We must trust the state to bug the right people

By Alasdair Palmer

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In Francis Ford Coppola's wonderfully paranoid movie The Conversation, the central character ends up destroying his apartment in a desperate hunt for the bug that he's sure has been planted somewhere inside it. He never finds the device, despite ripping out every plug, wire and electrical device in an ever-more frantic search. The film ends with his playing the saxophone amid the ruins of what used to be his home. The Conversation encapsulates the fear of being snooped on. It was released in April 1974, just four days before Congress requested 42 tapes that President Nixon had secretly recorded in the Oval Office - tapes which would prove that Nixon had also ordered the bugging of the Democrats' HQ in the Watergate Building. News: Bugging could lead to killers being freed Secret unit 'bugged hundreds of prison visits' Andrew Pierce: What's wrong with bugging MPs and priests? advertisement There was a lot of surveillance in the early Seventies, but there's a hell of a lot more today, not least because of the colossal expansion in the technology which makes it possible. CCTV, ubiquitous now, was a rarity then. In those days, almost all transactions in shops or restaurants were in cash. Today, most purchases are made with credit cards - so your credit card company knows what you buy and where. There were no mobiles 34 years ago. Today, your mobile company tracks where you've been as well as who you've called and who has called you. No one had a personal computer in 1974. Today, the computer we all leave permanently switched on is one of the most potent instruments known to man for snooping. Google, for instance, has a record of each website you have ever visited - yes, they know when you take just a quick look at that site which you know you shouldn't … Conscience may, as James Thurber insisted, be the sense that "someone, somewhere, is watching" - but that's exactly why we all hope that nobody actually is watching. No ordinary human being has a completely clear conscience. Everyone does things they would rather no one else knew about. A degree of privacy, of freedom from surveillance and intrusion, is essential to living any kind of desirable life at all. That's why those East European Communist states which came close to realising Himmler's vision of the "permanent police supervision of everyone" were so repulsive. The "right to a private life" is the last defence against encroaching totalitarian government - and there is a lot of encroaching government about. The most alarming aspect of last week's revelation that the police bugged conversations between Sadiq Khan, the Labour MP, and the prisoner Babar Ahmad, was that the police officers who did it thought it utterly unexceptional. It didn't occur to them to ask for ministerial authority. They didn't need it. And it seems they did it hundreds of times, to hundreds of different prisoners and lawyers. It is a striking example of the "mission creep" that is an occupational hazard for those involved in surveillance: it starts legitimately, but quickly expands beyond all legitimate bounds. The fear is that we'll wake up one day and find that the state has achieved "the permanent police supervision of everyone". That is why it's so important to ensure that the agents of the state involved in surveillance are properly accountable for what they do. But "properly accountable" is precisely what the spooks cannot be, at least if they are going to be able to make effective use of surveillance. Surveillance has to be secret in order to work. The terrorist who knows he is being watched or listened to will not reveal where he and his pals are planning to put the bomb - which means that next to nothing can be revealed about exactly who is being watched, or how and when. The Chilcot Report on whether intercept evidence should be made admissible in British courts, published last week, wrestled bravely with that dilemma. Making intercept evidence admissible appears to be a no-brainer: of course it should be admissible. Some of the best evidence against terrorists frequently comes from the conversations that the cops and the spooks have secretly recorded. If that was available for the purposes of prosecuting, it would significantly increase the number who get convicted. Furthermore, there is nothing like the security and intelligence services knowing that what they do will be scrutinised and "tested" by hostile defence lawyers for keeping the buggers honest. If we cannot directly control who they put under surveillance or why they do it, confronting them with the threat that their methods and procedures will be exposed in court is the next best thing. And yet … as the Chilcot Report pointed out, it is not quite as simple as that. The number of additional convictions which would result from using intercept evidence is predicted to be very small, especially in terrorist cases: not more than one or two a year, according to the best estimates. But there is no doubt that, were intercept evidence used in court, it would damage the ability of the security and intelligence services and others to use it effectively. The question is how severe that damage would be. The agencies that do most of the bugging are certain that it would be very severe. The telecoms and computer companies which help the state in its snooping would stop if their "help" was exposed in court. Foreign intelligence agencies who let us see the fruits of their own bugging would also stop sharing it. One civil servant in the Justice Department told me that he used to be convinced that intercept evidence should be admissible. Listening to a succession of secret agents insist that opening up intercept evidence to the scrutiny of defence lawyers would tell the bad guys all they needed to know to avoid surveillance changed his mind. The security services' trump card, however, is resources. They stressed that the preparation of intercepted material for use by the courts would take officers, and, particularly, competent translators (for many of the terrorists who are bugged do not speak in English), away from tracking active terrorist plots. So, said the spooks, there is a choice: the Government must massively increase the resources it gives us or accept a significant increase in the terrorist threat. That seems to have ended that debate. To the obvious question,"If other states can use intercept evidence in court, why can't we?", Lord Chilcot and his committee replied that, in fact, most other states do not use intercept evidence gathered by the equivalent of their intelligence services in court. You do not see intercepts from the NSA or the CIA in American courts. The French, the Dutch and the Irish ensure that material from their intelligence services is never subject to public scrutiny of any kind. Chilcot's conclusion? To propose that intercept evidence be made admissible - with the proviso that the security and intelligence services could veto its use in any court case when they thought that the result would be to damage national security. Given those services' adamant opposition to producing intercepts, that amounts to advocating that intercept evidence should be admissible in theory but never in practice. The Prime Minister has commissioned yet another report. Don't expect anything very significant to emerge from it. The Government, and the Chilcot Committee, think that the protection of our security is more important than accountability - and so, up to a point, should we. But because there is no way to combine accountability and efficiency, we can never know when that point has been crossed. We just have to hope, and trust, that it is not. Sadly, that means living with the risk of sleep-walking into the "permanent police supervision of everyone" - which is why The Conversation remains a powerful and troubling film.

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Related articles News: Bugging could lead to killers being freed

Privacy is a personal freedom or civil liberty and as we aren't allowed to have any rights or think for ourselves this is the logical step.

Posted by Amanda Regan on February 10, 2008 3:35 PM
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I wonder if the reports about systematic bugging would have emerged if the Government had paid the police their pay rise in full?

Posted by Primus Secundus Tertius on February 10, 2008 3:06 PM
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Whatever proves to be the correct balance between the citizen and the state regarding the right of the latter to intrude on the privacy of the former, we have certainly got it very wrong in the UK.

The British citizen has virtually no legal protection because we deemed ourselves to be be quite a civilised lot, which was fine when there were no technological means to spy on people, however the fantastic rise in technology has conversely led to a deplorable plummet in personal liberty.

While we may have sneered at others countries creation of strong and immutable privacy legislation, it may be time to admit that we need the very same thing here in Britain, because technology has revealed we aren't nearly as civilised as we thought we were.

We are I believe the only EU nation to be labelled an "endemic surveillance society" by privacy international: link

That is not satisfactory to me, and it certainly shouldn't be satisfactory to the rest of my fellows Citizens.
Posted by Matthias Gris on February 10, 2008 1:47 PM
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"We must trust the state to bug the right people"

Wrong! The State only exists to maintain our security. Yet they are progressively making themselves, both here and around the world, the biggest threat to our security.

In case it has escaped anyone's attention, the scales have fallen from our eyes. We no longer live in the Edwardian era when it was still unthinkable that Politicians or Policemen could be anything but paragons of virtue. For a raft of entirely legitimate reasons, it is now completely rational NOT to trust politicians, police or even Judges with the kind of authority we need to oversee something as dangerous as spying on our own citizens.

Spying on your own citizens is a major step - probably THE major step - on the road to Totalitarianism. There is only one way to allow such behaviour on the very rare occasions where it may be justified, whilst ensuring that we do not pave the way to such a hell with good intentions.

We must insist that no such serious measures are ever taken WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF A JURY of citizens, duly vetted and sworn to secrecy - though entitled to breach that secrecy if they witness abuse of power by the executive or its employees.

We like to believe that we live in a Democracy. We're wrong to believe it, but that's a different issue. One way, however, we can begin to make it true, is to establish Democratic control over our Justice and Security system. Juries of our fellow citizens are the only people we can or should trust with such dangerous authority.

This is the fundamental constitutional basis which lies at the heart of what I been describing as "Trusted Surveillance" for the past few years. (More on my web site)

Posted by Harry Stottle on February 10, 2008 12:53 PM
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The state is a function of its 'officers', and on past performance I wouldn't trust them to put their shoes on the right foot, let alone bug the right people.

But it is the duty of all good citizens to do something about this. The reason that we don't is the same complacency that allowed Hitler to rise to a position of power in the 1930's.

Learning the lessons of history? Erm, no....
Posted by Mike Poulsen on February 10, 2008 12:48 PM
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Muriel Spark also satirised Watergate, though I suspect the rather disjointed film ("Nasty Habits" 1977) was nothing like as biting as the book, "The Abbess of Crewe", 1974.

It is in the nature of surveillance that it is covert. Sadly also it is true that sometimes it is used to protect people from themselves.

We know that the Late Princess of Wales on more than one occasion was troubled by her belief that she was being bugged - and public domain evidence of rebroadcast telephone calls by both the Princess and her husband is a pointer at the realities. Diana's desire for privacy was surely contributory to her death.

Most surveillance, bugging, call it what you will, is infinitely more mundane. Once, vast amounts of material had to be combed through - because it is a waiting game, a needle in a haystack operation when it is systemic rather than very highly targeted. These days clever electronics can scan for key words and other aspects of recorded data - saving countless man-hours.

Intelligence work as it should be understood is about prevention before the fact not detection after the fact. Do not confuse the two uses: you will never hear much about the former, in the latter the techniques are being compromised.
Posted by simon coulter on February 10, 2008 12:03 PM
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Why are the politicians and media in such a lather about this bugging.
It is being done in the national interest and politians are not above the law. And why should prisoners or people in custody complain? If they are innocent then perhasps it will help them?
Most street and work chatter seems to support such bugging?
Posted by Geoff Malthouse on February 10, 2008 10:49 AM
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Come to think of it, why not ban curtains and - say - bathroom doors?

If you have nothing to hide...
Posted by Alec in France on February 10, 2008 10:31 AM
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Surely the best control would be financial. Every phone tap or bug requires someone to listen to it. If the number of peole entitled to lsiten is limited by budget constraints, the the security services will be forced to concentrate on those sources which represent a genuine threat. Remember that those odious East European regimes ultimately folded because their security was too tight, and thus too expensive.
Posted by Richard Cooper on February 10, 2008 10:29 AM
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I am not sure the headline to the article accurately reflects the argument you put forward.
We exactly MUST NOT trust the state to bug the right people
Posted by Paul Allkins on February 10, 2008 8:47 AM
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<< We must trust the state to bug the right people >>

Oh, don’t be naïve. Who are these ‘right people’.

No everyone should be bugged. Think about it. What is picked up by the bugs is put through a computer with voice recognition, date and time stamped, and then compressed. It wouldn’t be a problem to store an enormous amount of data and because already digitised being able to search on anything is nearly instantaneous.

As I say, think about it. Wouldn’t it be nice to go into your council archives and see exactly what was discussed and in what words by whom. Surely the only people to really object are actually the guilty.

Do you remember on the actual day of the last election in the UK the then PM Tony Blair having a meeting with Rupert Murdoch at No 10 ? Now wouldn’t that be interesting. And why not. It might be embarrassing to the PM and Inland Revenue, but for the rest of us, I think it would be worth knowing what was said, don’t you ?

And as for bugging the lawyers with their clients, I think that is brilliant and I totally approve. What have they got to worry about, surely their brief is to protect the innocent not the guilty.
Posted by Paul M. Wilson on February 10, 2008 8:11 AM
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A bug device is just another tool,like the policemans torch it enables him to see what he otherwise wouldn,t..so what is wrong with that?

I for one, regard our security forces as my protectors against evil people out to harm Britain...so I say,bug em,arrest em, jail em.

Oh,and by the way,does Labour MP Mr. Khan visit all his costituants who are in jail? if the answer is no,then why this one,linked to possible terrorism charges!..that is why the pair of them roused suspicion, of course they should be bugged...I don,t have a problem with it,

Derek McDonald,
Saigon, Vietnam.
Posted by Derek McDonald on February 10, 2008 5:45 AM
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Bugging is good for us. Everyone should be subject to it. As Gordon Brown is proposing, the public will have a right to listen to full recordings of his personal conversations with his wife, friends, close colleagues, etc., upon demand. After all, he is the biggest terrorist we have ever known in tax terms! :))
Posted by Terror Britain on February 10, 2008 2:26 AM
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