Brown plans to admit wiretap evidence in court

Cherry picking

I see a few problems.

Firstly, they plan on releasing *some* of the data, but that will lead to cherry picking, with the spooks choosing the recordings that back their case. The defence should be allowed the same access to all the recordings of that person.

All, because the person was there, so you are not telling him anything he doesn't already know. And others know when they spoke to the target, so they know too. All parties in a conversation know about the conversation!

All, because a 500GB portable hard disk can hold a lifetimes worth of voice recordings, so it's not difficult to give them a copy.

All, because voice recording equipment keeps the spooks comment, target id, channel etc. in a database with the recording. It's very trivial to give them a copy of all the voice recordings they have that include that person. I don't believe that the spooks have substandard interception equipment that doesn't meet evidence gathering standards, but yet the police do? Pull the other one it's got ringtones on it.

BTW, if you want to learn about pro voice interception/recording equipment grab the brochure.

http://www.wacs.com.au/thales.htm

The defence should be able to transcribe the parts that show their defence case as much as the prosecution can to prosecute them.

Look at it this way, you go to court, "Ivan said death to Blair in this recording here", perhaps he also said "You know, I often curse that Tony Blair but actually I'm his biggest fan and I'm just joking around" 500 times. To present only the "death to Blair" text out of context like that would be misleading.

As for the 'we have special tricks that would be revealed'. It's done in mainland Europe and I don't believe that there are tricks only known to the UK. That master class he theorises about would have already happened in mainland European cases.

IMHO, They should also remove control orders and the like. Anything where a spook, based on a secret interception, whispers in the Home Secretary's ear and he in turn imposes house arrest based on this unsound unchallengeable information. That should end, they do house arrest under political order in Burma, it has no place in the UK.

Put it another way, if the evidence wasn't sound, they'd go whisper in Home Sec's ear, but then unsound evidence is the type the court is there to protect against! It's the iffy times you exactly want the court to examine.

Likewise all the other flows of information to government departments which in turn lead to plastic police investigations. i.e. pseudo police forces in each government department that investigate stuff directly instead of asking the police to do it. Surely it's a police job?

"An example of the operational constraints this can impose can be found in the operations of bomb-disposal robots."

If BBC made a TV program "Bomb disposal, heroes on the extreme edge", they'd be lining up with their bomb disposal videos.

You can't both argue that

* Terrorist are getting off free because we can't submit the evidence

and

* We can't submit it because we need to protect our bomb disposal techniques.

Are the bomb disposal techniques so important that it's better to let terrorist go?

If you can't convince a judge it's so secret it should be kept from the defence then it shouldn't be, because the judge is the independent viewpoint.

We should get back to that system, where the police investigate, the judiciary prosecute, the government legislates. No more plastic police, taking on pseudo police roles, no more politico taking on judicial roles, no more vague legislation that leaves the fine detail up to the police.

/rant

Why are the secret squirrels opposing this?

"The targets for criminal investigation do not know what the security services can and cannot do."

In which case, they must be remarkably ignorant. Typing "lawful intercept" into any search engine should allow most people to obtain a good grounding in the capabilities available.

@Graham Marsden

I like what your saying and it fits with my own ideals, however, what evidence do you have for either part of your statement?

Encrypted phone conversations

Plug in a PC with a sound output, wire your phone to accept the output from the PC and feed input to the PC, run some form of audio encryption software (Nautilus was one example I remember from YEARS ago), and recommend SS* prove that your conversation wasn't just a terrible, terrible connection.

This is easier with encrypted files, where you can just delete the extension and say "Encryption? It must just be corrupt."

* Yes, yes... Godwin's Law. Apolgies.

Contrary to any Perceived or PreConceived Opinion

"It's also just possible that the spooks of old Blighty are actually mainly worried about people learning quite how limited their capabilities are, rather than the disclosure of an armoury of impressive unknown tricks. The spies might perhaps be more afraid of embarrassment than operational compromise."

I should just like to ensure the Board that such concerns are unwarranted and have no Foundation in Fact. QuiTe what the spooks of old Blighty can do, are not limited in any Capability. And QuITe beyond the Ken of Careless Disclosure. That which they Possess is Priceless beyond Compare and can Destroy All who would Dare ITs Might and Decline ITs Gracious Embrace of the Challenge. The Virtual Kiss of Death for a Wrong Un, a Renegade or a Rogue and all wrought by Ones Own Folly of Choices Clearly XXXXPlained.

And their Boffins have Jumping to a Fine Tempestuous AIRt2 ........ Astute NEUKlearer Technology which is a Shared Top Secret when Openly Shared but you will have Trouble Believing IT42BTrue. Although that is ITs Master Key with Parallel Support.

@AC

The article is about wiretaps, not the kind of bugging device that was used in the Sadiq Khan MP case. Phone service providers are required to provide lawful intercept information to properly authorised persons. How this is done is set out in public documents from ETSI.

The intercept information obviously cannot exceed that available to the service provider - viz:

Who: source and destination phone numbers

When: accurate date and time stamp

Where: physical location (for mobiles based on the local cell being used)

What: recording of the conversation.

All this info is readily available to terrorists. The squirrels tell us that they are very sophisticated, although most of the evidence is that they're closer to the "terror clowns" described by Lewis in an earlier article.

@AC and DaveTheRave

AC: "what evidence do you have for either part of your statement?"

To quote Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty:

“Our reluctance to use phone tap evidence in terror cases like most other countries is frankly mind-boggling. Surely the Government and police recognise that this is a far more effective tool than bringing back internment by holding suspects for 90 days without charge.”

Dave: "I wouldn't think it would be difficult to falsify audio recordings."

Other have already mentioned the De Menezes "faked" photo and taking comments out of context, but consider also if the Security Services attempted to falsify recordings eg by inserting "doctored" phrases, all it would take is *one* example of someone being able to show (eg by recording their own conversations) that such a recording had been faked to cast serious doubt on *all* such evidence in future.

"there will be a complex regime of checks and safeguards"

I'll bet there will be, and it will be so complex that there will be a number of ways to go around them perfectly "legally" and still have the "evidence" presented to the court.

As for doctoring a sound recording, I think it is quite a bit more difficult than fixing pixels on a picture. It has something to do with harmonics, and I'm sure an expert of proper qualifications could tell in an instant if the recording had been tampered with.

And, given the poor performance of the doctored pictures we have been presented with, I have no doubt that changing a recording in a believable manner will be far beyond the abilities of the plod charged with the tweak.

On the other hand, faking a recording entirely might be a lot easier to do, and more difficult to spot.

Take your tin foil hats off.

Most of you naysayers haven't given even the slightest consideration to legitimate uses for this legislation, instead jumping on the tinfoil hat bandwagon.

The reason for this legislation is probably the same as that for why similar legislation was introduced in Australia.

Previously, evidence of serious crime such as trafficking child pornography incidentally collected as SIGINT intercept could not be actioned at all, in anyway. The intercept (or even a tipoff) could not be passed to the police, nor used in court.

How would you feel if you were an analyst at GCHQ, you came across this sort of material in incidentally collected SIGINT, and knew you could do absolutely nothing whatsoever about it?

Disclosing the full details of how the intercept was collected gives away vital details of SIGINT capabilities, which essentially renders those capabilities useless.