http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo0a23YDXLM

As a follow up to this documentary, I would note that of the five requests we made for CCTV footage of Henry, we received only one film within the statutory time limit and only after numerous follow-ups. We were made to jump through a number of bureaucratic hoops that made the system in essence unusable to the general public. The fact is that while on paper you have a right to CCTV footage of yourself, in practice the chances of you actually getting it are slim to none. The Ministry of Defence also said it would provide the footage but we did not receive it within the statutory time limit.

While Parliament released the footage of Henry standing outside the House of Commons, an official there told us we could not use the footage in any way without the written permission of Parliament. Surely personal information is owned by the person in question and the only permission needed should be from that person? This is not the case in the UK where the government seems always to exert control by holding the copyright even for personal information.

Another film about CCTV which will hopefully be released soon is ‘Every Step You Take’.

Watchdog orders MoD to unmask arms sales officers
By David Leigh and Rob Evans
The Guardian, 26 April 2006

The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, yesterday ordered the Ministry of Defence to release the names and details of its 500 arms sales officials. The MoD has spent the last year trying to keep their identities secret, claiming they may be harassed by peace campaigners.

Mr Thomas, who polices the Freedom of Information Act, said there was no evidence that officials would be put in danger if the Defence Exports Services Organisation [DESO] staff directory was published. The directory is already circulated to arms manufacturers and banks…

The ruling will have a significant effect within Whitehall. Officials in many other departments have been trying to use a variety of loopholes under the FoI act to keep their identities secret and delete their names from released documents.

The decision opens the way for Whitehall departments to be required to publish their internal phone books, as happens in the United States…

Read the full article here
The Information Commissioner’s decision notice.

Journalists’ Toolbox – arms

When a huge arms fair like the Defence Systems and Equipment International Exhibition rolls into town as it did in September, journalists must quickly get to grips with the shadowy world of international arms trade. Comedian Mark Thomas posed as an arms dealer to glimpse the inner workings of the industry, but there are many quicker, cheaper resources available to all journalists covering either an arms fair or how public money is awarded through defence contracts.

Activist groups often conduct useful research and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (020 7281 0297) proved an excellent source for journalists covering the DSEI exhibition at London’s Docklands. The group keeps research files on country, company and issue as well as government statistics and yearbooks. When government failed to release the names of invited countries, CAAT conducted its own research revealing countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and Columbia on the guest list. To do this yourself, contact the embassies and defence attaché offices of foreign countries – they often view such invitations as a source of pride.

National Audit Office reports provide a rare candid view into the financial cost of publicly funded arms contracts. Search the website for the latest publications and reports. The major projects reports, for example, reveal that £50 billion is spent on arms projects that typically come in late and over budget.

Getting the details of these contracts is not always easy. Invitations to tender for public contracts (usually around £100,000) must be advertised in the EU and you can search these on the Tenders Electronic Daily website. Contracts already awarded may be available from the MoD Defence Contracts Bulletin but this site is set up specifically for vendors and suppliers; you’ll notice an important person missing from the list – the public who pays for all these projects!

Contrast the profiteering MoD site with the US Department of Defense, which is required by law to list all contracts above a certain amount on a freely accessible website. You do not need to register, pay money or be an arms company to access any of the data at www.defenselink.mil/contracts/, which updates contracts daily.

Arms deals seem to make up the bulk of the activity of the Export Credits Guarantee Department, even though, according to CAAT, arms exports comprise just 2-3 per cent of the UK’s total visible export. This shady department is best cracked open with some well-framed freedom of information requests.

For an overview of the arms industry, useful sources are the Stockholm International Peace Institute, which compiles statistics on military expenditure, arms production and transfers of military equipment. The Guardian newspaper also archives all articles on arms trade into an online Special Report.

Finally, don’t ignore the trade press. Jane’s is the best know and publishes such industry standards as Defence Weekly, Defence Industry, and International Defence Review. Aircraft makes up a major part of UK armaments and is covered by Flight International, and Air Forces Monthly.

U.S. Representative Christopher Shays (Connecticut) bluntly describes the very real danger to the American public resulting from excessive government secrecy: “Those costs are measured in lives as well as dollars. Somewhere in the vast cache of data that never should have been classified, and may never be declassified is that tiny nugget of information that if shared, it could be used to detect and prevent the next deadly terrorist attack. Recently enacted reforms should help focus and coordinate disparate elements of the so-called intelligence community to broaden our view of critical threat information.”

These statements are mirrored by the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission that it was overclassification and excessive compartmentalization of information among agencies that left the door open for terrorists to strike.

Citizens and politicians in America are fighting the trend of excessive secrecy with a public interest declassification board that has new authority to push for executive branch adherence to disclosure standards, particularly with regard to congressional committee requests.

You might well ask if our own UK government has an equivalent level of scrutiny. The answer is NO, even though British MPs and the general public have far less access to information about our intelligence services and police than our American counterparts. This country still labours under the archaic belief that we need to be secret to be safe. In this sense, President Bush is the most ‘British’ president since Richard Nixon.

In fact, as September 11th proved, we lose protection by too much secrecy. The true facts behind the London July 7 and 21 attacks may well show a similar failure to stop the attacks thanks to excessive secrecy and compartmentalisation of information. Already it has emerged that one of the bombers was known to US intelligence. What other information was known, not shared and therefore never utilised?

What is also forgotten in this rush to secrecy is that such behaviour is antithetical to a democratic society. As U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich said, “This climate of secrecy takes us toward a type of government which is not democratic, which is profoundly undemocratic, which has that kind of a stale, garbage-like whiff of fascism to it.”

Too true – but what are Brits going to do about it? The time for pontification and moaning has passed. Power hungry police and politicians have our civil liberties in their gunsights and the time is now to take action before it is too late. Write a letter to your MP or local/national newspaper – and demand more accountability from the police and intelligence services. They want more power and information about the public – make them pay for it with greater transparency! This is surely the best way to keep the country safe.

The government yesterday tried to suppress evidence that the attorney general believed war against Iraq was illegal less than two weeks before British troops joined the US-led invasion of the country.

It has removed a key passage in the resignation letter written by Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, on March 18 2003, the eve of the invasion.

The remainder of her letter – in which she described the planned invasion as a “crime of aggression” – was released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act. The entire letter would have remained secret had not the Guardian published parts of it last month, the FO said.

Read full article here

This is the first release of Security Service records since the full implementation of the Freedom of Information Act in January 2005. This introduction will give you more information about the release and the National Archive’s filing system. Though the security services are exempt from the Act (unlike in the United States), they do make some records available. This release is the twelfth and largest ever publication of Security Service records and contains 357 files. This brings the total number of MI5 records in the public domain to just 2,500.

Compare this measley amount to the number of declassified security documents released to the National Security Archive in the USA: 100,000 released documents, 30,000 intelligence files on individuals and organisations (amount released in UK = 0), 20,000 records released in response to FOIA requests (zero records released in UK in response to FOIA as intelligence services are exempt!)

Here is a brief overview and description of the most interesting and noteworthy files from MI5 released by the National Archives in March.

• Figures from the African nationalist and independence movements
• Cases of general interest
• German Intelligence Agents and Suspected Agents
• Files of Jewish interest
• Soviet Intelligence Agents and Suspected Agents
• Communists and suspected Communists
• Stories with possible local or international interest
• Arthur Ransome (KV 2/1903-1904)
• (Archibald) Fenner Brockway MP, later Lord Brockway (KV 2/1917-1921)
• Jurgen Kuczyinski (KV 2/1871-1880)
• Communication with the enemy via BBC programmes (KV 3/99)

Public access to the defence estate can be restricted or excluded where there is live firing or where other operational training is underway. These access restrictions are generally operated through military byelaws. Access may also be restricted or excluded under the provisions of the Countryside & Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW Act) in England and Wales and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 (LR(S)A) in Scotland.

An FOI page outlines how to make requests for information that is not listed on these pages.

The irony is that this type of surveillance cannot be used in a British court. So exactly why are we the most spied upon people in Europe? For a government of prolific telephone tappers, there are startlingly few controls monitoring the legitimacy of this common practice, as I make clear in my book.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) is the ‘wiretapping’ law that regulates communications interception and other types of intrusive surveillance. True, there are three commissioners whose purpose is to monitor the propriety of surveillance, but Privacy International has dubbed the three commissioners ‘The Three Blind Mice’ for their systemic failure to issue sanctions against the police or security services despite numerous findings that the wrong telephone numbers are often tapped and authorisations are issued on skimpy evidence.

The Commissioners also refuse to release the number of national security intercepts authorised, claiming that to do so would endanger national security, even though the United States, Canada and New Zealand make this information publicly available.

Secondary legislation passed in 2003 expanded the number of government bodies that can access private telephone records, mail and internet activity, so it now includes not only the police, the intelligence services, Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue, but also a raft of other organisations such as local government. There is concern that some organisations lack the necessary checks and audits to prevent secret material being misused against a person. During parliamentary debate, Baroness Blatch argued that ‘the issue of oversight of the system is particularly crucial, and the Interception Commissioner has been particularly silent on his methods of oversight’ (House of Lords, 13 Nov 2003, column 1538).

If the public are to have confidence that organisations are using their powers properly, there should be a system in place to objectively scrutinise how they conduct surveillance. RIPA created several tribunals to do this. However, these tribunals are not covered by the freedom of information act.

The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (ATCS) 2001 also requires communications providers to keep records of their users’ activities for national security purposes. Again, the oversight of these powers is far below what is required to ensure public confidence that they are not being abused.

The Ministry of Defense has written to arms firms promising them a virtual veto, according the article. And the code of practice on implementing the law, which urged civil servants to reject confidentiality agreements, was re-written at the last minute after intense lobbying from the MoD on behalf of arms firms.

Arms firms plan to thwart disclosure law
David Leigh, David Hencke and Rob Evans
Friday December 24, 2004

Arms manufacturers and other companies are seeking to frustrate Britain’s freedom of information act.

They plan to write legally enforceable confidentiality agreements into their dealings with Whitehall and are preparing “injunction packages” with which to threaten officials.

This will have the effect of bypassing the legislative machinery, and knocking a large hole in the act.

The Ministry of Defence wrote to arms firms this month, promising them a virtual veto and “the opportunity to seek a legal remedy” before files are disclosed. The government has also bowed to commercial pressures by deleting guidance to officials.
Full article here…

Yet when it came to weakening the Act there were no such qualms.

On 4 November, 2004, The Freedom of Information (Time for Compliance with Request) Regulations 2004 (draft) was announced to parliament. It would extend the deadline for answering a request for information in certain limited circumstances.
http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/foi-section10draft.pdf

Schools would be exempt from the time limit if the request falls within school holidays. If information is held abroad or by someone involved in a military operation the deadline can be extended to 60 days. And the National Archives would get an extension up to 30 working days for requests involving transferred public records not designated as open information, where it needs to determine whether the information is exempt.

In fact there already exists within the FOIA, flexibility for extensions if an authority can prove it needs extra time to consider whether an exemption applies, where the public interest lies or to contact third parties. The changes proposed take away the need to prove why time is needed and gives it automatically. Indeed, why not wait until the act has ‘bedded down’ to see if these time-periods are problematic before opening up yet another loophole in an already enfeebled law?