Jesus wept! Where does one start? First of all I love
the name: Prism, it’s Man from Uncle meets the Dark Side of the Moon with a
dash of the Matrix thrown in for good measure. Well, as of 24 June (at the time of writing),
nobody knew where the Man from Prism was. Had he gone to Ecuador? Was he in
Cuba, did he ever leave Moscow?
One thing is certain, Edward Snowden owes his
liberty to a number of factors that have little to do with his own
ingenuity as some kind of Digital Pimpernel. On the basis of media reports alone, it’s difficult to accurately assess Mr Snowden’s value as an intelligence asset. His
value as international embarrassment asset to Russian and China however, is
beyond doubt.
The apparent ease with which Snowden left Hong Kong and jetted off to Moscow left The Company
looking a little flat-footed. White House spokesman Jay Carney wasn’t buying
the technicality schtick that the Chinese authorities were peddling. He also conceded however that the US government
was working only on an assumption that the NSA whistleblower (that’s what he’s
called now in journalese) is still in Moscow. And it’s not that I’m anti-Team
America (Fuck Yeah!) per se, but it is jolly nevertheless to imagine Mr Snowden
sipping Cuba Libras on a layover while US intelligence camps out in Moscow.
Then here in the UK, those naughty secret policemen on the
homefront (not the ones in the donut who play show and tell with the Americans)
have been up all sorts. The balloons just keep going up. We’ve covered the vexing
subject of undercover policemen before
and the issue of plain-clothes operatives infiltrating protest groups and even conducting
sexual relationships with members of those groups or those seen to be close to
them, remains a live issue.
Certainly, consent looms large and whether or not a person
could actually give informed consent on the basis of identity being deliberately
misrepresented would be an issue I’d like to see the courts tackle. This was
pointed out quite rightly in the C4 Dispatches documentary on the subject. You don’t
need me to tell that it’s a pretty disturbing assessment of how little store is
set by our civil liberties when the state starts citing public policy considerations.
This wasn’t to infiltrate the IRA or Al Qaida, this was for some penny-ante left-wing
protesters. I guess the reasonable man should at least be asking himself
whether or not a member of the public would be convicted of a crime for having
sex under such huge pretences and if so, how much weight can one really give to
public policy here?
The other ball that got dropped in the UK today was linked
to the previous. (Don’t they always come in pairs?) . The news that the police
in London were using undercover officers to investigate groups campaigning for
justice in Deaths in Custody cases is quite disturbing. I worry when the state
starts seeing people who are both victims and crusaders against government, CPS
and police mendacity as enemies of the state worthy of such huge operational
expense. The disregard for the lives of individuals betrayed by these men is a
whole other arena.
The family of murdered Stephen Lawrence were among the
highest profile subjects of police surveillance which included an attempted
smear campaign and The Guardian reported that Stephen’s father, Neville had
called for a judicial inquiry separate from the ongoing investigations into
police corruption and incompetence.
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