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A PRACTICAL GUIDEThe four articles below are
taken from the BBC News Online.
Whilst the articles are now somewhat dated the gist is good. Collectively these articles present a good layman’s guide to the UK ‘bugging’. These articles focus on the citizen’s perspective. You are advised to listen to the BBC radio 4 broadcast ‘BeingBugged’ which can be accessed from my main article ‘The Art of Spying’. Bugs Listening or visual devices (bugs) come in many different modes. Whilst available bugs are becoming increasingly more sophisticated the underlying problems of transmission and power source remains. Thus unless an external power source is available (such as a phone line) then the best commercially available bug is unlikely to have an active life beyond 10 days, with 1 to 3 days being the norm prior to battery failure. Commonplace bugs usually fall into the below categories: The
socket: A tiny transmitter concealed in a 13 amp mains adapter
can be bought for as little as £400. It is powered off the mains
and can pick up sound 100 metres away.
The
pen: What could be less suspicious than a pen, possibly
disguised as a complimentary gift.
The
telephone: Virtually undetectable now if done by an official
service but unofficial surveillance will involve a tap probably
disguised as a phone splitter plugged into the socket.
The
clock: Clocks that house a tiny microphone and CCTV camera can
be bought on the open market. To fool the unsuspecting the clocks work
as normal.
The
mobile phone: The security services can log on remotely to a
person’s phone and record their conversations secretly. Mobile phones
are on sale that work in a similar way and allow someone to listen in
on the conversations.
The walls have eyes and earsBy Chris Summers
BBC News Online Every day thousands of telephone conversations are listened in on, e-mails intercepted and rooms bugged. The eavesdroppers include police officers, MI5 agents, private investigators, suspicious spouses and stalkers. The targets range from terrorists, paedophiles and organised criminals to company executives and errant husbands. "Snooping" devices are doubtless a crucial tool in the fight against those planning dastardly crimes. But bugs and phone taps can also threaten the human rights of innocent people. "Spy" technology has come on leaps and bounds in the last 30 years and it is harder than ever to keep anything you say or write confidential. Most people go through life entirely oblivious of the power of such technology. But for those who have been targeted it can be a horrible experience which leaves a legacy of distrust and paranoia. Telephone tapping and intrusive surveillance in the UK are covered by laws and guidelines. Only the police and a handful of other law enforcement and intelligence agencies are allowed to use taps and each one has to be approved by the home secretary. Up until 2000 warrants had to refer to specific addresses. In 1958 there were 95 warrants; 1968 155 warrants; 1978 214 warrants; and in 2000 2,080. In 2001 they became "person specific", which meant each warrant must refer to a single target but can apply to numerous telephone numbers, for example home, business and mobile phones. This meant the number of warrants issued fell from 2,080 in 2000 to 1,314 in 2001. The figure did not include warrants issued on the grounds of national security to MI5 or military intelligence. It also did not include any warrants issued in Northern Ireland. 'Misleading' Reg McKay, an investigative crime journalist in Scotland, believes the figures are misleading and says there are hundreds of "unofficial" taps being used by the police every day. Mr McKay, who has been told by an electronic surveillance expert his own phone was "definitely" tapped, said: "I don't have a problem with the police tapping the phone if they suspect a major crime is being committed. "What I do have a problem with is when it is done unofficially." Those who believe their phones are being monitored are in a Catch 22 situation. The police are not obliged to confirm or deny their phones are being tapped, so they cannot take any legal action. Complaints rejected There is an independent watchdog - the Investigatory Powers Tribunal - but neither it, nor its predecessor, have upheld a single complaint over tapping in 18 years. The head of the civil rights group Liberty, John Wadham, admitted it would be counter-productive to allow all those targeted by the police to find out if their phones were tapped. But he said: "There are many people who are identified by the police as targets but later realised to be completely innocent. In that case people should be told, at some time, that they were under surveillance." Simon Davies, of the pressure group, Privacy International, said the vast majority of people who contacted his organisation thinking their phones were tapped were probably wrong. He said: "It is very expensive to tap a phone. It costs about £1,000 an hour and 90% of the people who come to us would be of no interest to the police or security services. "A lot of people hear clicking sounds on the line and think that means their phone is tapped. In reality the police usually 'clean' your line before tapping it to get the best sound quality so you are unlikely to hear clicks or hums," he said. Patrick Mercer, a Conservative front bench spokesman on home affairs, told BBC News Online he supported the current system for police use of surveillance devices and was happy with the checks and balances in place. He said he knew of occasions, in Northern Ireland, when members of the security services had been dismissed for activating illegal phone taps. "That was entirely right. We must control the security services just as we would a maverick individual and they should face the full force of the law if they fall foul of it," he said. A Home Office spokesman pointed out that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has the power to award compensation, make orders quashing or cancelling any warrant or authorisation, or make orders for the destruction of information or records. Who can apply for a phone tap warrant?
As part of BBC News Online's investigation into Secret Britain, we spoke to an alleged victim of unjustified phone tapping. Malcolm Kennedy began suspecting his telephone was tapped shortly after he set up a new business in 1998. It may sound like paranoia but he is not alone in believing his phone is tapped. Many, like Kennedy - who has long protested about a manslaughter conviction - have had high-profile disputes with the police or other public institutions. Kennedy believes MI5, the Special Branch, a department of the Metropolitan Police or someone else is sabotaging his phones to keep tabs on him and interfere with his business. The pressure group Privacy International receives at least a dozen calls a week from people who believe their phones are tapped and they say this is the tip of the iceberg. What is more it is virtually impossible for them to confirm officially whether or not their phones are tapped. The police and security services, if approached directly, have no obligation to confirm or deny they are tapping a phone and critics say the Investigatory Powers Tribunal - which oversee complaints - is toothless. It has never upheld a complaint made to it. Likewise, its predecessor, the Interception of Communications Tribunal, did not uphold a single complaint in its 13 years of existence. In the early and mid-1990s Kennedy's case was something of a cause celebre among critics of the criminal justice system. The former restaurateur from Hackney, east London, who had no previous criminal record, was convicted of murdering Patrick Quinn, 56, in a cell at Hammersmith police station where both had been detained for drunkenness. He maintained his innocence and told his trial he believed Quinn was killed by police officers. Phone problems Kennedy's murder conviction was later quashed but he was convicted of manslaughter at his retrial. After his release from prison in 1996, Kennedy tried to rebuild his life while still seeking evidence which might clear his name. Before his conviction he had been a successful restaurateur but he lost everything when he went to jail, and when he came out he found it almost impossible to get a job because of his conviction. Kennedy decided the only option was to work for himself and he set up a "man and a van" business, offering small-scale removals. He advertised in both the Yellow Pages and on the internet but received constant reports that people were having trouble getting through to his numbers. Kennedy was told by some customers and friends that his phone number was giving an engaged or dead signal. He himself occasionally heard strange sounds while he was talking on the line and at one point heard a previous conversation being played back over the phone. He also said that on occasion he overheard someone whispering things like: "That's Kennedy - I recognise his voice". He checked with his phone company and was told there was nothing wrong with his line. Kennedy, now 56, complained to then Home Secretary Jack Straw, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Interception of Communications Tribunal. No phone tap was identified. The leaky netBy Mark Ward
BBC News Online technology correspondent In everyday life, with a few simple precautions, you can keep your personal details private. By using cash, taking public transport, using a pre-paid mobile and avoiding the internet most of your movements will go unseen. You will not fade away entirely, but the time and trouble it will take someone to find out what you have been doing will make you a lot less visible. But on the net, almost no matter what you do, you leave behind scraps of information about what you have been doing. Information about the computer you are using, the sites you visit, where files were downloaded to and information you type into forms will be noted. If you take no precautions in the offline world, you may leave the same scraps but they are harder to piece together, search through and compare. On the net, by contrast, it is relatively straightforward. "It is simply the incredible potential for automation of searches and cross-matching and coming up with new profiles that mean people tend to leave so many more traces online than they leave offline," said Ian Brown, director of net think-tank the Foundation for Information Policy Research. You leave tracks because someone, possibly you, is being charged for what you do online and the people providing the service need to know where to send the bill. Leaking information Some of this information, about which web pages you visit, does not persist for very long. As time goes on, without access to the computer you used to go online, it becomes harder and harder to reconstruct what you did in cyberspace. In stark contrast to this stands all the information you provide to websites when registering to use them or buying goods from them. A former hacker known as Kuji recommends people scrutinise privacy agreements to see what will happen to any personal information they surrender. Sometimes firms try to squeeze more cash out of their website by selling on valuable information about you, your buying habits and your e-mail address. Lax security often means this information is not very well protected. "Every time a form is filled in on the net, no matter what the web site declares, there is a possibility of that information leaking to unauthorised viewers," said Kuji. Websites are supposed to keep information about you only for as long as they need it to generate a bill. Sadly many websites retain information about what you bought, where it was sent and how you paid. By storing the data they become a target for criminals keen to get credit card numbers. In February 2003 crackers broke into the database operated by Omaha-based Data Processors International and got away with eight million credit card numbers. It was just the latest in a long list of similar break-ins. Stolen life Identity thieves also target organisations which do not do a good job of protecting their customers' personal information. Identity theft is a huge and growing problem. Last year in the UK more than 42,000 people suffered some form of identity theft, according to a report by the Fraud Advisory Panel. In total this crime cost people £62.5m and individually took people more than 300 hours to reverse the damage done. Much of this identity theft was due to tricks such as skimming, which involves the stealing of credit card numbers by running them through a device which captures the information held in the card's magnetic strip. The Panel's report said many more sophisticated frauds involved the use of information held by net service firms and other data providers. Many spammers pummel online databases with thousands of requests in an attempt to build up files on users. Others simply bribe the holders of this information to release it. In the US poor security by many government offices has exposed hundreds of thousands of people to possible identity theft. In particular the US Department of Motor Vehicles has proved very leaky not least because federal law demands social security numbers, addresses and driver's licence information be publicly accessible. The state of Virginia has now started issuing special passports to proven victims of identity theft to prove they really are who they say they are. A spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner, the UK's data protection watchdog, said the net did not present more problems for holders of personal information, but she said if any breach did occur it could seriously affect a lot of people very quickly. Many consumer and campaigning groups regularly report on the poor privacy of websites and try to shame them into doing a better job. There are some tips for protecting yourself on the net:
See also: Our new Secret police Secret Prisons |
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