts has greatly diminished.

The world has changed, too. Britain is certainly not the global power she once was. There is perhaps room for debate on the reasons for this relative decline, but some truths are incontrovertible. The growing focus of global power and wealth from West to East, the profound change in the nature and structure of armed conflict and the threats that we face to our national security are all factors that must enter the equation if we are to explain and account for how the world has changed and how, as a consequence, our influence has declined. Our reduced military capabilities reflect in large part the need to bear down and address our massive budget deficit and public debt. Such considerations have, as Gates himself stated, also forced spending reductions in the US.

But what is also true is that Britain is less committed in performing the role of being an acquiescent subordinate to the United States in international affairs. Widespread disquiet has also stemmed from the ubiquitous relationship that US intelligence has with Britain’s intelligence services and the close links that have existed between America’s National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s communications and listening posts at GCHQ in Cheltenham. In light of these considerations, it is only right and proper that the UK’s military relationship with the US be subject to re-examination.

Public ambivalence is not likely to stop there, either. It should also lead in due course to a more searching examination of Britain’s future commitment to Trident and what justifications there are in keeping a nuclear deterrent. Particularly so, given the changing political landscape in the UK and the very real prospect of Scotland (where Trident and the nuclear deterrent is housed against its will) becoming an independent nation. The referendum for Scottish independence is to be held this year in September.

It may be tempting to compare our defence capacity with what the country was able to sustain in the past and no-doubt some will rue Britain’s reduced capabilities. But the fact remains that the world has changed and with it the shifting balance of global power. It is to the future, not the past, which we should now look in how our overseas partnerships are formed. Britain’s defence arrangements will become a reflection of these changed requirements.

 

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Britain, Government, Human Rights, Intelligence, National Security, Politics, Scotland, Society

Protecting privacy requires Government action…

SURVEILLANCE

In the early 1990s a Scottish newspaper exposed the details of a routine police practice known as ‘metering’. This involved a senior detective and police officer requesting from British Telecom (BT) one of their customer’s phone records. Such records detailed the telephone numbers that person was calling, when the call took place, and the call’s duration. British Telecom handed these details over under a ‘private agreement’ it had formulated between itself and the police.

Not only did the newspaper reveal this practice, but divulged how little political or judicial oversight there was of it. Later, the Secretary of State for Scotland at the time, Ian Lang, announced new guidelines on metering for Scotland’s police forces, and a new reporting system was introduced to keep track of the practice. Details came to light following the theft of metering surveillance documents from the Headquarters of Lothian and Borders police in Edinburgh, in a saga that came to be known as Fettesgate.

More than two decades on one could be tempted to change the word ‘metering’ to ‘metadata’. In recent months, Edward Snowden, a former US intelligence officer with the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed the phenomenal scale of surveillance of the public’s phone, text, e-mail and social network communications, carried out by the NSA in joint collaboration with Britain’s GCHQ in Cheltenham. Matters arising now are the same issues that applied in 1992. Unlike the actual listening into telephone conversations, much of this surveillance focusses around metadata in the reading of e-mails and electronic texts but does not require ministerial permission and oversight.

The Scottish Government appears to accept the current democratic oversight may be insufficient. It suggests the scope of the practices used in surveillance may need to be reviewed in the event of Scotland becoming an independent country.

Some may say, however, that this is not good enough – arguing, that if the legislation needs to be reviewed then it should be done now: issues of public accountability, improved oversight and privacy apply regardless of Scotland’s constitutional future.

Privacy, of course, is one of the biggest issues of the day. Electronic and digital communications have opened up channels for people in a way that would have been hard to imagine just a generation ago. Undoubtedly, though, this has been achieved at a price. One of the biggest challenges facing our parliamentarians is to balance the needs of the police and security services with the personal liberties and rights of law-abiding citizens who are entitled to enjoy a private life. Of particular concern is the apparent comfortable relationship that has evolved between the authorities and some of the large telecommunication companies, many of whom are already under intense criticism for being condescending with their customers’ privacy.

Scotland’s Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill MSP, must accept that his task is not only facilitating Police Scotland in their fight against crime, but also involves protecting ordinary citizens in Scotland from undue and unwelcome scrutiny of their private lives by the authorities. Mr MacAskill has remained silent on this issue despite surveillance being a major issue in the current era. The Justice Secretary must speak up and demonstrate that he has this balance right.

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Britain, Government, Intelligence, National Security, Society, Technology, United States

The appearance of the heads of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Services before Parliament…

A WELCOME STEP

Yesterday, the heads of the three intelligence services in Britain – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – gave evidence in public for the first time before Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

Underlying the examination was one of the oldest questions about the nature of state-sponsored surveillance: who monitors and regulates the watchers? An analysis of what was said should glean that we did not learn a great deal that we did not already know. The transparency element, for example, went only so far. They appeared suitably nondescript, too, with faces you would quickly forget in a crowd, a prerequisite for any spymaster.

MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, GCHQ chief Sir Iain Lobban and Andrew Parker, who handles intelligence agents in the UK, deserve some credit for showing up, given their keen professional aversion to public exposure in a political theatre. This should be seen as a welcome step in the right direction if the work of the agencies is to be more open and less susceptible to caricature by conspiracy theorists.

Three developments compelled yesterday’s momentous public appearance. The first is the leaks by the former US national security contractor Edward Snowden which revealed extensive spying by GCHQ and the US National Security Agency. The scope and extent of this surveillance, its modus operandi and authorisation frameworks are matters of high public interest and concern given our historic traditions of personal privacy and public angst over the monitoring activities of government into citizens’ lives.

The second is the revolution wrought by communications technology with subsequent and resultant concerns over data protection. And the third is the sizeable increase to the budget of the security services to combat ‘terrorist’ threats. Balancing the duty to protect the public from dangerous and highly-organised would-be killers with how that objective is achieved by SIS (Security & Intelligence Services) is bound to create conflicts.

For spymasters, whose stock in trade is secrecy, it is perhaps too much for others to expect answers to be given in public about what they do. Such shortcomings soon became apparent during exchanges about the impact of the leaks perpetrated by Mr Snowden. Sir Iain Lobban denounced the way the disclosure of thousands of covert documents had hampered his agency’s efforts to thwart the nation’s enemies. Sir Iain claimed it had put the security effort back many years. In a similar vein, Sir John Sawers insisted our adversaries were ‘rubbing their hands with glee’ as a result. When asked, though, for specific details they retreated behind a cloak of secrecy, saying that to divulge such information would compound the damage.

Because of the synthetic nature of the exercise, the imperfections exposed matters that could not be revealed and which the public would not expect to be told. It is from this point, then, where we have to rely on systems of parliamentary oversight and surveillance protocols to work effectively.

It is indicative that the parliamentary committee for security and intelligence hold the chiefs accountable in private for the allegations they have made and to establish whether their concerns are substantively genuine. The ISC should then report its findings to the public.

The issue of mass surveillance was also raised at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep an appropriate balance between intrusion and security because communications technology is developing so rapidly. On being asked how legislation setting out their powers can possibly be relevant today when it was last updated 13 years ago, Mr Parker of MI5 said the law was a matter for parliament, not the intelligence chiefs. They also punctured the notion that simply because something is secret does not mean it is also sinister.

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