[…] Todd and Bloch’s recurring themes are the anti-civil liberty implications of terrorist legislation, and the supreme failure of the UK and US intelligence forces amidst the ‘new surveillance culture’ of the modern world. This broader culture is formed from three compelling factors: what the authors call the ‘Washington consensus’ on economic organisation (whereby everything […]
[PDF file]: Literary Spying British Writers and MI5 Surveillance 1930-1960 James Smith Cambridge University Press, 2013, £55.00, h/b John Newsinger Smith’s book is an immensely valuable preliminary examination of the British secret state’s surveillance of ‘the left-wing writers and artists’ of George Orwell’s generation. As the author makes clear, the context was very different from the […]
[…] from the HQMSU unit involved lied at the subsequent trials, partly to conceal the fact that members of Special Branch had been involved in an illegal cross-border surveillance operation. Enter Stalker, ‘high-flyer’ John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police, was asked to investigate the circumstances which surrounded the fabrication of evidence […]
[…] collusion did indeed take place, much of it to be found in the careers and activities of two of the more prominent MI5 officers involved in the surveillance of inter-war fascism, Charles Henry Maxwell Knight and James McGuirk Hughes. Maxwell Knight was recruited to the Security Service by Sir Vernon Kell in April 1925 […]
[…] directorates and senior level representatives from Naval Space Command, Army Space Command and Air Force Space Command.(6) The regulations governing the UFO topic is USR 55-12, Space Surveillance Network (SSN) of June 1 1992, classified by multiple sources. ‘This regulation provides policy and guidance for operations of the worldwide Space Surveillance Network (SSN). It […]
[…] Notice Committee), for a pre-publication view of material relating to the SAS. Harper Collins refused. In retrospect, Geraghty told the Observer, ‘its probable I had been under surveillance for some months’. He had some intimations of trouble and ‘got on with the normal, end-of-book weeding of files with more than usual urgency’. What had […]
[…] recent Director of the Berlitz School in Madrid was none other than CIA officer Alberto Cesar Augusto Rodriguez Gallego, who from 1961-72 was responsible for the photographic surveillance of the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. This includes the period of “Oswald’s” visit. (On the Madrid item see Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) April 1985.) Surveillance pictures of […]
[…] Tribunal was established under s65 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which lays down the rules governing interception of communications, acquisition and disclosure of communications data, and surveillance. It is the only body that can hear complaints relating to conduct by the intelligence and security agencies, and complaints about phone-tapping, and is also the […]
[…] investigation, the tribunal also has the power to require assistance from a relevant Commissioner (RIPA s68(2)). RIPA sets up a new commissioner system, with the exception of surveillance commissioners, who continue under the Police Act 1997, and who now also have responsibility for overseeing the surveillance powers conferred under Parts II and III of […]
[…] local basis from some police Special Branches. Special Branches also surveilled the unions, the wider left and organisations like CND. Also, and rather important in this period, surveillance and data collection by private sector groups such as the Economic League, the Building Employers Federation, was still important. But we also had American activities to […]
