Showing posts with label spying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spying. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 July 2022
Wednesday, 3 November 2021
Wednesday, 27 October 2021
Tuesday, 20 July 2021
Tuesday, 15 October 2013
From Obamacare to trade, superversion not subversion is the new and very real threat to the state
Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre. 'Strangely, this suspicion of the state and the People Who Know Best does not appear to extend to the security services, whose assault on our freedoms Dacre was defending'. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
Subversion ain't what it used to be. Today it scarcely figures as a significant force. Nation states are threatened by something else. Superversion: an attack from above.
It takes several forms. One is familiar, but greatly enhanced by new technology: the tendency of spooks and politicians to use the instruments of state to amplify undemocratic powers. We've now learnt that even members of the cabinet and the National Security Council had no idea what GCHQ was up to. No one told them that it was developing the capacity to watch, if it chooses, everything we do online. The real enemies of state (if by state we mean the compact between citizens and those they elect) are people like the head of MI5, and the home secretary, who seem to have failed to inform cabinet colleagues about these programmes.
Allied to the old abuses is a newer kind of superversion: the attempts by billionaires and their lieutenants to destroy the functions of the state. Note the current shutdown – and the debt-ceiling confrontation scheduled for Thursday – in the United States. The Republicans, propelled by a Tea Party movement created by the Koch brothers and financed by a gruesome collection of multimillionaires, have engineered what in other circumstances would be called a general strike. The difference is that the withdrawal of their labour has been imposed on the workers.
The narrow purpose of the strike is to prevent the distribution of wealth to poorer people, through the Affordable Care Act. The wider purpose (aside from a refusal to accept the legitimacy of a black president) is to topple the state as an effective instrument of taxation, regulation and social protection. The Koch shock troops in the Republican party seem prepared to inflict almost any damage in pursuit of this insurgency, including – if they hold out on Thursday – a US government default, which could trigger a new global financial crisis.
They do so on behalf of a class which has, in effect, seceded. It floats free of tax and the usual bonds of citizenship, jetting from one jurisdiction to another as it seeks the most favourable havens for its wealth. It removes itself so thoroughly from the life of the nation that it scarcely uses even the roads. Yet, through privatisation and outsourcing, it is capturing the public services on which the rest of us depend.
Using an unreformed political funding system to devastating effect, this superversive class demands that the state stop regulating, stop protecting, stop intervening. When this abandonment causes financial crisis, the remaining taxpayers are forced to bail out the authors of the disaster, who then stash their bonuses offshore.
One result is that those who call themselves conservatives and patriots appear to be deeply confused about what they are defending. In his article last week attacking the Guardian for revealing GCHQ's secret surveillance programmes, Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, characterised his readers as possessing an "over-riding suspicion of the state and the People Who Know Best". Strangely, this suspicion of the state and the People Who Know Best does not appear to extend to the security services, whose assault on our freedoms Dacre was defending.
To the rightwing press and the Conservative party, patriotism means standing up to the European Union. But it also means capitulating to the United States. It's an obvious and glaring contradiction, which is almost never acknowledged, let alone explained. In reality the EU and the US have become proxies for something which transcends national boundaries. The EU stands for state control and regulation while the US represents deregulation and atomisation.
In truth, this distinction is outdated, as the handful of people who have heard of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will appreciate. The European commission calls it "the biggest trade deal in the world". Its purpose is to create a single transatlantic market, in which all regulatory differences between the US and the EU are gradually removed.
It has been negotiated largely in secret. This time, they're not just trying to bring down international trade barriers, but, as the commission boasts, "to tackle barriers behind the customs border – such as differences in technical regulations, standards and approval procedures". In other words, our own laws, affecting our own people.
A document published last year by two huge industrial lobby groups – the US Chamber of Commerce and BusinessEurope – explains the partnership's aims. It will have a "proactive requirement", directing governments to change their laws. The partnership should "put stakeholders at the table with regulators to essentially co-write regulation". Stakeholder is a euphemism for corporation.
They want it; they're getting it. New intellectual property laws that they have long demanded, but which sovereign governments have so far resisted – not least because of the mass mobilisation against the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act in the US – are back on the table, but this time largely inaccessible to public protest.
So are data protection, public procurement and financial services. You think that getting your own government to regulate bankers is hard enough? Try appealing to a transnational agreement brokered by corporations and justified by the deemed consent of citizens who have been neither informed nor consulted.
This deal is a direct assault on sovereignty and democracy. So where are the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and the other papers which have campaigned so hard against all transfers of power to the European Union? Where are the Conservative MPs who have fought for an EU referendum? Eerie silence descends. They do not oppose the TTIP because their allegiance lies not with the nation but with the offshored corporate elite.
These fake patriots proclaim a love for their country, while ensuring that there is nothing left to love. They are loyal to the pageantry – the flags, the coinage, the military parades – but intensely disloyal to the nation these symbols are supposed to represent. The greater the dissonance becomes, the louder the national anthem plays.
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
NSA spying revelations: why so many are keen to play down the debate
The mass surveillance that Edward Snowden has exposed asks questions not only of government but of telecoms companies too
GCHQ reportedly snooped on foreign politicians attending two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA
Covering the Edward Snowden story has not been straightforward for many in the mainstream media, which is reflected in the disjointed coverage it has received in the UK so far. For the newspapers that campaigned so hard to get the communications data bill thrown out because of the implications for privacy, he should be a hero. But then the brash young American "stole" the material, came to the Guardian with it, and has ended up stranded in Russia, where he may or may not receive asylum with the help of Julian Assange. All of which makes him rather unpalatable to many in Fleet Street – and indeed the House of Commons. For many of them, the easier story to tell was the one about Snowden's girlfriend, who was left bereft in Hawaii.
This week there have been more revelations about the way the US spied on the EU, which followed the Guardian's disclosures about how the British snooped on diplomats from Turkey and South Africa, among others, at the G20 summit in London four years ago. This has caused genuine fury among those targeted, particularly the Germans and the French. But their anger has been met with shoulder-shrugging indignation from former British diplomats and security experts, who say this sort of thing happens all the time.
They would hardly say anything different. In all likelihood, they have either authorised or benefited from such covert intelligence gathering, so the lack of biting analysis was entirely predictable. For those in the media unsure how to deal with Snowden, and rather hoping the complex saga would go away, this was another easy escape route: "No story here, let's move on."
But there is a story. It gets lost, all too conveniently, in the diplomatic rows and the character-assassinations, but ultimately it is the legacy of the Snowden files. The documents have shown that intelligence agencies in the UK and the US are harvesting vast amounts of information about millions of people. This is fact, not fantasy. They are doing this right now, on a scale that could not have been envisaged five years ago, let alone when the laws covering the collection and retention of data were drafted. They are also sharing this treasure trove of intelligence with each other, and other close allies.
In the UK, the same ministers who sign off operations to spy on our allies, are also approving countless warrants to allow GCHQ to siphon off data from cables that carry internet traffic in and out of the country. Emails, conversations on Skype, the details of phone calls – they all go into the intelligence pot ready for analysis and digestion.
The methods that GCHQ has developed may be ingenious. But are they right? Do the laws really legitimise this activity? And can the handful of MPs and commissioners tasked with the scrutinising the agencies really keep on top of all this? Do they have the staff, the expertise? Those are the questions that need proper argument. The reassurances of senior cabinet ministers, such as William Hague, who is responsible for GCHQ, needed to be tested, not just repeated unchallenged.
Those who wail about the leaks affecting national security might consider the words of Bruce Schneier, a security specialist, who wrote in the New York Times: "The argument that exposing these documents helps the terrorists doesn't even pass the laugh test; there's nothing here that changes anything any potential terrorist would do or not do."
And where are the telecoms companies in all this, and the internet service providers? For now, they are still keeping quiet. But at some point they will be asked to explain to their millions of customers what they knew about this industrial-scale snooping. None of this is easy, and ministers and intelligence officials would like nothing more than to shut down the debate. The clues are in their discomfort.
Tuesday, 25 June 2013
How can we invest our trust in a government that spies on us?
We should not fear some Orwellian future state where we're subjected to total electronic scrutiny – it's our present reality
Bob Lambert, an undercover policeman who is alleged to have lied in court and has been accused by an MP of firebombing, was awarded an MBE in 2008 and now teaches at St Andrews University. Photograph: guardian.co.uk
'If you are a law-abiding citizen of this country, going about your business and your personal life, you have nothing to fear." That's how William Hague, the foreign secretary, responded to the revelations of mass surveillance in the US and the UK. Try telling that to Stephen Lawrence's family.
Four police officers were deployed to spy on the family and friends of the black teenager murdered by white racists. The Lawrences and the people who supported their fight for justice were law-abiding citizens going about their business. Yet undercover police were used, one of the spies now tells us, to hunt for "disinformation" and "dirt". Their purpose? "We were trying to stop the campaign in its tracks."
The two unfolding spy stories resonate powerfully with each other. One, gathered by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, shows how police surveillance has been comprehensively perverted. Instead of defending citizens and the public realm, it has been used to protect the police from democratic scrutiny and stifle attempts to engage in politics.
The other, arising from the documents exposed by Edward Snowden, shows that the US and the UK have been involved in the mass interception of our phone calls and use of the internet. William Hague insists that we should "have confidence in the work of our intelligence agencies, and in their adherence to the law and democratic values". Why?
Here are a few of the things we have learned about undercover policing in Britain. A unit led by a policeman called Bob Lambert deployed officers to spy on peaceful activists. They adopted the identities of dead children and then infiltrated protest groups. Nine of the 11 known spies formed long-term relationships with women in the groups, in some cases (including Lambert's) fathering children with them. Then they made excuses and vanished.
They left a trail of ruined lives, fatherless children and women whose confidence and trust have been wrecked beyond repair. They have also walked away from other kinds of mayhem. On Friday we discovered that Lambert co-wrote the leaflet for which two penniless activists spent three years in the high court defending a libel action brought by McDonald's. The police never saw fit to inform the court that one of their own had been one of the authors.
Bob Lambert has been accused of using a false identity during a criminal trial. And, using parliamentary privilege, the MP Caroline Lucas alleged that he planted an incendiary device in a branch of Debenhams while acting as an agent provocateur. The device exploded, causing £300,000 of damage. Lambert denies the allegation.
Police and prosecutors also failed to disclose, during two trials of climate-change activists, that an undercover cop called Mark Kennedy had secretly taped their meetings, and that his recordings exonerated the protesters. Twenty people were falsely convicted. Those convictions were later overturned.
If the state is prepared to abuse its powers and instruments so widely and gravely in cases such as this, where there is a high risk of detection, and if it is prepared to intrude so far into people's lives that its officers live with activists and father their children, what is it not prepared to do while spying undetectably on our private correspondence?
Already we know that electronic surveillance has been used in this country for purposes other than the perennial justifications of catching terrorists, foiling foreign spies and preventing military attacks. It was deployed, for example, to spy on countries attending the G20 meeting the UK hosted in 2009. If the government does this to other states, which might have the capacity to detect its spying and which certainly have the means to object to it, what is it doing to defenceless citizens?
It looks as if William Hague may have misled parliament a fortnight ago. He claimed that "to intercept the content of any individual's communications in the UK requires a warrant signed personally by me, the home secretary, or by another secretary of state".
We now discover that these ministers can also issue general certificates, renewed every six months, which permit mass interception of the kind that GCHQ has been conducting. Among the certificates issued to GCHQ is a "global" one authorising all its operations, including the trawling of up to 600m phone calls and 39m gigabytes of electronic information a day. A million ministers, signing all day, couldn't keep up with that.
The best test of the good faith of an institution is the way it deals with past abuses. Despite two years of revelations about abusive police spying, the British government has yet to launch a full public inquiry. Bob Lambert, who ran the team, fathered a child by an innocent activist he deceived, co-wrote the McDonald's leaflet, is alleged to have lied in court and has been accused by an MP of firebombing, was awarded an MBE in 2008. He now teaches at St Andrews University, where he claims to have a background in "counter-terrorism".
The home office minister Nick Herbert has stated in parliament that it's acceptable for police officers to have sex with activists, for the sake of their "plausibility". Does this sound to you like a state in which we should invest our trust?
Talking to Sunday's Observer, a senior intelligence source expressed his or her concerns about mass surveillance. "If there was the wrong political change, it could be very dangerous. All you need is to have the wrong government in place." But it seems to me that any government prepared to subject its citizens to mass surveillance is by definition the wrong one. No one can be trusted with powers as wide and inscrutable as these.
In various forms – Conservative, New Labour, the coalition – we have had the wrong government for 30 years. Across that period its undemocratic powers have been consolidated. It has begun to form an elective dictatorship, in which the three major parties are united in their desire to create a security state; to wage unprovoked wars; to defend corporate power against democracy; to act as a doormat for the United States; to fight political dissent all the way to the bedroom and the birthing pool. There's no need to wait for the "wrong" state to arise to conclude that mass surveillance endangers liberty, pluralism and democracy. We're there already
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Blacklisting is the scandal that now demands action
'Workers across Britain have been systematically and illegally forced into unemployment by some of the country's biggest companies.' Illustration by Matt Kenyon
As in the phone-hacking scandal, the evidence of illegality, surveillance and conspiracy is incontrovertible. In both cases, the number of victims already runs into thousands. And household names are deeply tied up in both controversies – though as targets in one and perpetrators in the other.
But when it comes to the blacklisting scandal, the damage can't only be measured in distress and invasion of privacy. Its impact has already been felt in years of enforced joblessness, millions of pounds in lost income, family and psychological breakdown, emigration and suicides.
It's now clear that workers across Britain have been systematically and illegally forced into unemployment for trade union activity – often on publicly funded projects and in collusion with the police and security services – by some of the country's biggest companies, using secret lists drawn up by corporate spying agencies.
Liberty has equated blacklisting with phone hacking, insisting that the "consequences for our democracy are just as grave". Keith Ewing, professor of public law at King's College London, calls it the "worst human rights abuse in relation to workers" in Britain in half a century.
But whereas David Cameron ordered a public inquiry into hacking, he rejected any investigation of blacklisting out of hand. And while a mainly anti-union media has largely ignored the scandal, all the signs are that it's continuing right now, in flagship public projects such as the £15bn Crossrail network across the south-east.
Thanks to leaks, tribunals, evidence to MPs and an information commissioner's raid, we now know that one of those private espionage outfits, the Consulting Association, had 3,213 names on its blacklist before it was shut down in 2009. Most were construction workers, based at sites from Clwyd to Croydon, but they also included environmental activists.
For an annual subscription of £3,500, 44 construction and outsourcing giants such as Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Sir Robert McAlpine and Wimpey paid £2.20 a shot for "intelligence" on the 40,000 names a year they ran past the association's database.
For that they could have access to such gems as "keeps extremely interesting company", "union activity", "brought in H&S issues", "politically motivated", "troublemaker", "recently seen at a leftwing meeting" and "girlfriend … involved in several marriages of convenience". Mostly, workers were branded "involved in dispute" or "company given details and not employed".
Through this covert power, building workers were driven on to the dole during a construction boom. Both Dave Smith, an engineer, and Steve Acheson, an electrician, were sacked from one major construction job after another after raising health and safety concerns (asbestos and lack of drying facilities) over a decade ago. They have never been able to work in the trade for more than a few weeks ever since.
Their cards had been marked by blacklisters. "Those people ruined my life," Acheson says. For some workers, they destroyed it. After hundreds involved in disputes on London's Jubilee line extension were blacklisted in 2000, at least two who were unable to find work committed suicide.
The Consulting Association, which used material the Information Commissioner's office said "could only be supplied by the police or security services", was fined £5,000 for breaching data protection law (paid by the Conservative donor Sir Robert McAlpine). Blacklisting was formally outlawed in 2010, but covert arrangements are by their nature difficult to expose.
Corporate managers who have been revealed to have been up to their necks in blacklisting are now running major publicly funded projects – including Crossrail and the Carillion-run PFI Great Western Hospital in Swindon – that are the focus of new blacklisting and bullying disputes.
Last week, Ian Kerr, the man who headed the Consulting Association, spoke in public for the first time, telling MPs there had been an "awful lot of discussion" between Crossrail contractors and his outfit, as well as those at the Olympic Park, Wembley stadium and other public construction projects. "Like it or not," he declared, blacklisting "will always be there".
Of course blacklisting isn't new. Throughout the cold war, the virulently rightwing Economic League ran a similar corporate espionage outfit, from where Kerr brought his database. And more recently civil servants, police and corporations have been shown to work hand in glove against climate change and other environmental activists.
Nor is blacklisting confined to construction, where unions still have real power. But in a deregulated economy – where union weakness has helped slash the share of wages in national income and an anti-union firm such as Starbucks can announce it's cutting staff benefits on the day it's in the public dock for tax dodging – this ugly corporate victimisation isn't just an outrage against civil liberties.
It's also a block on the revival of union organisation essential to turning the tide of inequality – and the defence of those paying the price of a failed economic model. Labour, which took 11 years to put its own ban on blacklisting into law out of deference to big business, now needs to commit to tougher rights at work. The scandal of corporate blacklisting doesn't just demand a public inquiry and compensation, but a real shift of direction on power in the workplace.
But when it comes to the blacklisting scandal, the damage can't only be measured in distress and invasion of privacy. Its impact has already been felt in years of enforced joblessness, millions of pounds in lost income, family and psychological breakdown, emigration and suicides.
It's now clear that workers across Britain have been systematically and illegally forced into unemployment for trade union activity – often on publicly funded projects and in collusion with the police and security services – by some of the country's biggest companies, using secret lists drawn up by corporate spying agencies.
Liberty has equated blacklisting with phone hacking, insisting that the "consequences for our democracy are just as grave". Keith Ewing, professor of public law at King's College London, calls it the "worst human rights abuse in relation to workers" in Britain in half a century.
But whereas David Cameron ordered a public inquiry into hacking, he rejected any investigation of blacklisting out of hand. And while a mainly anti-union media has largely ignored the scandal, all the signs are that it's continuing right now, in flagship public projects such as the £15bn Crossrail network across the south-east.
Thanks to leaks, tribunals, evidence to MPs and an information commissioner's raid, we now know that one of those private espionage outfits, the Consulting Association, had 3,213 names on its blacklist before it was shut down in 2009. Most were construction workers, based at sites from Clwyd to Croydon, but they also included environmental activists.
For an annual subscription of £3,500, 44 construction and outsourcing giants such as Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Sir Robert McAlpine and Wimpey paid £2.20 a shot for "intelligence" on the 40,000 names a year they ran past the association's database.
For that they could have access to such gems as "keeps extremely interesting company", "union activity", "brought in H&S issues", "politically motivated", "troublemaker", "recently seen at a leftwing meeting" and "girlfriend … involved in several marriages of convenience". Mostly, workers were branded "involved in dispute" or "company given details and not employed".
Through this covert power, building workers were driven on to the dole during a construction boom. Both Dave Smith, an engineer, and Steve Acheson, an electrician, were sacked from one major construction job after another after raising health and safety concerns (asbestos and lack of drying facilities) over a decade ago. They have never been able to work in the trade for more than a few weeks ever since.
Their cards had been marked by blacklisters. "Those people ruined my life," Acheson says. For some workers, they destroyed it. After hundreds involved in disputes on London's Jubilee line extension were blacklisted in 2000, at least two who were unable to find work committed suicide.
The Consulting Association, which used material the Information Commissioner's office said "could only be supplied by the police or security services", was fined £5,000 for breaching data protection law (paid by the Conservative donor Sir Robert McAlpine). Blacklisting was formally outlawed in 2010, but covert arrangements are by their nature difficult to expose.
Corporate managers who have been revealed to have been up to their necks in blacklisting are now running major publicly funded projects – including Crossrail and the Carillion-run PFI Great Western Hospital in Swindon – that are the focus of new blacklisting and bullying disputes.
Last week, Ian Kerr, the man who headed the Consulting Association, spoke in public for the first time, telling MPs there had been an "awful lot of discussion" between Crossrail contractors and his outfit, as well as those at the Olympic Park, Wembley stadium and other public construction projects. "Like it or not," he declared, blacklisting "will always be there".
Of course blacklisting isn't new. Throughout the cold war, the virulently rightwing Economic League ran a similar corporate espionage outfit, from where Kerr brought his database. And more recently civil servants, police and corporations have been shown to work hand in glove against climate change and other environmental activists.
Nor is blacklisting confined to construction, where unions still have real power. But in a deregulated economy – where union weakness has helped slash the share of wages in national income and an anti-union firm such as Starbucks can announce it's cutting staff benefits on the day it's in the public dock for tax dodging – this ugly corporate victimisation isn't just an outrage against civil liberties.
It's also a block on the revival of union organisation essential to turning the tide of inequality – and the defence of those paying the price of a failed economic model. Labour, which took 11 years to put its own ban on blacklisting into law out of deference to big business, now needs to commit to tougher rights at work. The scandal of corporate blacklisting doesn't just demand a public inquiry and compensation, but a real shift of direction on power in the workplace.
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
Be Your Own Dick Tracy
Just walk into the nearest spyware shop, and grab the gizmo of your choice.
In
a basement office-cum-showroom off Green Park in south Delhi, a demo is
in progress. “Recording time is 12 hours, the images and sounds will be
so clear you can see and hear everything,” offers the sales assistant.
The customer, a man in his 40s with dark-circled eyes, is convinced; the
deal is sealed. In an hour or so, the digital table clock he just
bought should be sitting on his bedside table; hopefully, worth every
penny of the 12,000-odd rupees he spent on it.
The innocuous clock is in fact a spycam, bought to combat “domestic abuse” in his bedroom, he confesses, even as he advises us on the best cam for our job. There are, after all, plenty of options: caps, wristwatches, sunglasses, buttons, pens, belts, pendants, photo-frames, iPhone lookalikes, cola cans, even chewing gum packs, each fitted with pinhole cameras and tiny recording devices to be your eyes and ears when you need it to be.
For anything from Rs 1,500-Rs 30,000 or more, you can play detective with a lifetime’s supply of spy devices available off the internet, in discreet shops, or through smses peddling the snare ware. A request to an online directory for details of shops selling spyware like pen cameras throws up nine addresses in south Delhi alone. No wonder Bhavna Paliwal, director of Tejas Detective Agency, has had to reluctantly ditch the pen camera as a work tool because it is “so common now”. Clearly, spyware has stealthily attached itself to the underbelly of urban relationships, with spouses, partners, friends and colleagues relying increasingly on guileful gizmos to catch their kith and kin in the act.
Mueen Pasha, founder of the Bangalore-based Spy Zone, has been selling spy gadgets for eight years, but it’s only now that his business is truly thriving—he sells at least a hundred gadgets a month, in the price range of Rs 4,000-Rs 15,000. “Sales have gone up, and in the last two years, family problems have come to the fore. These days working hours are so long that one doesn’t know what is going on at home and some people will go to any lengths to find out.”
In Mumbai, Mahmood, a salesperson in a spyware shop he didn’t want named, says, “Most often people buy these gadgets when they suspect their partners of infidelity. Many discuss their problems in detail, so that we can suggest the best gadget. Others claim they want to fix cameras in their shops or homes after a theft, or to keep an eye on their domestic helps, but we can tell they are lying.”
He has seen enough customers to know that the real reasons may be very different. Sanjay Singh, director of Indian Detective Agency, doesn’t hesitate to call the use of spycams a ‘trend’. “People going for business meetings try to sneak in devices to record conversations. Many who come to us have already tried these DIY spykits,” he says. One woman, he recalls, approached him to help her bring her husband to book. The gentleman in question, she alleged, was enjoying the company of other women behind her back. “I was surprised by the knowledge she had about spy devices!” Singh says.
Paliwal too has had clients trying to cut costs by doing the digging themselves instead of hiring a private eye. “Very often they fail,” she laughs, recounting how a newly-married man tried hiding a tiny camera in the air cooler. Only, he hadn’t factored in his wife’s keen eyesight. “As it turned out, he had no reason to suspect her,” she says. Another client, a professional working in a multinational company, made a mess of “investigations” trying to record his wife entering her office. “Their divorce case was under way, and if he could prove she had got herself a job, he wouldn’t have to shell out maintenance money,” she explains.
So common are these devices, and so diverse their customers, that Devendra, from Anand India’s sales team, finds it difficult to sketch up a client profile. “Aajkal to bahut chal raha hai,” he concedes, counting journalists, lawyers, doctors, wives and husbands among his customers. One popular product, he says, is the spy bug—a matchbox-sized device fitted with a SIM, which can be yours for Rs 3,000. “Once you put the sim into the device, and call that number, you can hear whatever is going on around that device.” If that sounds difficult to pull off, it isn’t. Arun (name changed) vouches for it. His “friend”, he claims, had once hidden this spybug in his girlfriend’s handbag when she went to meet a former classmate. “He suspected the two of them were more than friends and figured that listening in on their conversation would clear things up.” Obviously, the girl’s word that there was no funny business going on wasn’t enough.
Paliwal feels shows like Emotional Atyachaar, where cheating partners are spied upon and confronted, sparked the dubious inclination to peep into our own bedrooms. This inclination has been fuelled by easy access and low prices. Singh says, “Five or six years ago, we would buy pen cameras for Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000. Now Chinese versions of it can be bought for Rs 1,500 or less.”
That cannot be good news for unsuspecting subjects at the receiving end. As Singh cautions, misuse is an obvious danger. “I know of teenagers using these gadgets, they are so tech-savvy anyway. People know all about these gizmos; even leading dailies run advertisements for them. Girls often bear the brunt, being filmed without their knowledge and viewed by hundreds once the video is posted online.”
Even if the footage is for the eyes of the “spy” alone, the act itself is an invasion of privacy, a breach of trust. As Paliwal asks, “Will a wife who knows that her husband tried to record her activities on the sly ever trust him again?” Whatever the answer to that, it is a risk not a few are clearly willing to take.
Spy Camera
The innocuous clock is in fact a spycam, bought to combat “domestic abuse” in his bedroom, he confesses, even as he advises us on the best cam for our job. There are, after all, plenty of options: caps, wristwatches, sunglasses, buttons, pens, belts, pendants, photo-frames, iPhone lookalikes, cola cans, even chewing gum packs, each fitted with pinhole cameras and tiny recording devices to be your eyes and ears when you need it to be.
For anything from Rs 1,500-Rs 30,000 or more, you can play detective with a lifetime’s supply of spy devices available off the internet, in discreet shops, or through smses peddling the snare ware. A request to an online directory for details of shops selling spyware like pen cameras throws up nine addresses in south Delhi alone. No wonder Bhavna Paliwal, director of Tejas Detective Agency, has had to reluctantly ditch the pen camera as a work tool because it is “so common now”. Clearly, spyware has stealthily attached itself to the underbelly of urban relationships, with spouses, partners, friends and colleagues relying increasingly on guileful gizmos to catch their kith and kin in the act.
Mueen Pasha, founder of the Bangalore-based Spy Zone, has been selling spy gadgets for eight years, but it’s only now that his business is truly thriving—he sells at least a hundred gadgets a month, in the price range of Rs 4,000-Rs 15,000. “Sales have gone up, and in the last two years, family problems have come to the fore. These days working hours are so long that one doesn’t know what is going on at home and some people will go to any lengths to find out.”
In Mumbai, Mahmood, a salesperson in a spyware shop he didn’t want named, says, “Most often people buy these gadgets when they suspect their partners of infidelity. Many discuss their problems in detail, so that we can suggest the best gadget. Others claim they want to fix cameras in their shops or homes after a theft, or to keep an eye on their domestic helps, but we can tell they are lying.”
He has seen enough customers to know that the real reasons may be very different. Sanjay Singh, director of Indian Detective Agency, doesn’t hesitate to call the use of spycams a ‘trend’. “People going for business meetings try to sneak in devices to record conversations. Many who come to us have already tried these DIY spykits,” he says. One woman, he recalls, approached him to help her bring her husband to book. The gentleman in question, she alleged, was enjoying the company of other women behind her back. “I was surprised by the knowledge she had about spy devices!” Singh says.
Paliwal too has had clients trying to cut costs by doing the digging themselves instead of hiring a private eye. “Very often they fail,” she laughs, recounting how a newly-married man tried hiding a tiny camera in the air cooler. Only, he hadn’t factored in his wife’s keen eyesight. “As it turned out, he had no reason to suspect her,” she says. Another client, a professional working in a multinational company, made a mess of “investigations” trying to record his wife entering her office. “Their divorce case was under way, and if he could prove she had got herself a job, he wouldn’t have to shell out maintenance money,” she explains.
So common are these devices, and so diverse their customers, that Devendra, from Anand India’s sales team, finds it difficult to sketch up a client profile. “Aajkal to bahut chal raha hai,” he concedes, counting journalists, lawyers, doctors, wives and husbands among his customers. One popular product, he says, is the spy bug—a matchbox-sized device fitted with a SIM, which can be yours for Rs 3,000. “Once you put the sim into the device, and call that number, you can hear whatever is going on around that device.” If that sounds difficult to pull off, it isn’t. Arun (name changed) vouches for it. His “friend”, he claims, had once hidden this spybug in his girlfriend’s handbag when she went to meet a former classmate. “He suspected the two of them were more than friends and figured that listening in on their conversation would clear things up.” Obviously, the girl’s word that there was no funny business going on wasn’t enough.
Paliwal feels shows like Emotional Atyachaar, where cheating partners are spied upon and confronted, sparked the dubious inclination to peep into our own bedrooms. This inclination has been fuelled by easy access and low prices. Singh says, “Five or six years ago, we would buy pen cameras for Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000. Now Chinese versions of it can be bought for Rs 1,500 or less.”
That cannot be good news for unsuspecting subjects at the receiving end. As Singh cautions, misuse is an obvious danger. “I know of teenagers using these gadgets, they are so tech-savvy anyway. People know all about these gizmos; even leading dailies run advertisements for them. Girls often bear the brunt, being filmed without their knowledge and viewed by hundreds once the video is posted online.”
Even if the footage is for the eyes of the “spy” alone, the act itself is an invasion of privacy, a breach of trust. As Paliwal asks, “Will a wife who knows that her husband tried to record her activities on the sly ever trust him again?” Whatever the answer to that, it is a risk not a few are clearly willing to take.
Spy Camera
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| Belt Rs 7,500 Pinhole camera inside clasp with one hour battery back-up | Watch Rs 5,500 Two-hr battery back-up, 4 GB internal memory, 5 MP camera |
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| Silk Necktie Rs 11,000 Pinhole camera in pattern. 4 GB internal memory. | Photo Rs 35,000 Can record for 2 months. Has an HD camera. | |
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| Canvas Cap Rs 7,500 4 GB memory, 1 hr back-up, 3 m microphone range | Chewing gum Rs 5,000 Can record 90-min video and take photos with 5 MP camera | |
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| Glasses Rs 12,500 Can record audio-video with 2-hr battery back-up. |
Sunday, 24 June 2012
‘Terrorism Isn’t The Disease; Egregious Injustice Is’
NARENDRA BISHT
INTERVIEW
‘Terrorism Isn’t The Disease; Egregious Injustice Is’
On laws like AFSPA, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, sedition, democracy, terrorism and more
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No one individual critic has taken on the Indian State like Arundhati Roy has. In a fight that began with Pokhran, moved to Narmada, and over the years extended to other insurgencies, people’s struggles and the Maoist underground, she has used her pensmanship to challenge India’s government, its elite, corporate giants, and most recently, the entire structure of global finance and capitalism. She was jailed for a day in 2002 for contempt of court, and slapped with sedition charges in November 2010 for an alleged anti-India speech she delivered, along with others, at a seminar in New Delhi on Kashmir, titled ‘Azadi—the only way’. Excerpts from an interview to Panini Anand:
How do you look at laws like sedition and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or those like AFSPA, in what is touted as the largest democracy?
I’m glad you used the word touted. It’s a good word to use in connection with India’s democracy. It certainly is a democracy for the middle class. In places like Kashmir or Manipur or Chhattisgarh, democracy is not available. Not even in the black market. Laws like the UAPA, which is just the UPA government’s version of POTA, and the AFSPA are ridiculously authoritarian—they allow the State to detain and even kill people with complete impunity. They simply ought to have no place in a democracy. But as long as they don’t affect the mainstream middle class, as long as they are used against people in Manipur, Nagaland or Kashmir, or against the poor or against Muslim ‘terrorists’ in the ‘mainland’, nobody seems to mind very much.
Are the people waging war against the State or is the State waging war against its people? How do you look at the Emergency of the ’70s, or the minorities who feel targeted, earlier the Sikhs and now the Muslims?
Some people are waging war against the State. The State is waging a war against a majority of its citizens. The Emergency in the ’70s became a problem because Indira Gandhi’s government was foolish enough to target the middle class, foolish enough to lump them with the lower classes and the disenfranchised. Vast parts of the country today are in a much more severe Emergency-like situation. But this contemporary Emergency has gone into the workshop for denting-painting. It’s come out smarter, more streamlined. I’ve said this before: look at the wars the Indian government has waged since India became a sovereign nation; look at the instances when the army has been called out against its ‘own’ people—Nagaland, Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Kashmir, Telangana, Goa, Bengal, Punjab and (soon to come) Chhattisgarh—it is a State that is constantly at war. And always against minorities—tribal people, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, never against the middle class, upper-caste Hindus.
How does one curb the cycle of violence if the State takes no action against ultra-left ‘terrorist groups’? Wouldn’t it jeopardise internal security?
I don’t think anybody is advocating that no action should be taken against terrorist groups, not even the ‘terrorists’ themselves. They are not asking for anti-terror laws to be done away with. They are doing what they do, knowing full well what the consequences will be, legally or otherwise. They are expressing fury and fighting for a change in a system that manufactures injustice and inequality. They don’t see themselves as ‘terrorists’. When you say ‘terrorists’ if you are referring to the CPI (Maoist), though I do not subscribe to Maoist ideology, I certainly do not see them as terrorists. Yes they are militant, they are outlaws. But then anybody who resists the corporate-state juggernaut is now labelled a Maoist—whether or not they belong to or even agree with the Maoist ideology. People like Seema Azad are being sentenced to life imprisonment for possessing banned literature. So what is the definition of ‘terrorist’ now, in 2012? It is actually the economic policies that are causing this massive inequality, this hunger, this displacement that is jeopardising internal security—not the people who are protesting against them. Do we want to address the symptoms or the disease? The disease is not terrorism. It’s egregious injustice. Sure, even if we were a reasonably just society, Maoists would still exist. So would other extremist groups who believe in armed resistance or in terrorist attacks. But they would not have the support they have today. As a country, we should be ashamed of ourselves for tolerating this squalor, this misery and the overt as well as covert ethnic and religious bigotry we see all around us. (Narendra Modi for Prime Minister!! Who in their right mind can even imagine that?) We have stopped even pretending that we have a sense of justice. All we’re doing is genuflecting to major corporations and to that sinking ocean-liner known as the United States of America.
Is the State acting like the Orwellian Big Brother, with its tapping of phones, attacks on social networks?
The government has become so brazen about admitting that it is spying on all of us all the time. If it does not see any protest on the horizon, why shouldn’t it? Controlling people is in the nature of all ruling establishments, is it not? While the whole country becomes more and more religious and obscurantist, visiting shrines and temples and masjids and churches in their millions, praying to one god or another to be delivered from their unhappy lives, we are entering the age of robots, where computer-programmed machines will decide everything, will control us entirely—they’ll decide what is ethical and what is not, what collateral damage is acceptable and what is not. Forget religious texts. Computers will decide what’s right and wrong. There are surveillance devices the size of a sandfly that can record our every move. Not in India yet, but coming soon, I’m sure. The UID is another elaborate form of control and surveillance, but people are falling over themselves to get one. The challenge is how to function, how to continue to resist despite this level of mind-games and surveillance.
How do you look at laws like sedition and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or those like AFSPA, in what is touted as the largest democracy?
I’m glad you used the word touted. It’s a good word to use in connection with India’s democracy. It certainly is a democracy for the middle class. In places like Kashmir or Manipur or Chhattisgarh, democracy is not available. Not even in the black market. Laws like the UAPA, which is just the UPA government’s version of POTA, and the AFSPA are ridiculously authoritarian—they allow the State to detain and even kill people with complete impunity. They simply ought to have no place in a democracy. But as long as they don’t affect the mainstream middle class, as long as they are used against people in Manipur, Nagaland or Kashmir, or against the poor or against Muslim ‘terrorists’ in the ‘mainland’, nobody seems to mind very much.
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Some people are waging war against the State. The State is waging a war against a majority of its citizens. The Emergency in the ’70s became a problem because Indira Gandhi’s government was foolish enough to target the middle class, foolish enough to lump them with the lower classes and the disenfranchised. Vast parts of the country today are in a much more severe Emergency-like situation. But this contemporary Emergency has gone into the workshop for denting-painting. It’s come out smarter, more streamlined. I’ve said this before: look at the wars the Indian government has waged since India became a sovereign nation; look at the instances when the army has been called out against its ‘own’ people—Nagaland, Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Kashmir, Telangana, Goa, Bengal, Punjab and (soon to come) Chhattisgarh—it is a State that is constantly at war. And always against minorities—tribal people, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, never against the middle class, upper-caste Hindus.
How does one curb the cycle of violence if the State takes no action against ultra-left ‘terrorist groups’? Wouldn’t it jeopardise internal security?
I don’t think anybody is advocating that no action should be taken against terrorist groups, not even the ‘terrorists’ themselves. They are not asking for anti-terror laws to be done away with. They are doing what they do, knowing full well what the consequences will be, legally or otherwise. They are expressing fury and fighting for a change in a system that manufactures injustice and inequality. They don’t see themselves as ‘terrorists’. When you say ‘terrorists’ if you are referring to the CPI (Maoist), though I do not subscribe to Maoist ideology, I certainly do not see them as terrorists. Yes they are militant, they are outlaws. But then anybody who resists the corporate-state juggernaut is now labelled a Maoist—whether or not they belong to or even agree with the Maoist ideology. People like Seema Azad are being sentenced to life imprisonment for possessing banned literature. So what is the definition of ‘terrorist’ now, in 2012? It is actually the economic policies that are causing this massive inequality, this hunger, this displacement that is jeopardising internal security—not the people who are protesting against them. Do we want to address the symptoms or the disease? The disease is not terrorism. It’s egregious injustice. Sure, even if we were a reasonably just society, Maoists would still exist. So would other extremist groups who believe in armed resistance or in terrorist attacks. But they would not have the support they have today. As a country, we should be ashamed of ourselves for tolerating this squalor, this misery and the overt as well as covert ethnic and religious bigotry we see all around us. (Narendra Modi for Prime Minister!! Who in their right mind can even imagine that?) We have stopped even pretending that we have a sense of justice. All we’re doing is genuflecting to major corporations and to that sinking ocean-liner known as the United States of America.
Is the State acting like the Orwellian Big Brother, with its tapping of phones, attacks on social networks?
The government has become so brazen about admitting that it is spying on all of us all the time. If it does not see any protest on the horizon, why shouldn’t it? Controlling people is in the nature of all ruling establishments, is it not? While the whole country becomes more and more religious and obscurantist, visiting shrines and temples and masjids and churches in their millions, praying to one god or another to be delivered from their unhappy lives, we are entering the age of robots, where computer-programmed machines will decide everything, will control us entirely—they’ll decide what is ethical and what is not, what collateral damage is acceptable and what is not. Forget religious texts. Computers will decide what’s right and wrong. There are surveillance devices the size of a sandfly that can record our every move. Not in India yet, but coming soon, I’m sure. The UID is another elaborate form of control and surveillance, but people are falling over themselves to get one. The challenge is how to function, how to continue to resist despite this level of mind-games and surveillance.
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Why do you feel there’s no mass reaction in the polity to the plight of undertrials in jails, people booked under sedition or towards encounter killings? Are these a non-issue manufactured by few rights groups?
Of course, they are not non-issues. This is a huge issue. Thousands of people are in jail, charged with sedition or under the UAPA, broadly they are either accused of being Maoists or Muslim ‘terrorists’. Shockingly, there are no official figures. All we have to go on is a sense you get from visiting places, from individual rights activists collating information in their separate areas. Torture has become completely acceptable to the government and police establishment. The nhrc came up with a report that mentioned 3,000 custodial deaths last year alone. You ask why there is no mass reaction? Well, because everybody who reacts is jailed! Or threatened or terrorised. Also, between the coopting and divisiveness of ngos and the reality of State repression and surveillance, I don’t know whether mass movements have a future. Yes, we keep looking to the Arab ‘spring’, but look a little harder and you see how even there, people are being manipulated and ‘played’. I think subversion will take precedence over mass resistance in the years to come. And unfortunately, terrorism is an extreme form of subversion.
Without the State invoking laws, an active police, intelligence, even armed forces, won’t we have anarchy?
We will end up in a state of—not anarchy, but war—if we do not address the causes of people’s rising fury. When you make laws that serve the rich, that helps them hold onto their wealth, to amass more and more, then dissent and unlawful activity becomes honourable, does it not? Eventually I’m not at all sure that you can continue to impoverish millions of people, steal their land, their livelihoods, push them into cities, then demolish the slums they live in and push them out again and expect that you can simply stub out their anger with the help of the army and the police and prison terms. But perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe you can. Starve them, jail them, kill them. And call it Globalisation with a Human Face.
Of course, they are not non-issues. This is a huge issue. Thousands of people are in jail, charged with sedition or under the UAPA, broadly they are either accused of being Maoists or Muslim ‘terrorists’. Shockingly, there are no official figures. All we have to go on is a sense you get from visiting places, from individual rights activists collating information in their separate areas. Torture has become completely acceptable to the government and police establishment. The nhrc came up with a report that mentioned 3,000 custodial deaths last year alone. You ask why there is no mass reaction? Well, because everybody who reacts is jailed! Or threatened or terrorised. Also, between the coopting and divisiveness of ngos and the reality of State repression and surveillance, I don’t know whether mass movements have a future. Yes, we keep looking to the Arab ‘spring’, but look a little harder and you see how even there, people are being manipulated and ‘played’. I think subversion will take precedence over mass resistance in the years to come. And unfortunately, terrorism is an extreme form of subversion.
Without the State invoking laws, an active police, intelligence, even armed forces, won’t we have anarchy?
We will end up in a state of—not anarchy, but war—if we do not address the causes of people’s rising fury. When you make laws that serve the rich, that helps them hold onto their wealth, to amass more and more, then dissent and unlawful activity becomes honourable, does it not? Eventually I’m not at all sure that you can continue to impoverish millions of people, steal their land, their livelihoods, push them into cities, then demolish the slums they live in and push them out again and expect that you can simply stub out their anger with the help of the army and the police and prison terms. But perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe you can. Starve them, jail them, kill them. And call it Globalisation with a Human Face.
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