The violent scenes in London in the last few days have been appalling and shocking.  There can be no excuse for the violence and vandalism.  In some cases, this will force the closure of the small businesses that have been targetted.  And the stigma and blight that will fall on some areas of the capital will make it even more difficult for local councils trying to strengthen and build sustainable local economies in the most deprived areas of our city.

The immediate task is, of course, to restore order to our streets.  And as part of this, the Metropolitan Police has started to put on line photographs of those suspected of being involved in some of the disorder and looting.  These hooligans need to be brought to justice.  So, do you know any of these people?

West Norwood

WestNorwood.Image 1: A male in a grey Nike hooded top with red draw strings and the number “87″ on his back. This male is later involved in a burglary.

WestNorwood.Image 2: A group of eight males gathering outside the shop. A distinctive male in a white and red Addidas logo on his chest can be seen.

WestNorwood.Image 3: A group of eight males entering the shop. Note the male in the Stone Island hooded jacket, blue Nike tracksuit bottoms and blue face scarf.

WestNorwood.Image 4: A close up of the “87″ male.

WestNorwood.Image 5: An image of a male joining the group wearing a blue Nike hooded top and red face scarf.

Croydon

Croydon.Image 1 – 21:45hrs 8 August: Two females outside PC World on Purley Way. These females entered the store after it had been broken in to.

Croydon.Image 2 – 21:45:55hrs 8 August: a facial shot of a female in a crowd of other looters outside PC World in Purley Way

Croydon.Image 10 – 21:42:08hrs 8 August: a male outside a jewellers shop in London Road about to enter shop

Croydon.Image 12 – 01:34:23hrs 9 August: a male with grey hooded top and black body warmer about to enter Cash Plus in Thornton Heath

Croydon.Image 13 – 02:47:52hrs on 9 August: a male with black hooded coat entering a jewellers in Church Road, Croydon

Croydon.Image 14 – 02:40:23hrs 9 August: two males stealing from a jewellers in Church Road

Croydon/Image 15 – 02:40:58hrs 9 August: one of the males shown in ‘Image 12′ carrying a large amount of jewellery from the jewellers in Church Road

Croydon.Image 22 – 22:41:52hrs 8 August: a shaven headed male who enters Richer Sounds, South End, Croydon

Croydon.Image 24 – 22:42:20hrs 8 August: two female suspects entering Richer Sounds, South End, Croydon

Croydon.Image 25 – 22:45:26hrs 8 August: a female wearing a vest top who has just carried items from Richer Sounds.

I gather that the Total Politics Blog Awards are now in progress.  I want to make it quite clear that I will not be in the least bit affronted should you chose to vote for this blog by clicking here.

The news in the last seventy-two hours takes me back to the 1985:  the Broadwater Farm disturbances and the events that led up to them.  In October 1985, the death of Mrs Jarrett during a police search of her home was followed by a demonstration outside Tottenham Police Station which in turn was followed by violence on the Broadwater Farm estate, during which PC Keith Blakelock was hacked to death.

My immediate response on hearing of the shooting dead by police of Mark Duggan, who at that stage had not been named, was to warn of a “potentially lively community reaction”.  And anyone who remembers vividly as I do the night of 6th October 1985 would have seen yesterday’s demonstration outside the Police Station as a likely trigger for attacks on the police and even for rioting.

There are, of course, many parallels with 26 years ago, but also many differences.  In 1985 police-community relations were appalling – even before the riot.  They are nothing like as bad now, but nonetheless could no doubt be better.  Unemployment in Tottenham is not as bad as it was in 1985, but is still the highest in London and the eighth worst rate in the UK.  Tottenham continues to be a vibrant community with much strength in its diversity, but there is still a sense of hopelessness amongst many young people. 

What is depressing is that having spent twelve years of my life as Council Leader trying to kickstart regeneration in Tottenham and Wood Green the need for sustainable economic development remains as acute as it did in the late 1980s.

The irresponsible violence and looting last night can never be acceptable or condoned , but one of its consequences is that many of the businesses affected will have been destroyed by what has happened and others will be damaged by the blight and stigma that may now fall on the area. 

The most important immediate task is to lessen the tension and to address the rumours that are swirling about the death of Mark Duggan.   The Independent Police Complaints Commission could make a big contribution to this.  One of the problems with this sort of dreadful incident is that often the investigation is shrouded in total secrecy and in the absence of hard information unsubstantiated stories or even malicious misinformation spread like wildfire – this is particularly so now in the age of Twitter.  I understand that the IPCC are shortly due to make some sort of public statement.  I hope they will be as open as possible and commit to providing regular briefings about the state of their investigation.  As soon as they are able to confirm or otherwise, for example, whether a non-police weapon was at the scene or not and whether it was fired or not, the better it will be.

The next urgent task is to get Tottenham and Wood Green functioning again.  The police will obviously have an important job to do in sifting through the debris for evidence (indeed, it still needs to be conclusively established that nobody burnt to death in the fires that swept through buildings).  However, I hope this can be done as quickly as possible so that the clear-up can begin and those businesses that are able to can start to function again.  Haringey Council will no doubt put in significant resources to enable this clean-up to happen but I hope that the Government will undertake to underwrite this work given that the Council is still having to implement swingeing budget reductions as a result of cuts in Government grants.

There will also need to be a review of what lessons need to be learned about the police response to the developing disturbances last night.  Many people in Tottenham and Wood Green felt undefended despite the bravery of the police and fire officers deployed.  Should there have been better intelligence about what was likely to happen?  Should more efforts have been made to monitor the traffic on social media sites?  Indeed, what is a proportionate and appropriate level of such monitoring?  I am sure colleagues on the Metropolitan Police Authority will want to pursue these issues in detail (it is not quite clear who will do this once the Police Authority is abolished once the Government’s Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill gets Royal Assent in September or October).

Finally, some of the underlying causes of what happened need to be addressed.  What is to be done about escalating gun violence in  London (particularly if police resources are to be reduced as part of Government policy)?  When is Tottenham going to see the regeneration it deserves and how are young people in Haringey going to be supported to achieve their true potential?

It must be a sign of age but I find myself hugely taken with the editorial in today’s Daily Telegraph.

It is strong stuff:

“The chief executive of a newspaper company resigns after allegations that her colleagues have hacked into the phone accounts of murder victims and their families; a Prime Minister moralises noisily in Parliament, trying to distract attention from the fact that he has been spending family holidays with this disgraced CEO, and that he appointed as his director of communications a man who employed those The chief executive of a newspaper company resigns after allegations that her colleagues have hacked into the phone accounts of murder victims and their families; a Prime Minister moralises noisily in Parliament, trying to distract attention from the fact that he has been spending family holidays with this disgraced CEO, and that he appointed as his director of communications a man who employed those phone hackers; meanwhile, the country’s most senior police officer is forced to admit that he, too, engaged someone implicated in the scandal – a ruthless and abrasive tabloid journalist from the same newspaper company – as his personal adviser.”

And it goes on:

“Our senior policemen, too, were determined not to miss out on the hospitality of Murdoch employees. Between September 2006 and June 2009, Sir Paul Stephenson, now the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had seven dinners with Neil Wallis, a former deputy editor of the News of the World at the time hacking is alleged to have gone on. They must have been agreeable occasions, for in October 2009 Mr Wallis was engaged as Sir Paul’s personal adviser – an appointment the Commissioner failed to acknowledge publicly until he was forced to this week. Mr Wallis also advised John Yates, the police officer previously in charge of the Met’s investigation into phone hacking. Even in Palermo, this would raise eyebrows.”

Senior figures have now left News International.  Where else?

Sophos’s NakedSecurity site tells the cautionary tale of the company chief executive and the slighted IT administrator who took his revenge:

“Imagine you’re giving a presentation to the board of directors at your company. You have your PowerPoint slides all ready, you’re projecting onto a 64 inch screen… what could possibly go wrong?

Well, what would you do if your carefully composed presentation was replaced on the big screen by images of a naked woman? My guess is that you wouldn’t know where to put your laser pointer..

52-year-old Walter Powell used to be an IT manager at Baltimore Substance Abuse System Inc, until he was fired in 2009. Clearly someone who believed that revenge should be served red hot, Powell used his computer knowledge to hack into his former employer’s systems from his home and install keylogging software to steal passwords.

On one occasion, Powell took remote control of his former CEO’s PowerPoint presentation to the board of directors, and projected pornographic images on the 64 inch TV.

According to media reports, Judge M. Brooke Murdock gave Powell a two year suspended sentence, and ordered him to 100 hours of community service and three years’ probation.”

Interestingly, I read this on my way home from hearing a presentation from the CEO of a very large corporation who had described in passing the processes (that even he described as draconian) his company follows in monitoring the activites of employees who hand in their notice,  which includes checking what company files they access and download, reviewing their outgoing email traffic and monitoring memory stick usage. Once caught, twice shy?

An interesting piece by Darryl Chamberlain in the Scoop at Snipe argues that the time may be coming when there should be greater indepence for London from the rest of the country.  With the devolution settlement being reviewed in Wales and Scotland, why not London as well?  The piece points out:

“A question: why can’t London have a bit of what they’re having? Isn’t it time for us to break away too?

London is a wildly different place to the rest of England, never mind the rest of the UK. We’re more socially liberal than the rest of the country, we live in communities that are far more mixed. We’re less likely to drive, and more likely to spend huge amounts of time stuck on public transport. We’ve more in common with New York or Paris than Newcastle or Portsmouth.  …

In London, we’re different.  …

Look at the two men we’ve elected to run the place. A newt-loving man with a raspy voice who loves winding up American diplomats on one hand, a floppy-haired fop on a bike with a bizarre line in Latin anecdotes on the other.

Both, in their own ways, engaging ambassadors for the capital. And seen as dangerous threats by their own party leaders. Because that is how many in the rest of England see London—as a threat. Read below the line on any comment piece on the possibility of an English parliament, and within the ?rst few comments someone will sound off about how London leeches off the rest of England, takes all the jobs and investment and produces nothing in return.

Yet if London kept the tax revenue earned within its borders—or at least had more control over raising its own budget – we’d be able to make a much better job of running our transport network, for example.

The Tube’s current woes can be traced back to the last government trying to sell off its maintenance — bitterly resisted by Ken Livingstone before he rejoined the Labour Party. He was right, Gordon Brown was wrong – but London had to pick up the bill.

In the old days, Ken used to taunt the Tories with unemployment figures on the roof of the old County Hall. But Labour wouldn?t even give him the power to empty London?s bins, so we still have 33 different recycling policies. And the Conservatives won?t even give Boris Johnson the Royal Parks, so keen is the UK government to hang onto the prestige of chasing dogs out of flower gardens.

So if they don’t trust us, why don’t we just go it alone?”

I have long pointed out the extent to which London subsidises the rest of the UK.  Irrespective of the present incumbent of the Mayor’s office, there is a strong case for London having more autonomy and being able to invest its revenues in its own infrastructure and its people.  And because London is the engine of the UK economy, this would be good for the rest of the country too.

A few days ago I reported on the call for a “general obligation for data security”.

Now comes this report on CBS (thanks to FutureCrimes):

I wonder how many companies and government agencies are equally careless in this country?

It makes leaving a paper on a photocopier seem old hat …..

High-level legal guru, Stewart Room, gave an excellent presentation at last week’s East-West Institute Global Cyber Security Summit.  In it he called for a “general obligation for security”, saying:

“I believe that holders of sensitive data, the controllers of important networks, systems and infrastructures – and their supply chains – should face a clear legal requirement to keep these assets safe and secure. As well as describing the obligation, this general security law should describe the consequences of failure.”

He pointed out that:

“It is naive to think that all relevant actors will do what is necessary to protect these assets without a clear steer from the law. Ignorance, laziness, apathy, short sightedness and greed are all powerful counterweights to enlightened self interest.”

He also highlighted the dangers of simply addressing the problem through the prism of the protection of personal data only.  Intellectual property is currently being leeched from corporate data systems all over the world – an issue repeatedly referred to at the Summit.  Likewise the vulnerability of national infrastructure systems – including power grids and water supplies – is also now increasingly apparent.

He warned that:

“In the UK and most of the rest of Europe the law for security is effectively left to reside in the domain of privacy and data protection law. This is a grave mistake. …  it gives the mistaken impression that the law only sees security as being important in the context of the handling of personal data. Of course, we all know that the substance of security extends much further that this. The impact of this problem is worsened by the fact that far too many people and organisations do not take data protection law seriously. Thus, the law is not properly driving behaviours.”

And there may be unintended consequences:

“This gives effective ownership of the field to people who are the least competent to manage it. I am talking about a small cadre of data protection regulators and bureaucrats, who are so slanted toward privacy that they may unwittingly encumber us with anti-security policies, which could jeopardise the health of cyberspace, our economies and our societies.”

He concluded byasking “what will a general obligation for security look like?”:

“Aside from removing the issue from the privacy and data protection domain and describing the nature of the obligation to secure assets and the penalties that may flow in breach, a general obligation for security will capture:

1. Critical definitions. We need to agree the parameters and make sure that we are all talking the same language.

2. The traditional “cyber crime” subject matter, dealing with the criminalisation and prosecution of unacceptable behaviours of hackers, botnets and others whom attack information and information systems. The interests of law enforcement should be properly served.

3. The role of the private sector cyber security industry, so that innovation in IT solutions can continue. We are totally reliant upon the private sector for security solutions, so we must give it our full support.

4. Intelligence sharing between the public and private sectors and across geographical boundaries.

5. The need for identification measures for people and machines operating in cyberspace. Privacy should not provide a cloak for criminals and anti-social behaviour.

6. The right for people and organisations under cyberattack to take offensive action in their defence. This is probably the most controversial point. But we need to ask ourselves whether it is morally right to tie the hands of those under attack. And we need to be sure that we do not open Pandora’s box.”

Whilst ideally this needs a solution in international law, a good start would be made by legal changes in this country to establish a better and more robust framework, whilst British Ministers argue for European-wide changes via Brussels and press the case through the G8 and G20 fora.

There was a palpable sense of urgency about the need for change at last week’s summit.  I hope it was felt by Francis Maude MP, who is apparently now the Minister in charge of cyber-security, and that he takes it back to his Government colleagues.

The lead story on the front page of today’s Sunday Times (behind the paywall) proclaims “China gives £50 million aid for Olympics” and reports that:

“A Chinese company is offering Britain £50 million of ‘aid’ to put in a free mobile phone network in time for the Olympics.

Huawei, one of the worlds biggest telecoms equipment firms, is presenting the offer for the London Underground as a gift from one Olympic host nation to another.”

This proposal has the support of Mayor Boris Johnson.

However, as the Sunday Times warns:

“The offer has been made only two years after intelligence chiefs warned that China could have the capabilityto shut down Britain by bringing down its telecoms and utilities systems.

They raised fears that equipment already installed by Huawei in BT’s network could be used to cripple vital services.

A deal would see Huawei, which has close military links, install mobile transmitters along the ceilings of tunnels so that commuters can make and receive calls for the first time while travelling underground.”

I have been concerned about Huawei for some time.  We are breath-takingly complacent about the vulnerability of our critical national infrastructure and – particularly in the current economic climate – there seems to be no appetite from the Government to prevent huge chunks of it falling into foreign hands.

This is potentially another example – aided and abetted by Mayor Boris Johnson.

Not all Tories are so relaxed (and Mayor Johnson has a reputation for being very relaxed!): Patrick Mercer MP has pointed out:

“… it absolutely answers a terrorists’ prayers to be able to detonate devices on the Underground.  …  It has been proven that a proportion of the cyber attacks on this country come from China.  I wonder when the eyes of the world are upon us whether there is sense in using a Chinese firm to install a sensitive mobile network.”

These are serious matters and a serious London Mayor should not complacently give his support, presumably he hopes that if his eyes are firmly closed and his fingers are crossed that it will all be OK.

Every January, the Lord Mayor of London hosts a dinner at the Mansion House in the heart of the Square Mile in honour of the ‘Governing Bodies of London’. For the last ten years this has been addressed by the (elected) Mayor of London – in effect providing a platform for an Annual State of London Address
Mayor Boris Johnson has usually offered an entertaining, if sometimes rather incoherent, fifteen minutes or so of fairly random observations vaguely related to London issues. (Not quite the dignified and substantive gravitas-loaded approach originally envisaged by the Court of Aldermen and the Court of Common Council that make up the Corporation of London.)
Tonight was no exception. The only point of any substance was the Boris Johnson solution to poor industrial relations on the London Underground: an offer to those present to drive the trains. After several glasses of wine, quite a number in the audience seemed up for it.
Our safety in their hands (courtesy of Mayor Boris Johnson).