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Security and Intelligence - new material (17)

01 April 2011

“The Rosemary Nelson Inquiry Report”, Sir Michael Morland (Chair). The Stationery Office, pp. 505, (ISBN: 9780102971071). Rosemary Nelson, a prominent lawyer and human rights defender, was demonised by loyalists, threatened by police and finally assassinated in a car bomb attack on 15 March 1999. As had been widely predicted, the Moreland Inquiry found “no evidence of any act by or within any of the state agencies we have examined” that “directly facilitated Rosemary Nelson’s murder” but did concede that "the state failed to take reasonable and proportionate steps to safeguard the life of Rosemary Nelson". As Amnesty (24.5.11) has pointed out, the government interpretation of these conclusions as meaning that the authorities have been completely cleared of collusion in the killing, is disingenuous: “This response is, sadly, an example of the United Kingdom government glossing over the inconvenient findings of an inquiry and failing to learn fully from the lessons of its past in Northern Ireland.” Available as a free download at: www.official-documents.gov.uk

Up to a quarter of US hackers are secret service informers, Ed Pilkington. The Guardian 7.6.11. Interesting article which claims that: “The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers.”

Assessing the Effects of Prevent Policing: a report to the Association of Chief Police Officers, Martin Innes, Colin Roberts and Helen Innes (with Trudy Lowe and Suraj Lakhani). Universities’ Police Science Institute and Cardiff University (March 2011) pp. 100. In his study Spooked: How not to prevent violent extremism Arun Kundnani described the Prevent programme as “one of the most elaborate systems of surveillance ever seen in Britain.” This Cardiff University study was commissioned by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and it gives an assessment of the effects of Prevent informed by analysis of the British Crime Survey.