Subject: brits to listen to GSM on Mayday
Police to tap calls
at May Day
protest
Civil rights group attacks move
as unjustified intrusion
Nick Paton Walsh
Sunday April 23, 2000
Police will be listening in when
demonstrators use mobile phones to
plan tactics during the expected 1 May
demonstrations in London, The
Observer has learnt.
Scotland Yard has said it will 'pursue
all legal avenues' to prevent and
monitor crime. A number of legal
loopholes give police the power to
intercept conversations.
May Day is known to be the date of
the next series of anti-capitalist
protests, and Special Branch is
believed to have kept alleged
ringleaders under surveillance. The
protests are expected to be organised
by a few individuals in constant
contact by mobile phone. This was the
pattern at the 'N30' demonstration
outside Euston station on 30
November last year, where organisers
co-ordinated attacks on financial
institutions.
Mobile phones may be legally
monitored in two ways. The network to
which the phones are connected can
be tapped if the police obtain a
warrant from the Home Secretary. But
to do so, they must suspect that a
crime may be committed which carries
a penalty of more than three years or
which involves a number of people. A
warrant allows the police to intercept
all communications to and from one
individual. Riots such as those caused
by the N30 protests involve
sufficiently
serious crimes for such warrants to be
issued.
Additionally and more controversially,
police may also intercept signals
between a mobile phone and a phone
mast. While it was all too easy to
intercept old analogue phones, the
vast majority of new digital phones
send encrypted signals, and the
equipment required to tap such
phones is not publicly available.
'Technology of that sort would only be
owned by the Government,' said an
engineer with telecoms security firm
Spymaster.
John Wadham, director of civil rights
group Liberty, said: 'Listening in to
someone's telephone conversations is
a serious intrusion that should only
be
justified if police are investigating
really serious offences. The planning
of a peaceful protest should never be
subject to such intrusive
surveillance.
The real solution for the future is to
ensure that there is an independent
check on this, and the only real way
to
ensure this is to have a judge - not a
politician - issue the warrant.'
There are now 2,000 ministerial
warrants approving phone and mail
tapping every year, an increase of 50
per cent over the past three years.
The May Day 2000 protests will start
on Friday with a Radicals' Walk of the
East End, and conclude on 1 May with
a series of demonstrations and 'direct
action' around the capital.
http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/0,6903,213280,00.html
- None anonymous
