Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former Dame Eliza and Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), gave the Mile End lecture in the House of Lords a few hours ago.  Her topic was “Reflections on Intelligence” and I understand that the text of this will shortly be available on the Parliamentary web-site.

In the Q&A after the lecture one Jack Bauer enthusiast asked her about torture.  She was unequivocal in her reply:

“Nothing – even saving lives – justifies torture.”

She’d earlier made some comments about US “waterboarding” activities at Guantanamo Bay and she added the caustic comment:

“The sad thing is that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush watched “24″.”

Admiral Lord Alan West, the Security Minister, has spoken out today about the cyber-threat that Britain faces.  I am pleased that he has tackled the subject so directly.  Too many businesses and too much of Government have been complacent about what has been happening for years.

When I first started raising the problem in the House of Lords more than five years ago, I was repeatedly assured that there was no significant threat and that the protection around the critical national infrastructure was more than sufficient to fend off any problems.

When I started asking questions of each Government Department about how often their systems had been compromised, it was apparent from the answers that some Departments simply didn’t know.  I was clearly making progress when two years ago, I started being told it was “not in the national interest” to divulge the information.

When I found three reputable penetration-testing companies prepared to check Government systems pro bono, I was assured such external testing was not needed.

Now – at last – the real and present danger of such cyber-attacks is being acknowledged and the necessary systems to combat it are starting to be put in place.  I just hope it is not too little too late.

I have had a rather scary thought.

This evening there was a meeting of the Labour Peers’ Group.  Now normally I follow a strict rule that I never post on this blog about private meetings I have attended, nor reveal any privileged information I acquire on such occasions.  However, to explain my scary thought I have to reveal just a little about this meeting. (I promise I won’t deviate again.)

This evening’s meeting received an oral briefing from Black Rod, who is amongst other things responsible for security in the House of Lords and about which he was briefing colleagues.

I have just remembered the last time Black Rod (or rather his predecessor) attended a meeting of the Labour Peers. It was for a similar purpose.  And I remember on the previous occasion a number of (very) senior colleagues making scathing remarks about the need for any greater security in the Palace of Westminster (there was no repetition this evening I am pleased to say).

And the date of this previous visit? 

Wednesday 6th July 2005. 

Remember what happened the following morning ……

Earlier today, a leading Islamic scholar, Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, issued a comprehensive fatwa which in 600 pages of argument ruled that terrorists were enemies of Islam, that suicide bombers were heading for hell, and that “There is no place for any martyrdom and their act is never, ever to be considered Jihad.”

The fatwa was issued in London at an event organised and funded by Minhaj-ul-Quran International (MQI) UK.  I heard about this from the Quilliam Foundation, which said:

“This fatwa has the potential to be a highly significant step towards eradicating Islamist terrorism. Fatwas by Wahhabi-influenced clerics and Islamist ideologues initiated modern terrorism against civilians. Terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda continue to justify their mass killings with self-serving readings of religious scripture.  Fatwas that demolish and expose such theological innovations will consign Islamist terrorism to the dustbin of history.”

This is apparently the most comprehensive fatwa (religious ruling) on terrorism ever issued and will set a clear context for those Muslims who are seeking a clear lead from mainstream scholars.

Scott Charney, the Microsoft Vice President in charge of Trustworthy Computing, is speaking today at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.  He is re-stating both Microsoft’s commitment to “End-to-End Trust” but also the need for business, government and the public to work together to ensure that those using the internet are safe and secure.

The message is an important one: responsibility for internet security has to be shared.  The House of Lords Committee on Personal Internet Security, on which I sat, reported nearly three years ago and used a road transport analogy to make the point: safe road use requires responsible behaviour by drivers and pedestrians, but cars need to have safety features embodied in them, roads themselves need to be well-maintained and properly lit, there need to be laws regulating safe behaviour on the roads (speed limits etc) and those laws need to be properly enforced.

If anything the message has become even more important since our Committee reported.  More and more commercial and personal interactions take place on line.  Social networking sites are booming and an increasing proportion of commerce is conducted via the internet.

The threats to security have also become more pronounced.  The threats are no longer from isolated individuals, but from organised crime and it is also becoming abundantly apparent that some nation states are operating in the same way to infiltrate commercial and government networks for their own purposes.

And the technology itself is developing.  Cloud computing is becoming the norm and this presents its own challenges.  Certainly, this has raised the issue of security for many people (although it is not automatically a given that the security of data held in a cloud is necessarily worse than if it is held on your own servers, particularly if it turns out that they are inadequately protected).

So how do we move forward?

Partnership is certainly essential.  Governments have to work together in setting an international framework for collaboration and for law enforcement.  And at a national level they must also work with IT service providers and with business in general.

But above all, the individual user must be at the heart of all this.  Sensible security arrangements that make sense to the individual have to be devised.  It needs to be acknowledged that most individual users of the internet, whether they are trying to do their weekly shopping or organise their social lives, are rushed and busy.  Moreover, they are not technological experts.  They have inadequate levels of knowledge, so an error message or system alert that makes sense to an IT professional will probably be gibberish to most of us.

And critical to all of this is the need for robust identity management.

Surely, it is not too much to ask that people can feel confident that their personal details are secure, that they can communicate with others secure in the knowledge that the person or organisation with which they are communicating is who it says it is, and that when they are asked to identify themselves they need reveal no more about themselves than is necessary for the transaction concerned.

If today’s discussions at the RSA Conference take us further towards those objectives, we will be making real progress and we can all feel more hopeful that a trusted and secure internet environment is being built.

I always thought of William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, as one of the Tory Shadow Cabinet’s better performers.  However, his performance this morning on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme in an interview with John Humphrys was dire and I will clearly have to relegate him to the also-ran status of most of his colleagues.

He was being interviewed about the assassination in Dubai of a leading Hamas commander.  However, he started by asserting that his default position was that any statement made by by a Minister was a lie – rather a repudiation of his Leader’s promise that Cameron Conservatives would not stoop to old-style “Punch and Judy” politics.  This sort of comment debases the political process and undermines democracy itself.

His key message seemed to be that the Foreign Office should be seeking an assurance from the Israeli ambassador that no Mossad agent would ever in the future pretend to be a British citizen.  At first sight that seems to be fine – except, of course, that to date there doesn’t seem to be anything more than newspaper supposition that Mossad were involved in this case: so any ambassador is likely to respond that the question is hypothetical.  Incidentally, I wonder what the response would be from any British ambassador called into another country’s foreign office and asked to give a categorical assurance that no agent of MI6 would ever in the future pretend to be a national of that country.  So perhaps William Hague needs to get real if he seriously expects to be taken seriously as a prospective future Foreign Secretary.

He resorted to saying that he condemned extra-judicial killings.  Again, absolutely right.  However, John Humphrys then asked him about the US use of drone aircraft pursuing Al Qaeda personnel in Pakistan and killing civilians.  Hague repeatedly refused to answer.  He left the clear impression that he was condemning Israel for killing the Hamas leader – condemning a country with which the UK has strong links on the basis of newspaper supposition – but that he was condoning the actions of the US.

Hardly consistent, hardly convincing, but definitely Conservative.

Those of you who follow these matters would have been forgiven for thinking that in the (increasingly unlikely) event of a Conservative Government one of the first things they would do is scrap Control Orders – the method used at present for keeping tabs on the handful of individuals (and it is a handful: less than a dozen) who are deemed to pose a serious terrorist threat to the public but who cannot for a variety of reasons be charged and brought before the Courts.

Successive Tory Home Affairs and Security spokespeople have attacked the very concept of Control Orders as being totally alien, an affront to liberty etc etc.  Repeatedly they have said that they would repeal the legislation.

Now, however, like with their economic policies and their promises on marriage, what had seemed like a cast-iron pledge has vanished like a mirage in the desert.

Their new policy document, “A Resilient Nation” changes the pledge into a review, saying “A Conservative Government … will … review the Control Order system with a view to reducing reliance on it”.

Zowie!! Radical stuff!

This was all aired in Lords Question Time this afternoon (in which I played a modest part):

“Lord Lloyd of Berwick

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for phasing out control orders in the light of the unanimous decision of nine Lords of Appeal in Ordinary in Secretary of State for the Home Department v AF (No. 3).

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead): My Lords, the Government do not have any plans for phasing out control orders.

Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. The House will recall the unusual circumstances in which we passed the control order legislation five years ago after an all-night sitting. Do the Government have any alternative plan—plan B, as it were—if Parliament decides not to renew the legislation when it comes up for renewal next month? If so, could the Minister let us know what that plan is?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, this House has gone over the control order issue at length and there have been numerous Questions on it. None of us likes control orders. I did not like them when I came into post and I specifically asked whether there was any way of getting round them. A detailed study into this was done by the Security Service—SO15 OSCT—and control orders were the least worst option. There are a very small number of them—12, according to the last quoted figure and fewer than that now. We use them on a carefully selected basis.

I believe that they are necessary for the security of the nation. We do not like them and we have a lot of safeguards in place. Three High Court judgments have upheld individual control orders since the House of Lords judgment. Mr Justice Wilkie said of one of the cases that there was overwhelming evidence of past involvement in terrorism-related activity and future intentions to be so involved. It would be remiss of our Government not to look after the security of our nation. Control orders are absolutely necessary and I will fight tooth and nail to keep them because there is no easy alternative at the moment.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, is my noble friend aware—

Lord Elton: My Lords—

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, perhaps we could hear from my noble friend first, and then from the noble Lord, Lord Elton.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in his capacity as the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, that there is no readily available alternative to control orders? Is he also aware of the interesting document on national security published by the Conservative Party, in which it, too, acknowledge that the best that the party can offer as an alternative is to review the system with a view to reducing reliance on it—which, as I understand it, is the Government’s policy?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who is the independent reviewer, stated,

“it is my view and advice that abandoning the control orders system entirely would have a damaging effect on national security”.

He went on to emphasise that he had considered the effects of the court decisions on disclosure and did not agree that the effect was to make control orders impossible.

My noble friend is absolutely right that we constantly review this issue. I am very hard on people, when they try to come up with a control order, to see that it is absolutely necessary. It is interesting that those in the party opposite, who earlier said that they were going to get rid of these things, have, amazingly, slightly changed their view—which is much more sensible, because all of us are interested in the security of our nation.

Lord Elton: Nevertheless, the noble and learned Lord, in his supplementary question, asked about the Government’s plan B. I did not hear an answer: do they not have one?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, all the time we are looking at threats, possible threats and what might happen. It would be foolhardy of me to say on the Floor of the House what we would do. Clearly, we would ensure the safety of the nation. It might cost a huge amount more, and take a great deal more effort, and it might mean we could not be quite so sure of our safety, but that is what we would do.

There is to be a new Joint Committee to consider the National Security Strategy.

The first National Security Strategy was published in March 2008 and looks beyond the traditional areas of foreign, defence and security policies to include transnational crime, pandemics and flooding.

The Strategy was updated in June 2009 with further updates to be produced every year.  It has always been the intention that there would be a Joint Parliamentary Committee with members drawn from both Houses to help monitor the implementation and development of the Strategy.

The Committee is to consist of twelve Commons members, including the Chairmen of the Departmental Select Committees on Foreign Affairs, Defence, Home Affairs, International Development, Business and Enterprise, Energy and Climate Change, and Justice, and also the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and ten Lords members (and I have been asked to be one of these).

The latest appalling news from Baghdad that at least forty people have been killed by a female suicide bomber is a timely reminder that simple profiling will never be enough to combat determined terrorists.

The idea that by stopping and searching all young Asian males that you would significantly reduce the risk of suicide bombing is a fallacy.  As this news reminds us, not all such bombers are males.  Richard Reid, the convicted shoe bomber, was not Asian and was a convert to Islam.  And, of course, not all Asians are Muslims, nor are all Muslims Asian.  And most important of all, the vast majority of Muslims are not violent extremists and are not potential terrorists.

Crude profiling will not only be ineffective, but it will increasingly alienate precisely those people that the authorities need to be working with if they are to be effective in combatting terrorism.

In the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, the most senior counter-terrorist police officer in the UK, made the case for profiling.  But – and it is a big but – he was NOT arguing for crude profiling.  He was arguing for “intelligent” profiling.  And, yes, this does involve stopping people based on appearance and behaviour, but it is also about ” using “common sense” and “street-craft” to recognise suspicious behaviour.”

The Telegraph report goes on (mainly focussing on stops at airports):

“Mr Yates called for searches to be carried out using intelligence databases, and “sharp thinking” on the ground.

He said that suspicions should be aroused by an individual’s personal history and pattern of travel, how they bought their ticket, and their luggage.

The anti-terrorism chief continued: “At the same time, we must encourage police and security staff to use their experience, their street-craft – their ‘nous’. This means considering a range of factors – dress, body language, behaviour or simply something that’s ‘not quite right’.

“This puts the onus on our staff to be intelligent and to act with common sense.””

This is an approach that most people would support and it is right that this is the ethos now being promoted by the Metropolitan Police.  For it to work, of course, there also needs to be a rigorous system of management supervision and external scrutiny to make sure that the policy is not abused or mis-applied.

At the last meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority – all of two months ago – I raised the Human Rights Watch report, entitled “Cruel Britannia” in which five cases were reported of individuals who had been tortured overseas and alleged that British officials were involved.  I sought assurances about Metropolitan Police involvement in any of the cases.

At the time, the Commissioner said he had no reason to believe that any Metropolitan Police officers were involved, but he would check and report back.  He has now done so and formally reported to the Authority today that:

“We can confirm that we are satisfied that there can be no basis to any allegation that MPS officers could have been complicit in torture.”