How Intelligence Agencies Have Gotten Their Data
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Open Secrets
22 BACK PAGE LAW STORIES 15 January 2021 | www.newlawjournal.co.uk Open secrets In a tribute to John Le Carré, Athelstane Aamodt reflects on the operation & enforcement of official secrets laws © Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP/Shutterstock ne of the things that nearly communication of information’ under (the have. Further, the House of Lords’ decision everyone knew about the late now-abolished) s 2 of the Official Secrets most likely caused sales of the book to John Le Carré was that he had Act 1911. The basis for prosecuting them increase, thereby making things even Oworked in British Intelligence, was an article that they had written in the worse. The House of Lords eventually first for MI5 (domestic counter- magazine Time Out about the intelligence saw sense and in A-G v Guardian intelligence) and then for MI6 (foreign services. One of the photographs that had Newspapers Ltd (No 2) [1988] 3 All ER 545 intelligence). His life as an intelligence featured in the article was a photograph discharged the interim injunction on the officer provided ample inspiration for of the Post-Office Tower. The trial was a basis that the worldwide dissemination his many novels. For years, the British cause célèbre, with the first trial being of the book had already caused the Government would not even acknowledge abandoned after it was discovered that, harm that the British government had the existence of MI5 and MI6. MI5 was among other things, the security services complained about. Unsurprisingly, the first mentioned in parliament in 1952 and had been vetting the jury. -
SPYCATCHER by PETER WRIGHT with Paul Greengrass WILLIAM
SPYCATCHER by PETER WRIGHT with Paul Greengrass WILLIAM HEINEMANN: AUSTRALIA First published in 1987 by HEINEMANN PUBLISHERS AUSTRALIA (A division of Octopus Publishing Group/Australia Pty Ltd) 85 Abinger Street, Richmond, Victoria, 3121. Copyright (c) 1987 by Peter Wright ISBN 0-85561-166-9 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. TO MY WIFE LOIS Prologue For years I had wondered what the last day would be like. In January 1976 after two decades in the top echelons of the British Security Service, MI5, it was time to rejoin the real world. I emerged for the final time from Euston Road tube station. The winter sun shone brightly as I made my way down Gower Street toward Trafalgar Square. Fifty yards on I turned into the unmarked entrance to an anonymous office block. Tucked between an art college and a hospital stood the unlikely headquarters of British Counterespionage. I showed my pass to the policeman standing discreetly in the reception alcove and took one of the specially programmed lifts which carry senior officers to the sixth-floor inner sanctum. I walked silently down the corridor to my room next to the Director-General's suite. The offices were quiet. Far below I could hear the rumble of tube trains carrying commuters to the West End. I unlocked my door. In front of me stood the essential tools of the intelligence officer’s trade - a desk, two telephones, one scrambled for outside calls, and to one side a large green metal safe with an oversized combination lock on the front. -
Harold Wilson Obituary
Make a contribution News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle UK World Business Football UK politics Environment Education Society Science Tech More Harold Wilson obituary Leading Labour beyond pipe dreams Geoffrey Goodman Thu 25 May 1995 09.59 EDT 18 Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, as he came improbably to be called - will not go down in the history books as one of Britain's greatest prime ministers. But, increasingly, he will be seen as a far bigger political figure than contemporary sceptics have allowed far more representative of that uniquely ambivalent mood of Britain in the 1960s and a far more rounded and caring, if unfulfilled, person. It is my view that he was a remarkable prime minister and, indeed, a quite remarkable man. Cynics had a field day ridiculing him at the time of his decline. Perhaps that was inevitable given his irresistible tendency to behave like the master of the Big Trick in the circus ring of politics - for whom there is nothing so humiliating as to have it demonstrated, often by fellow tricksters, that the Big Trick hasn't worked. James Harold Wilson happened to be prime minister leading a left wing party at a time when the mores of post-war political and economic change in Britain (and elsewhere) were just beginning to be perceived. Arguably it was the period of the greatest social and industrial change this century, even if the people - let alone the Wilson governments - were never fully aware of the nature of that change. Social relationships across the entire class spectrum were being transformed. -
LJMU Research Online
LJMU Research Online Craig, MM Spycatcher’s Little Sister: The Thatcher government and the Panorama affair, 1980-81 http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/4694/ Article Citation (please note it is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from this work) Craig, MM (2016) Spycatcher’s Little Sister: The Thatcher government and the Panorama affair, 1980-81. Intelligence and National Security, 32 (6). pp. 677-692. ISSN 1743-9019 LJMU has developed LJMU Research Online for users to access the research output of the University more effectively. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LJMU Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of the record. Please see the repository URL above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. For more information please contact [email protected] http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/ Spycatcher’s Little Sister: The Thatcher government and the Panorama affair, 1980-811 Abstract: This article investigates the Thatcher government’s attempts to suppress or censor BBC reporting on secret intelligence issues in the early 1980s. It examines official reactions to a BBC intrusion into the secret world, as the team behind the long- running Panorama documentary strand sought to examine the role and accountability of Britain’s clandestine services. -
Unmasking Gchq: the Abc Trial 341
UNMASKING GCHQ: THE ABC TRIAL 341 18 too large for any human to read. Moreover, the vast complexes of domes and satellite dishes that now accompanied the suppos- Unmasking GCHQ: The ABC Trial edly super-secret intelligence activities of NSAand GCHQmeant that they were more and more visible. Sooner rather than later, an enterprising investigative journalist was bound to point to these surreal installations and shout the dreaded words 'Signals We've been to MI5, MI6, Scotland Yard, Parliament and many intelligence.' It is amazing that in the mid-1970s GCHQ was more. Now we're going where much of the dirty work goes on - still managing to pass itself off as a glorified communications CHELTENHAM! relay station, hiding its real activities from public view. ABC trial campaign newsletter, 27 May 19781 Anonymity would not last much longer. What we now recognise as the first glimmerings of a global telecommunications revolution seemed 10 be in the interests of the world's major sigint agencies. A fascinating example of this During the late 1960s and early 1970s, signals intelligence was was an operation carried out jointly by the British and Americans changing fast. The big players were discovering a whole new in 1969. NSA was gathering a great deal of intelligence from world of super-secret interception which provided a different telephone callsbetween Fidel Castro's Cuba and the many Cuban sort of signals intelligence. This new source was telephone calls. exiles living in Florida. Using sigint ships, it was also possible As we have already seen, tapping telephones was hardly new, 10 intercept some calls from Havana to other parts of Cuba. -
Intelligence Agents As Authors: a Comparison of the British Courts' Position on Attorney-General V
Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review Volume 11 Number 2 Article 4 3-1-1989 Intelligence Agents as Authors: A Comparison of the British Courts' Position on Attorney-General v. Heinemann Publishers and the United States Supreme Court Decision of Snepp v. United States Nancy Alyce Jerian Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ilr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Nancy Alyce Jerian, Intelligence Agents as Authors: A Comparison of the British Courts' Position on Attorney-General v. Heinemann Publishers and the United States Supreme Court Decision of Snepp v. United States, 11 Loy. L.A. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 345 (1989). Available at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ilr/vol11/iss2/4 This Notes and Comments is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews at Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NOTES AND COMMENTS Intelligence Agents as Authors: A Comparison of the British Courts' Position on Attorney-General v. Heinemann Publishers and the United States Supreme Court Decision of Snepp v. United States I. INTRODUCTION In 1976, Peter Wright retired from a twenty-one year career with the British Security Service. I Throughout his career, Wright had gained access to virtually all classified information concerning British intelligence and the intelligence of other major world powers. -
Project VENONA: Breaking the Unbreakable Code
Georgia Southern University Digital Commons@Georgia Southern University Honors Program Theses 2020 Project VENONA: Breaking the Unbreakable Code Cassandra Hankin Georgia Southern University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Hankin, Cassandra, "Project VENONA: Breaking the Unbreakable Code" (2020). University Honors Program Theses. 471. https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses/471 This thesis (open access) is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. It has been accepted for inclusion in University Honors Program Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Project VENONA: Breaking the Unbreakable Code An Honors Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in History. By Cassandra Hankin Under the mentorship of Dr. Bill Allison ABSTRACT Project VENONA was a top-secret counterintelligence program initiated by the United States Army Signals Intelligence Service during World War II. VENONA was established to decipher intercepted Soviet communications and break the “unbreakable” Soviet code system. Examining Project VENONA and its discoveries is vital to understanding the history of the early Cold War. Thesis Mentor:________________________ Dr. Bill Allison Honors Director:_______________________ Dr. Steven Engel April 2020 Department of History University Honors Program Georgia Southern University 2 Acknowledgements There are many people I’d like to thank for helping me during the year and a half I worked on this project. For helping me through the research and writing process, I would like to thank Dr. Bill Allison, who never gave up on me or my project. -
British Intelligence, Archives, and the End of the Cold War
The Opening Hand: British Intelligence, Archives, and the End of the Cold War ANDREW HORRALL The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence. RICHARD J. ALDRICH. New York: Overlook Press, 2002. 733 p. ISBN 1- 5886-7274-2. Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5. STELLA RIMINGTON. London: Hutchinson, 2001. 288 p. ISBN 0-0917- 9360-2. RÉSUMÉ L’auteur fait la critique des ouvrages Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5, de Stella Rimington et de The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence, de Richard J. Aldrich. Après avoir sans suc- cès essayé d’empêcher la publication de Spycatcher, les mémoires de l’agent secret Peter Wright en 1987, le gouvernement britannique a été de plus en plus tolérant quant aux révélations au sujet de ses services secrets. La fin de la guerre froide a encouragé ce climat d’ouverture officielle et permis, en 1997, le début du transfert des dossiers historiques de l’agence secrète britannique MI5 au Public Record Office de Londres. Les mémoires de Rimington et l’histoire de Aldrich, basés en partie sur des documents nouvellement disponibles, sont des exemples de la frontière entre ce que le gouverne- ment britannique veut bien transmettre aux archives et ce qu’il préfère garder secret. ABSTRACT This essay reviews Stella Rimington’s Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5, and Richard J. Aldrich’s The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence. Since unsuccessfully trying in 1987 to block the publication of Spycatcher, Peter Wright’s memoirs of his career in British intelligence, the British government has been increasingly tolerant towards rev- elations about its secret services. -
Spycatcher Cases, the British Government Relied on the Common Law Action of Breach of Confidence
Case Comments The Spycatcher Cases If the publication of this book in America is to have, for all practical purposes, the effect of nullifying the jurisdiction of the English courts to enforce compliance with the duty of confidence, . then, . the English law would have surrendered to the American Constitution. There the courts, by virtue of the First Amendment, are, I understand, powerless to control the press. Fortunately, the press in this country is, as yet, not above the law. .. With this statement, Lord Ackner has, perhaps unwittingly, illustrated the vast difference between the freedom of the press in England and in the United States. In the United States, the Supreme Court has consistently maintained that any system of prior restraint bears a strong "presumption against its constitutional validity. ' 2 The government, therefore, "carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint." ' 3 That burden is not reduced simply because the government seeks a temporary injunction against the press, because even a slight delay would interfere with the press's "traditional function of bringing news to the public promptly." ' 4 In England, however, the presumption is just the opposite. The courts, when balancing the competing interests between preserving confidentiality and keeping the public informed, resolve the conflict in favor of prior restraint unless 5 the latter interest clearly outweighs the public interest in maintaining confidence. The difference between these two approaches is demonstrated by the Spycatcher cases. If these cases had arisen in the United States, the British claims would have been rejected in a manner similar to the Supreme Court's dismissal of the temporary injunctions against the New York Times and Washington Post in New York Times Co. -
The Fight Against Russian “Illegal” Spies in Great Britain During the Early Cold War
Volume 3, Issue 2: November 2020 The Fight against Russian “Illegal” Spies in Great Britain During the Early Cold War Trevor Barnes (Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge) Introduction In September 1960 Britain’s counterintelligence service MI5 (also known as the Security Service) secretly broke into the London bank deposit box of a Canadian businessman, Gordon Lonsdale. They found a treasure trove of KGB spy paraphernalia: proof that Lonsdale was in fact a Russian deep cover “illegal” spy, whose real name was Konon Molody.1 Although Molody was the first Russian “illegal” spy MI5 uncovered in Britain during the Cold War, the Security Service had been far from complacent in the preceding years about the threat “illegals” posed and had obtained valuable information about their methods from a notorious and earlier American case. In 1957 the FBI had arrested in New York a man known as Rudolf Abel. The bureau shared valuable information about the case with the British, and the declassified Security Service files on Abel (real name William Fisher)2 provide valuable insights into the reaction of British and other Five Eyes intelligence agencies and their combat against Russian “illegals.” The arrest on January 7, 1961, of Konon Molody and two fellow KGB “illegals” in the Portland Spy Ring—Morris and Lona Cohen—was precipitated by the defection in Berlin 1 See Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm (London: Penguin, 2010), 485–88; Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Penguin, 2000), 532–37; and Trevor Barnes, Dead Doubles: The Extraordinary Worldwide Hunt for One of the Cold War’s Most Notorious Spy Rings (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2020), 184–85, 219–34. -
GCHQ and the International Right to Journalistic Expression Matthew .B Hurowitz
Brooklyn Journal of International Law Volume 43 | Issue 1 Article 30 12-12-2017 The crS ivener’s Secrets Seen Through the Spyglass: GCHQ and the International Right to Journalistic Expression Matthew .B Hurowitz Follow this and additional works at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/bjil Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, European Law Commons, First Amendment Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, International Law Commons, National Security Law Commons, and the Privacy Law Commons Recommended Citation Matthew B. Hurowitz, The Scrivener’s Secrets Seen Through the Spyglass: GCHQ and the International Right to Journalistic Expression, 43 Brook. J. Int'l L. 261 (2017). Available at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/bjil/vol43/iss1/30 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at BrooklynWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Brooklyn Journal of International Law by an authorized editor of BrooklynWorks. THE 0'RI.E(ER&0 0E'RETS SEEN THROUGH THE SPYGLASS: THE GCHQ AND THE INTERNATIONAL RIGHT TO JOURNALISTIC EXPRESSION INTRODUCTION he Edward Snowden1 leaks Q“Snowden leaks”P painted a Tclear picture of contemporary government surveillance and data storage. While government-sanctioned warrantless hoarding of personal data was once thought of as a problem ex- clusive to those intrusiveO “freedom-hating” governments of the world, the Snowden leaks pulled back the curtain and painted a very different picture.2 The Snowden leaks revealed that several nations, up until the date of the historic article published by The Guardian in the summer of 2013, that were perceived as rela- tively strong on issues of personal privacy, had engaged in the bulk collection of their citiRen’s communications dataO or “metadataO” as it is sometimes knownK3 The public discovered 1. -
The Spycatcher Saga
Dalhousie Law Journal Volume 12 Issue 2 Article 1 10-1-1989 The Spycatcher Saga D GT Williams Cambridge University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/dlj Part of the National Security Law Commons Recommended Citation D GT Williams, "The Spycatcher Saga" (1989) 12:2 Dal LJ 209. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Schulich Law Scholars. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dalhousie Law Journal by an authorized editor of Schulich Law Scholars. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Articles D.G.T. Williams* The Spycatcher Saga I. Introduction The central facts in the unfolding of the Spycatcher saga are relatively well-known. Peter Wright left M.I.5 in 1976 after some twenty years' service "in the shadows;"' his health was "bad", his pension "derisory", but he had his "memories."'2 After retirement he went to live in Tasmania, where (according to Kirby P in the Court of Appeal of New South '3 Wales) "he still resides in a place with the idyllic name of Cygnet." Despite the distance Peter Wright remained closely involved in the welter of allegations and denials, which emerged especially after the unmasking of Anthony Blunt as a former double agent in late 1979, about the inner workings of M.I.5 and Soviet penetration of M.I.5. In 1984 a television interview with Mr. Wright concerned in part the suggestion that Sir Roger Hollis, a former Director-General of M.I.5, had been a Soviet agent.