The accountability of the intelligence and security services

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

Accountability I will be discussing a non subject – the accountability of the intelligence services. By accountable we mean the ability to be brought to account, to be answerable for their actions, to be subject to scrutiny and ultimately to have their actions adjudicated upon in a court of law. I will be looking at … Read more

KAL 007 and Overhead Surveillance

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] London, 1984, p131). The most famous of these, of course, was the Gary Powers U-2 on May 1st 1960 and Khrushchev was quick to exploit the ‘ spy’ Powers, forcing Eisenhower to forswear further aerial reconnaissance over the Soviet Union at the Paris summit that year (Klass p50). The use of satellites was only […]

Electronic Privacy and the Encryption Debate

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] make interception more difficult; and to provide ever increasing surveillance capabilities for, in the main, the intelligence community. In Secret Power: New Zealand’s role in the International Spy Network, Nicky Hager describes the ECHELON system: ‘Designed and co-ordinated by the NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex and telephone […]

Vatican Connections

Lobster Issue 1 (1983)

[…] the stories issuing from the Vatican), but also, on pp 236-7 he gives an account of a memo -” a series of notes from the Italian government’s spy in the Secretariat of State (in the Vatican)”. This memo reports that Wojtyla’s candidacy was “pushed especially by the West Germans, the English-speaking North Americans and […]

The Enemy Within; the IRA’s War Against the British

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995)

[…] between MI5 and MI6…..MI5 used RUC Special Branch to circulate stories about Oldfield going to the town of Comber to pick up young men…(and) that the ageing spy chief was involved in the abuse of young boys from the Kincora boys’ home in East Belfast’. (p. 192) (This story, I seem to remember, was […]

Sources

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

[…] York Sun, 19 March 2008. This was discussed by Mary Dejevsky in The Independent on 2 May 2008, ‘The Litvinenko files: Was he really murdered?’ ‘Why a spy was killed’, The Guardian, 26 January 2008. Their Website is Nick McDermott, ‘Big Brother tapping our phones and e-mails 1,000 times a day’, The Daily Mail, […]

French vendetta: from Rainbow Warrior to the Iranian hostages deal

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] long to get their revenge. The following month they broke the story that a cipher clerk in the French diplomatic service, Maurice Abrivard, had been a KGB spy for ten years up to his death in 1984, delivering diplomatic codes and important secrets about the installation of US Pershing missiles in Europe to the […]

Churchill and Secret Service

Book cover
Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] the time, Room 40 would have been established. Much more notable was Churchill’s continual interference in its running. Predictably, he was an eager victim of the ‘ spy mania’ that gripped the country on the outbreak of war in 1914, actually leading a raid, pistol in hand, on the home of an unsuspecting Tory […]

RE:

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

The Diana inquest – the people’s verdict? Well we now know who didn’t do it. It wasn’t the Royals. Not that they and their associates don’t have past form when it comes to helping family members into the next world. George V was given a fatal injection on his deathbed in order that news of … Read more

Hilda Murrell: a death in the private sector

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] During my membership with the IPI I also had contact with numerous private investigators who also acted for the government, carrying out surveillance, investigations etc. for official spy masters. At one stage I was a Director sitting on the board of governors, dealing with the day to day affairs at the Institute. During this […]

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