I am told that the name of the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner will be announced tomorrow morning at 9am.  There is to be a photocall with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Mayor Boris Johnson.  Mayor Johnson (he is the Latin scholar after all) will say “Habemus Papam”.  There will be a puff of white smoke and when it clears there – revealed – will be the new Commissioner.

The Home Secretary and the Mayor having interviewed the final two candidates – Sir Hugh Orde (Chief Constable of Northern Ireland) and Sir Paul Stephenson (Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police) – on Monday.  I hear that they readily reached a consensus on which of the two was the best person to succeed Sir Ian Blair and the Home Secretary has now made her formal recommendation to the Queen.

I genuinely do not know which of the two it will be. 

However, the good news is that the Home Secretary and the Mayor agreed on the choice – so whichever one of the final two it turns out to be will take up the role with the confidence and support of both the Mayor of London (and Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority) and the Home Secretary. 

What is more the person who is appointed will have been chosen from what is probably the strongest and most impressive field there has ever been for the Commissioner’s job.  

Either of the final two candidates would make an impressive Commissioner.   They would each bring their own styles to the job, but whichever it turns out to be, I wish them well.

I have heard a number of stories about breaches in information security at the Ministry of Defence in the last week.  It sounds as if the problems occurred in a number of places with malicious code compromising a series of computers, including some on board Royal Navy ships.  It has also been suggested that not only did this lead to a variety of system breakdowns but also that information was transmitted away from the secure system.
If these stories are true, it is significant at a number of levels: first, it would appear to have been a co-ordinated attack on multiple systems (therefore highly organised and credibly sponsored by a nation state); second, it appears to have caused major disruption; and third, it successfully penetrated the existing information security systems.
I have been concerned for a number of years about the inadequate priority given to the information security of the UK’s critical national infrastructure.  When I first started raising this in Parliament with a series of questions, I was essentially told that the Government was satisfied that there were adequate protection systems in place and that in any event there was no evidence or intelligence to suggest that either other nation states or terrorists might seek to exploit any information security vulnerabilities.
Since then, we have seen the Titan Rain cyber-attacks on US and UK systems in 2007 (allegedly sponsored by China), and cyber-disruption aimed at Estonia and Georgia in 2008.
The UK Government has started taking the threat much more seriously than it did and I am not in a position to know whether the arrangements now in place are sufficient.  However, this week’s reports of the attacks on Ministry of Defence computers suggest that there is still a lot more to be done.
For about four years, I asked a series of Parliamentary Questions of each Government Department about the number of incidents of malicious breaches of their IT systems.  The answers obtained were interesting if not very meaningful.  Each year, by far the largest number of breaches were reported by the Ministry of Defence.  This possibly suggested that their systems were the subject of more attacks, but certainly indicated that they had the best system for monitoring what was going on within their IT systems.  In a sense, much more worrying was the fact that up to half of Government regularly reported that they had suffered no malicious attacks whatsoever.  This, of course, could mean that their systems to avoid malicious penetration were perfect or that their systems were regarded as so boring that no-one had bothered to attack them.  Much the more likely explanation, however, was that their systems were not detecting when they had been attacked.
Last year, my Parliamentary Questions were answered with a standard answer that “it was not in the national interest” to provide the data as it might provide assistance to those who were trying to undermine our national security.  It is therefore impossible to gauge the significance and relative scale of the latest attack.  However, if it raises the importance attached to having the highest levels of information security surrounding the UK’s critical national infrastructure, then some good will have come of it.
At the moment, I am not sure whether there is anything to be gained by trying to get more details of what has happened and more importantly what is being learned from the latest attack.  Maybe I will feel more energised tomorrow ….

It was refreshing to see David Miliband is today shifting the Government’s line on the “War on Terror”.  Most UK officials stopped using the phrase some time ago on the grounds that it helped provide a justification for those who use terrorism as a tactic in pursuing their objectives by glamorising them as enemy combatants in the “war”, and unhelpfully lumped together all sorts of groups whose only common feature was a willingness to use terrorism.  Now, however, David Miliband has confronted the issue head-on, sparking the debate at an international level, about the extent to which the measures taken to combat and pursue terrorists run the risk of alienating communities (indeed whole nations) and make individuals more likely to fall prey to those who want to recruit them to the cause of violent extremism.

This is not to say that any of the authorities should go soft on pursuing those who are terrorists, or who are planning terrorist acts or who are recruiting terrorists.  It is clear that in the UK alone there are many hundreds (2,000-plus, according to successive Director-Generals of MI5) who are engaged in terrorism in one way or another.  They have to be identified, their activities disrupted and the individuals brought in to the criminal justice system.  However, in the planning of every police operation an assessment has to be made of the appropriateness of the tactics used and the risks that are being confronted – not only of the potential terrorist acts themselves but also what effect individual responses will have on the future flow of those tempted to go down the road of violent extremism. 

This is already – I believe - very much part of policing practice in the UK: senior officers planning operations routinely assess the PREVENT implications of individual PURSUE operations (to use the jargon of the CONTEST counter-terrorist strategy).  Thus, the impact of the use of Section 44 stops and searches (the random power that the police can deploy under the Terrorism Act 2000 to stop people to deter would-be terrorists) is being reviewed, so as to minimise the sense of alienation felt by many young people when it is used in a widespread fashion – as recommended by the Metropolitan Police Authority in its “Counter-Terrorism: The London Debate” report.

The issue raised by David Miliband, of course, raises wider issues and is timely – just days before President Obama’s inauguration – in that US foreign policy needs to be tested against the same template.  Drone bombing raids in the FATA areas of Pakistan may have been effective in removing senior people in the leadership of al-Qaeda but what effect are they having on young men in Pakistan (or for that matter on the future direction of Pakistani politics)?  To say nothing of the impact of abstaining on the UN resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

A large amount of today’s news coverage seems to have been about the alleged “row” between the Conservative Party and Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, who has overall responsibility for the continuing police investigation into the leaks of material from the Home Office which led to the arrest of Damian Green MP.

The story so far seems to be that the Mail on Sunday for reasons best known to their editor (and no doubt completely unrelated to his role in the Green case) decided to investigate Assistant Commissioner Quick and, in particular, whether there was anything reprehensible in the wedding hire car business run by his wife.  They couldn’t find anything wrong, so instead published a story alleging a “possible” security risk because the family home of the head of Scotland Yard’s Specialist Operations Directorate was also where the vintage cars used for the wedding hire business were garaged.  Then to make sure that any security breach was maximised showed pictures of Assistant Commissioner Quick, his home and the vintage cars.

The following day, as Assistant Commissioner Quick was in the process of moving his family away from the security risk exacerbated by the Mail story, he was collared by another reporter and made some tetchy comments suggesting that the whole farrago was part of a smoke-screen set up to distract attention from the investigation being carried out into the leaks from the Home Office and intended to create sufficient fuss to get the investigation dropped.  No doubt he shouldn’t have been so tetchy, although I suspect most people in similar circumstances might have reacted in even more forthright terms.

In response, the Conservative Party threatened to sue for defamation and David Cameron went into over-drive and, using the prestigious platform of his end-of-year interview with the BBC’s “Women’s Hour” called for the offending remarks to be withdrawn and for Assistant Commissioner Quick to make a full apology. 

Finally, after an apology was made in more fulsome terms than I would have been able to manage in the same position, David Cameron declared that the matter was closed and that the Conservative Party were “drawing a line” under the affair.

So what exactly was the Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, doing on BBC Radio 4’s “World at One” programme a couple of hours later?  Apparently, he was very keen to go on air (or so I was told, when the programme contacted me to join him to debate the issue – I declined on the basis that that nice Mr Cameron had declared the matter closed and therefore further discussion was pointless). 

What in the event Dominic Grieve said on the programme was hardly drawing a line under the affair, as he said Assistant Commissioner Quick should consider his position and stand down from his role in respect of the inquiry into Home Office leaks.

So either David Cameron was being disingenuous when he accepted Assistant Commissioner Quick’s apology and said that it “drew a line” under the controversy or Dominic Grieve was deliberately ignoring what his Party Leader had said.

Either way, it begins to look as though the Conservatives really are trying to make sure that Assistant Commissioner Quick stops his investigations.

It has now been publicly confirmed that the nine applicants for the post of Met Commissioner (or “Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis” to use the proper title) have now been whittled down to four.  This follows a short-listing meeting earlier this week, chaired by Sir David Normington (Permanent Secretary at the Home Office). 

The lucky four are:

• Sir Paul Stephenson, currently acting Commissioner, who was Sir Ian Blair’s Deputy and was formerly Chief Constable of Lancashire;
• Sir Hugh Orde, Chief Constable of Northern Ireland and formerly a Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the Met;
• Sir Paul Scott-Lee, Chief Constable of the West Midlands; and
• Bernard Hogan-Howe, Chief Constable of Merseyside and formerly an Assistant Commissioner at the Met (and the only non-knight in the list).

They all have substantial experience and it would be wrong to describe any of them as the front-runner.  The race is genuinely an open one.

The next stage is an interview for the four candidates at the Home Office in January, followed by an interview a few days later at the Metropolitan Police Authority.  The names will then be considered by the Home Secretary, presumably with the comments/recommendations from the two interviews.  Technically, the Commissioner is a Royal appointment with the Queen being advised by the Home Secretary, who must in turn have consulted the Metropolitan Police Authority and considered any representations made by the Mayor of London.

White smoke by the end of next month?

When I was on the London Assembly between 2000 and 2004, most meetings of the Assembly itself were pretty dull with the only excitement (and that only counted as excitement if you were a pretty sad individual) being some fairly petty inter-Party bickering.  However, maybe things have changed.  Earlier today, I finally caught up with the webcast of yesterday’s meeting of the Assembly (I know I’ve been a bit slow but I have had quite a number of other things on in the last couple of days).  This was the meeting where the Assembly was questioning Mayor Boris Johnson (in his capacity as Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA)) along with Sir Paul Stephenson, Acting Commissioner.

Len Duvall‘s questioning of the Mayor was scrutiny at its best and has been described to me as “forensic” by a number of people who were there.  Len, of course, is Leader of the Labour Group and followed me as Chair of MPA until Boris Johnson took over at the beginning of October.

Len first of all asked the Mayor about the comments attributed to him that the arrest of Damian Green  was unlikely to lead to a charge or a prosecution.  The Mayor then repeated the comments and didn’t seem to see any incongruity in statements like that being made by a Chair of a Police Authority, who has just been briefed in confidence by senior police officers on a continuing police operation.

Len then asked another series of questions about who the Mayor had subsequently talked to about the police operation.  Initially, the Mayor was reluctant to say, muttering something about his wife, but then blurted out that he had telephoned Damian Green himself.  This is frankly an extraordinary admission.

As Len commented subsequently:

“It is astonishing that the Mayor, following a briefing from senior police officers, has been speaking to a suspect under police investigation. He received information as chair of the MPA, then went to his political ally and old friend, who is now under criminal investigation. This is not appropriate behaviour for a chair of the police authority.

“Whether he likes it or not, the public perception will be that he his too involved in this investigation and is looking after his mates. Regardless of the merits of this particular case, should the chair of the police authority be speaking to a suspect in a criminal investigation? Should he then pre-judge the outcome of that investigation? The answer to both those questions is ‘no’. Boris should reflect on how he and his officials have behaved from the start of this affair and re-consider whether, if he is going to use sensitive information for political capital, he is an appropriate person to chair the authority.

“The appropriate time to raise issues around police action is once an investigation, and in this case the review announced today, is completed.”

A police officer who did something similar and spoke without authorisation to a person who had been arrested and released on police bail would be liable to disciplinary action.

An ordinary member of a police authority who did something like this might well be reported to the Standards Board for breaching the Code of Conduct governing members of public bodies and could, in principle, end up by being suspended from office.

So what will happen to the Mayor?  No doubt, he assumes that his charm, coupled with a bumbling mea culpa and an admission that he is new to this sort of public accountability will get him through. But Len gave him a lifeline and asked whether he would go away and reflect on whether his conduct was appropriate as Chair of the Police Authority.  However, the Mayor wasn’t having it – instead, he effectively said he would do the same thing again.

If the Mayor continues as Chair of the Police Authority, some interesting issues are raised.  Will the police ever trust him enough after this to brief him about confidential matters and on operational issues?  They will certainly think twice in the future about talking to the Mayor in his capacity as Chair of the MPA about an ongoing investigation if they run the risk of the Mayor’s next act being to ring a suspect in that investigation for a cosy chat and to publicly announce his views on the likely outcome of that investigation.  

However, if there isn’t a relationship of trust on such matters between the Mayor and senior police officers, London will lose out because everywhere else in the country one of the roles of a police authority chair is to be briefed and, on occasions, to give advice or to warn, whilst respecting the operational independence and decision-making of the police command structure.  The Mayor was quite within his rights to urge caution on the police in the matter of the alleged Home Office leaker and Damian Green, but that should have been a caution urged privately (at least, whilst the investigation is in progress – and, of course, it is still continuing) and not then briefed out to the media and repeated to the London Assembly.

Damian Green’s arrest yesterday has predictably sparked controversy.  However, let’s get the facts in proportion.

Fact One: Why were the police officers concerned from the Counter-Terrorist Command?  The Metropolitan Police Special Branch was set up in 1883 and amongst its many other duties it had responsibility for investigating security breaches in Government departments, including leaks of confidential material (they also investigate allegations of breaches of electoral law).  Two years ago, the Metropolitan Police merged Special Branch with the Anti-Terrorist Branch to form a new Counter-Terrorist Command and, although the majority of the new Command’s work relates to terrorism, it still retains the wider remit of the former Special Branch.  So if there was an allegation about a leak from a Whitehall Department to be investigated by the police, it would fall to the Counter-Terrorist Command to do the work.

Fact Two: In any investigation, the police have got to follow the evidence. Even if the evidence leads into sensitive areas.  I backed the police in pursuing the so-called “cash for honours” inquiry, as did many in the Conservative Party who are now saying that the police action in this particular case is inappropriate.  In such highly sensitive cases, it would be unthinkable for the police not to consult the Crown Prosecution Service about whether each significiant step was proportionate in the context of the alleged offence and the material already gathered.  I cannot believe that this did not happen in this particular case.

Fact Three: Why were so many police officers involved?  In any operation involving a search and, in particular, examination and possible removal of computer equipment a number of police officers would necessarily have to attend.  The nine described in this particular instance sounds about right.

Fact Four:  Why was an “arrest” necessary?  If a search is to take place and if someone is to be interviewed at a police station, an arrest (which also gives the person arrested specific rights) is normally required.

I hope the controversy and fuss is not an attempt to prevent the police properly concluding their investigations.  Those who attempted to do so in “cash for honours” case were wrong and it would be equally wrong to try and derail the process in this case.  To do so, would be inappropriate political interference in policing.

And just for the record: I was not informed about the arrest until several hours after it happened.

The reported death of Rashid Rauf raises some important questions and highlights the dilemmas being faced constantly by those who are trying to protect their country’s citizens from terrorism.  Rashid Rauf has been described by many media reports as the person believed to be the mastermind behind the alleged plot to use liquid bombs to blow up airliners flying from the UK to the United States.  His arrest in Pakistan triggered the raids in August 2006 that led to a significant number of people being arrested in Britain and three people being convicted of conspiracy to murder this September with a further trial pending.  Subsequently, Rauf escaped from custody in Pakistan under strange circumstances while on his way to an extradition hearing.  He has now apparently been killed by an American airstrike in Waziristan part of Pakistan’s FATA  (Federally Administered Tribal Areas).

In an ideal world, he would have been extradited from Pakistan to the UK (he was a British citizen) and his guilt or innocence would have been determined in a court of law.  If the suggestions that he was the mastermind of the 2006 plot are correct, then there would have been every reason to suppose (and no doubt the US would also have been acting on current intelligence reports) that his recent activities might have been directed towards masterminding some further attack.  If that were true, the US would no doubt argue that their airstrike has prevented the deaths of hundreds or maybe thousands.  So the question we all have to ask ourselves is: have the ends justified the means?

There are plenty of other questions, although it is not clear whether knowing the answers is necessarily helpful.  Were the Pakistani authorities complicit in Rauf’s escape from custody and were they complicit in the air strike that appears to have killed him?  Or were different elements within the Pakistani state complicit in the escape and the air strike?  The Pakistani government, both under Zardari and under Musharraf, treads a complicated path in trying both to be supportive of Western attempts to clamp down on terrorism and at the same time not to alienate elements of popular opinion in Pakistan that are sympathetic to Taleban or al-Qaeda rhetoric.

American airstrikes (often using remotely-controlled unmanned drone missiles) into the FATA are inevitably wounding to national pride in Pakistan.  The Government both protests against these strikes but is at the same time accused of having secretly agreed to them.  The more such strikes there are the more vulnerable will the Government become and, if the Government were to fall, it is not clear what the stance of any successor might be. 

The airstrikes are also no doubt feeding the “single narrative” used to persuade people down the path towards violent radical extremism and the flow increases every time an airstrike goes wrong and kills “innocent” people.

On the other hand, there is also no question that the removal of key people in the al-Qaeda hierarchy does reduce that organisation’s effectiveness and ability to plan and coordinate terrorist activity around the world.

The other certainty is that the frequency of the airstrikes will continue to increase over the next few weeks as the Bush administration desperately tries to be able to declare “mission accomplished” and announce the death of Osama Bin Laden before it leaves office.

Let nobody say that House of Lords Select Committee reports are without influence!  It seems that one of the recommendations of the House of Lords Committee inquiry into “Personal Internet Security” has been taken on board by Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari.  The Committee, of which I was a member, recommended stiffer penalties for those convicted of cyber-crimes.  However, Zardari’s response has probably gone just a bit further than we had in mind.  He has now issued a decree backdated to the end of September that sets the maximum penalties for internet crime as death or life imprisonment.

Those people who felt I had gone too far when I called for a Sarblanes-Oxley type approach to company directors who fail to take information security seriously enough might care to note what the Zardari solution might be!

I keep hearing that one of the first acts of President Obama when he takes office in January will be to announce the closure of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.  Symbolically this will have a significant impact on the world image of the United States.  Guantanamo Bay has become synonymous with human righs abuses and the role of the camp itself is, of course, extremely dubious in terms of international law.  It will remove one thread of the single narrative used to lure individuals down the path to violent extremism (not in itself enough to stop violent extremism, but helpful nonetheless).

The question now being posed is what will happen to the detainees.  Only a tiny number have ever been fed into a proper judicial process for trial.  Some of them if returned to their former countries of origin are likely to face torture or the death penalty.  Moreover, as one sage counter-terrorist expert pointed out to me the other evening, if a detainee wasn’t a terrorist or a violent extremist when he was sent to Guantanamo Bay, the experience there may well have turned him into one.  No easy challenge for the incoming Obama administration.

Another early decision of the Obama administration will also probably be to merge the Homeland Security Council with the National Security Council.  This too looks like a wise decision – having a dual leadership function for something like security, as has existed in the US since 2002, is a recipe for duplication, unclear accountability, and muddle.