SDS undercover cops hack lives of law-abiding lady activists

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

At the crux of this case is the direct connection with MI5 and the expectation that these operations would never be discovered. One can not help but wonder did Met police counter subversion activity stop here or were/are trades unions & holitgaaj parties also targeted by Her Majesty's Detectives & Constables?
Probably the most important case in decades, subject to a crooked judge already and obvious cheap, insulting delaying tactics.
Women who had relationships with police spies win partial legal victory
Judge rules half of the women's cases can be heard in open court but half must be first heard by secret tribunal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/17/women-relationships- police-spies-victory

[TonyGosling]

If this story hasn't been irking you - it should have been
A load of Thunderballs: James Bond is fiction, not a police instruction manual
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/commentisfree+environment/mark -kennedy
A shocking ruling (let's call it the 007 standard) gives undercover police licence to break hearts. It's the hacking of people's lives

Behold a new legal threshold: let's call it the 007 standard. Apparently the law now allows secret agents to get up to all manner of mayhem, just so long as it's something James Bond might have done. Threatening to strangle a woman with her own bikini top? Powering a speedboat, both on and besides the Thames, destroying everything in your wake? Forcing a shark-gun pellet into a man's mouth, so he blows up like a balloon. All fully lawful, m'lud: can I refer the court to Diamonds Are Forever, The World Is Not Enough and Live and Let Die?

This new principle of jurisprudence was unveiled at the high court this week by Mr Justice Tugendhat, as he ruled on whether a case brought by 10 women and one man duped into fraudulent relationships by undercover police officers should be heard in open court or in a secret tribunal.

The decision hinged on whether the law governing agents of the state allows them to form sexual relationships with those they spy upon. The good judge believes that when MPs wrote the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) in 2000, permitting undercover police to form "personal or other" relationships, they must have meant it to include sexual relationships. After all, the legislators were bound to have had one particular secret agent in mind. "James Bond is the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women," Tugendhat declared, lending "credence to the view that the intelligence and police services have for many years deployed both men and women officers to form personal relationships of an intimate sexual nature".

That came as a shock to the women involved in the case, and not only them. The former director of public prosecutions, Ken, now Lord, Macdonald, thought the judge's mention of 007 "ludicrous". Ripa, he told me, is an extremely serious piece of legislation, "one that determines the extent to which our private lives can be intruded upon by the state. It's undermining of parliament's reputation as a serious body to suggest it took into account the mad escapades of a fictional spy".

Talk of Bond only highlights one of the absurdities at the heart of this sad, strange saga that first came to light two years ago, when the Guardian revealed how a police officer named Mark Kennedy had infiltrated the environmental protest movement and become intimate with the activists he was monitoring. The absurdity in question is that of proportionality. At least Bond was confronting mighty adversaries with demonic ambitions to destroy the world: no wonder he had to cut the odd ethical corner. But Kennedy and the other cops were, mostly, targeting domestic groups that posed no such threat. It's true that one undercover policeman caught the Animal Liberation Front activists who had planted incendiary devices in fur-selling department stores (at night, with no one around) – a policeman who has himself been accused in parliament of detonating one of the devices – but the target was usually more Citizen Smith than Dr No. In one case, the police infiltrated an anti-war group called the Clown Army whose existential threat to national security consisted of running around Leeds city centre brandishing feather dusters. Blofeld, it wasn't.

But that the judge thought to mention Bond is perhaps revealing. For even those who would defend Ian Fleming's character from charges of misogyny would concede that he often regards women as disposable. And that is the crux of this case, brought by a group of women who believe their innermost lives were regarded as so valueless they could be used by covert police as mere props, devices to shore up agents' cover stories and prove they were good-faith activists rather than frauds.

Some may question how much the women involved really suffered: they were with a man long ago who was not what he claimed to be – OK, not nice, but move on. Such an attitude was hinted at in the remarks by a male activist who slept with an undercover policewoman in a tent at a "climate camp" and who told the Guardian he did not want to sue the police because the one-night stand was "nothing meaningful".

But for the others these were not one-night stands, they were relationships of long standing – six years in one case, five in another – that were enormously meaningful. Those involved tell of deep and genuine attachments, the men integrated into their lives as partners, living together, travelling together, attending family gatherings, sitting at a parent's bedside, even attending a funeral.

There are at least four children from these relationships, some of whom have only now, decades later, discovered who their father really was – and that they were born of a great act of deception.

The greatest pain seems to have come afterwards. Uncannily, most of the relationships all seem to have ended the same way: a sudden departure, a postcard from abroad, and then silence. Some women spent months or even years trying to work out what had gone wrong, travelling far in search of answers. Others found that their ability to trust had been shattered. If the man they had loved turned out to be an agent of the state, what else should they be suspicious of? Could they trust their colleagues, their friends? And the question that nags above all others: was it all a fake, did he not love me at all? One woman tells friends simply: "Five years of my life was built on a lie."

There was rightly an outcry about the News of the World's hacking of people's voicemail messages. But this was the hacking of people's lives, burrowing into the most intimate spaces of the heart in order to do a job, all authorised by the police. It is state-sanctioned emotional abuse.

The present tense is appropriate because there is no reason to believe this kind of police activity, begun in 1968 when Scotland Yard started to infiltrate groups opposed to the Vietnam war, has stopped. The police have not apologised or vowed to give up the practice. Instead, they simply refuse to confirm or deny that the men involved worked as agents at all. A dozen people are taking legal action in total, but those who have followed the case closest – the Guardian's Paul Lewis and Rob Evans – are convinced there are many more victims, including some who still don't know that a past partner conned them. Almost every undercover cop so far identified found himself a lover in the group under surveillance: it was the norm, a standard part of their tradecraft.

This is a question for the police, whose view of women as so dispensable surely suggests a kind of institutional sexism, but also for the state itself. Either it knew or it didn't know what these men were up to, apparently in the service of the crown: both possibilities are indefensible. There is no licence to kill, and there can be no licence to break human hearts, to inflict lasting psychological trauma. The James Bond stories are thrillers, not an instruction manual for an unaccountable state.

[TonyGosling]

Dispatches exposes the shocking story of Britain's secret police and how undercover officers reportedly used sex and lies to spy on members of the public.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-130  /episode-2
The programme reveals the names of high-profile targets spied on by the police.

Through the personal testimony of a whistleblower who operated deep undercover for four years, the film examines the ethically dubious tactics of a clandestine unit within the Metropolitan police.

Tasked with infiltrating political campaigns and protest groups, it operated under the unofficial motto 'By any means necessary'.

The programme speaks exclusively to the women who say their lives have been wrecked after being spied upon; and who reveal how they were duped into sexual relationships with men they didn't even know were cops.

One of the women reveals the heart-wrenching story of how she was also deceived into having a child with a police spy.

[TonyGosling]

Who’s keeping tabs on the undercover cops?
The family of Stephen Lawrence are not the only ones concerned about their activities

By Philip Johnston 8:43PM BST 24 Jun 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10139126/Whos-kee ping-tabs-on-the-undercover-cops.html

He was identified in court only by the name “Deano”. The police officer had been part of an undercover operation in Basildon, Essex, last year to target an alleged gang of drug dealers. He had posed as an addict to infiltrate their operations, but when they became suspicious, the court heard, the gang leader looked into the “white of the officer’s eyes” and asked him if he was “Old Bill”. Deano was savagely beaten, whereupon the secret camera he was wearing was discovered. He said he only managed to escape with his life by jumping from a window.

Few can possibly doubt the bravery of undercover agents who put themselves in great danger to expose criminal activity or terrorist plots. But when the same techniques are used to spy on political organisations or campaign groups, they do not appear quite so heroic – though they might be just as risky. And allegations this week that a covert Metropolitan Police unit tried to collect “dirt” on the family of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence have revived the controversy over the extent of such secret activity.

The worries began with the extraordinary story of Mark Kennedy, a police officer who lived among climate change campaigners and had several relationships with women on whom he spied, one of which lasted six years. Three senior judges later found that Kennedy might have acted as an agent provocateur.

More recently, there have been revelations about how the identities of dead children were used by officers on clandestine missions, in an echo of The Day of the Jackal. This practice, described as “ghoulish and disrespectful” by a Commons select committee, is still the subject of an internal investigation. Undercover operations against groups planning protests at international summits have also been criticised.

The impression has developed of a widespread and largely unaccountable secret network, operating in a netherworld beyond the control of senior officers and with legal authority that is ambiguous to say the least. But is this fair? If the alleged smear campaign against the Lawrences did indeed take place, then most people will consider that to have been reprehensible.

But as Lord Condon, who was Met commissioner at the time, has pointed out, there might have been good reasons for intelligence operations against groups associated with the Justice for Stephen campaign. A few months after the murder, there were serious disturbances in Welling, south London, where the BNP was accused of stirring up racial hatred. According to Lord Condon, a plot to burn down the BNP’s building – with people inside it – was thwarted by undercover officers, whom he visited to congratulate.

One of these officers, Peter Francis, now claims in a new book that the operation went far beyond keeping an eye on violent extremists, to become a “hunt for disinformation” to discredit the Lawrences. This, says Lord Condon, is not something he would have authorised or condoned. But bosses are often kept in the dark: to ensure the safety of the officers involved, undercover work must be conducted on a need-to-know basis, with as few people as possible in the loop. Yet this also means that the rules under which it takes place must be clear – and that has not been true for many years.

Over time, a bewildering variety of groups tasked with clandestine investigations has grown up, all with varying lines of accountability. They include the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a unit within the Met’s Special Branch, whose job is to prevent violent public disorder on the streets of the capital. Originally established to combat demonstrations against the Vietnam War in 1968, it was funded by the Home Office for 40 years and was allegedly so secretive that even senior officers were unaware of its existence. It was recently replaced by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), which also targets subversives and political extremists.

These units have been credited with preventing bloodshed on numerous occasions by using intelligence to forestall violent clashes, or episodes such as Welling. Oversight of what they do is provided by government surveillance watchdogs, as well as police and crime commissioners. Bizarrely, however, the NPOIU was until recently managed not by a police force directly, but by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which despite its name is a private body. The unit has now been transferred to the Met and absorbed into another covert agency, the National Domestic Extremist and Disorder Intelligence Unit.

At one stage, there were eight different organisations – and their governance was by no means clear. There is also a code of conduct for undercover policing, but watchdogs found that, in the Kennedy case at least, it had not been followed correctly.

Just days ago, Damian Green, the policing minister, announced new regulations intended to clarify what can and cannot be done by covert units, to reassure the public that they are being deployed and supervised appropriately. “Inevitably, undercover police officers work in extraordinary circumstances,” he said. “But this does not absolve them from the responsibility to adhere to the highest standards of professional behaviour in the course of their duties.” If there was a smear campaign against the Lawrence family 20 years ago, ministers hope that the rules have been so tightened that it could not happen now. But given the nature of undercover activities, is anyone really going to know?

[TonyGosling]

Did an undercover cop help organise a major riot?
The wrongly convicted activist John Jordan claims the Met helped plan serious civil disorder. An independent public inquiry is now vital
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/03/undercover-office r-major-riot-john-jordan

George Monbiot - The Guardian, Monday 3 February 2014 20.30 GMT

Link to video: 'Undercover policeman's car' used by anti-capitalism protesters before 1999 London riot
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2014/feb/05/undercover-police man-car-capitalism-protesters-riot-video

From the Stephen Lawrence inquiry we learned that the police were institutionally racist. Can it be long before we learn that they are also institutionally corrupt? Almost every month the undercover policing scandal becomes wider and deeper. Today I can reveal a new twist, which in some respects could be the gravest episode yet. It surely makes the case for an independent public inquiry – which is already overwhelming – unarguable.

Before I explain it, here's a summary of what we know already. Thanks to the remarkable investigations pursued first by the victims of police spies and then by the Guardian journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis (whose book Undercover is as gripping as any thriller), we know that British police have been inserting undercover officers into protest movements since 1968. Their purpose was to counter what they called subversion or domestic extremism, which they define as seeking to "prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy … outside the normal democratic process". Which is a good description of how almost all progressive change happens.

Most of the groups whose infiltration has now been exposed were non-violent. Among them were the British campaign against apartheid in South Africa, the protest movements against climate change, people seeking to expose police corruption and the campaign for justice for the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence. Undercover officers, often using the stolen identities of dead children, worked their way into key positions and helped to organise demonstrations. Several started long-term relationships with the people they spied on. At least two fathered children with them.

Some officers illegally used their false identities in court. Some acted as agents provocateurs. Seldom did they appear to be operating in the wider interests of society. They collected intelligence on trade unionists that was passed to an agency which compiled unlawful blacklists for construction companies, ensuring that those people could not find work. The policeman who infiltrated the Stephen Lawrence campaign was instructed by his superiors to "hunt for disinformation" about the family and their supporters that could be used to undermine them. When their tour of duty was over, the police abandoned their partners and their assumed identities and disappeared, leaving a trail of broken lives. As the unofficial motto of the original undercover squad stated, it would operate By Any Means Necessary.

The revelations so far have led to 56 people having their cases or convictions overturned, after police and prosecutors failed to disclose that officers had helped to plan and execute the protests for which people were being prosecuted. But we know the names of only 11 spies, out of 100-150, working for 46 years. Thousands of people might have been falsely prosecuted.

So far there have been 15 official inquiries and investigations. They seem to have served only to delay and distract. The report by Sir Christopher Rose into the false convictions of a group of climate change protesters concluded that failures by police and prosecutors to disclose essential information to the defence "were individual, not systemic" and that "nothing that I have seen or heard suggests that … there was any deliberate, still less dishonest, withholding of information". Now, after an almost identical case involving another group of climate activists, during which the judge remarked that there had been "a complete and total failure" to disclose evidence, Rose's findings look incredible.

The biggest inquiry still running, Operation Herne, is investigating alleged misconduct by the Metropolitan police. Of its 44 staff, 75% work for, er, the Metropolitan police. Its only decisive action so far has been to seek evidence for a prosecution under the Official Secrets Act of Peter Francis, the police whistleblower who has revealed key elements of this story. This looks like an attempt to discourage him from testifying, and to prevent other officers from coming forward.

Bad enough? You haven't heard the half of it. Last week, the activist John Jordan was told his conviction (for occupying the offices of London Transport) would be overturned. The Crown Prosecution Service refuses to reveal why, but it doubtless has something to do with the fact that one of Jordan's co-defendants turns out to have been Jim Boyling, a secret policeman working for the Met, who allegedly used his false identity in court.

Jordan has now made a further claim. He alleges that the same man helped organise a street party that went wrong and turned into the worst riot in London since the poll tax demonstrations. The J18 Carnival Against Global Capitalism on 18 June 1999 went well beyond non-violent protest. According to the police, 42 people were injured and over £1m of damage was done. One building was singled out: the London International Financial Futures Exchange (Liffe), where derivatives were traded. Though protesters entered the building at 1.40pm, the police did not arrive until 4.15pm.

After furious recriminations from the Lord Mayor and the people who ran the Liffe building, the City of London police conducted an inquiry. It admitted that their criticisms were justified, and that the police's performance was "highly unsatisfactory". The problem, it claimed, was that the police had no information about what the targets and plans of the protesters would be, and had no idea that Liffe was in the frame. The riot was "unforeseen".

Jordan was a member of "the logistics group that organised the tactics for J18. There were about 10 of us in the group and we met weekly for over six months." Among the other members, he says, was Boyling. "The 10 of us … were the only people who knew the whole plan before the day itself and who had decided that the main target would be Liffe." Boyling, he alleges, drove one of the two cars that were used to block the road to the building.

It is hard to think of a more serious allegation. For six months an undercover officer working for the Metropolitan police was instrumental in planning a major demonstration, which ended up causing injuries and serious damage to property. Yet the police appear to have failed to pass this intelligence to the City of London force, leaving the target of the protest unprotected.

Still no need for an independent public inquiry? Really?

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

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