private lives

"One can usually adopt a fairly effective cover story by pretending to be someone to another branch of the same department. We find that time and time again we can obtain detailed information over the telephone from government departments that really should not be divulged to anyone at all, let alone a voice over the phone. But it does happen. This approach, by the way, works especially well with local authorities.
"Criminal records are also reasonably easy. And there are middle-men readily available for most departments. We would then assign them to the investigation. By a combination of bluff, knowledge of the department's workings and, sometimes, the old pal's act, they can get to work. And invariably this succeeds."
Excerpts from a memo by a Guardian reporter, Peter Harvey, after he had managed to get an inquiry agent into his confidence. The agent proved his skills by a quick phone call from the Gay Hussar restaurant in London where Harvey was giving him lunch. He then gave Harvey personal details he had discovered about him in only a few minutes.
He did the same with the editor, Alastair Hetherington, producing confidential information about his tax returns. And then the Guardian believed him and carried a front-page story. It produced a shocked reaction from Ted Heath then Prime Minister, and questions in the House. The police came looking in the newspaper office for clues about the source, which the paper refused to give. But they found it. The agent, Ian Withers, had sent in an invoice for payment. The result was that he was arrested and sent to prison. Peter Harvey won the Journalist of the Year award.
In spite of the plethora of demands which followed for criminal action against illegal surveillance - Heath set up a committee on privacy which recommended this - the blagging and bugging increased over the years, not by the press, but by private interests. The number of inquiry agents, some former police officers, expanded.
It has culminated, not as it might have in press campaigns to reveal the illegality of the spying, but in the Murdoch newspapers letting reporters use inquiry agents to get information for their stories. This is what happened to Gordon Brown whose bank account, legal files and family medical records were illegally plundered over what has been estimated as 10 years. This implies a deliberate Press action against him - which succeeded.
New privacy laws which will be brought in might work this time.
It is not only private inquiry agents who do the snooping. So do the security services. The question in David Leigh's book on the plot against the Prime Minister Harold Wilson,who was succeeded by Edward Heath asked "Was a British Prime Minister hounded out of office by bogus element inside MI5 and the CIA who sought to discredit him as a Soviet agent?"
And there is also Menwith Hill, the American's international listening post on the Yorkshire moors, with its permanent group of protesters outside,from which no email or phone call is safe.
Add to all that the digital revolution and privacy may be a thing of the past, whatever laws are brought in. We will all then be living in a small village with open windows.

ends