Obviously fighting against the crushing power of the state is hard work, but we can still land a few (metaphorical) blows. This is one of the most feisty letters from a lawyer you will ever see, directly confronting Police Scotland over responsibility for the hacking of my Twitter account.
I am quite sure the contents of my phone and laptop were shared with UK intelligence services, and very probably with other intelligence services as well. Which one hacked my Twitter account we may never know, but the responsibility lies with Police Scotland who seized my devices and initially downloaded the contents. The letter covers all eventualities.
The lawyer’s letter previously sent to X (or Twitter) has resulted in some progress being made in regaining my Twitter account. I can now post to it again, but reach is extremely suppressed and I cannot load my profile photo or regain my blue tick. This is in contrast to the hack, when all the further changes that ought to have been disabled by Twitter after the password was changed, were enabled by somebody inside Twitter.
That I am blocked from making the changes the hackers were freed to make really says a great deal. There is no indication how long the account will be “under review”, and other than an automated invitation to change my password and regain control, Twitter are still not in contact.
Gordon MacMillan, the British Army 77th Brigade “information warfare” officer who was previously in charge of Middle East content at Twitter, is now openly supporting the genocidal Israeli regime. Which tells you a lot about both Twitter and the British army.
On the larger question of precisely what “terrorism” the police are investigating me for, there is still no sign of any answer.
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The British Army is supporting genocide in Gaza in more ways than that. It is a taboo subject in British media.
D notice?
I don’t think that’s it. For two months DeclassifiedUK have been reporting the daily flights of big British Army transport planes to Tel Aviv from Cyprus. A telling story of modern Britain and its ruling class that establishment media won’t touch.
It is relentless, isn’t it?
I am re-reading “The First Global Revolution”, A 1991 Report by the Council of The Club of Rome, and came across that prophetic paragraph:
“It is not possible at this stage to foresee the consequences of these innovations with any clarity, but some trends are already visible. In the information society interdependence between individuals and between countries will increase through the immediate visibility of information. It will lead to a greater complexity of institutions and societies. It could enable a high degree of power and decision making, but it could equally well serve the will of unscrupulous leaders to consolidate centralized power. There will be the means for the electronic control of everyone’s activities by “Big Brother” dictators and societies, far more effective than myriads of secret police.”
The chapter is called “The Common Enemy of Humanity Is Man”.
The call to achieving global revolution proposes tactics that do not sound unfamiliar: “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill”; where “The real enemy, then, is humanity itself” probably calls for a completely different discussion, but the idea of NOT unscrupulous leaders consolidating centralised power using bureaucracies and new technologies features prominently, between the lines, in that report.
However hard it seems to be, there is no option (until Canadian MAID program will arrive in UK – sorry, joke), but to persevere with standing witness to hypocrisy of those who apply different principles depending on one’s ethno-religious category or political, social, epistemological, and ethical ideology or worldview.
The idea of exceptions to human rights and democratic principles “for the common good” is not new, and each post war generation must learn to fight this battle anew. My own children, who rolled their eyes when I spoke of Palestinian plight in the 1990s, now are ready to notice the hollowness of political proclamations when their media are flooded with pictures of dead and dying children. It will be my job in my private sphere, just like it is your job in a public square, to be there when new people are ready to listen to the universality of rights and principles which our civilisation elucidated during the enlightenment and so utterly failed to live up to ever since.
Well! That’s a thoughtful contribution. A 1991 report pre-dates the astonishing changes in communication we have seen since about mid-nineties. There was a lively discussion going on in the 90s on this very topic. I remember listening to a friend one bonfire night who was at the then–cutting-edge of computer technology saying we were on the cusp of a great release/expression of humanity akin to the invention of the Gutenberg press but telescoped into a tiny fraction of the time it took for books to become common.
We now have the advantage of hindsight, and it was clear years ago that the potential for personal human development was quickly commandeered by corporate/military/government forces which took control of the key technologies and insights. Many of these processes are obscure, often deliberately so.
The title “The Common Enemy of Humanity Is Man” is somewhat trite. Yes indeed, but don’t we all know this already. It’s not chickens or tigers or elephants that create the horrific events that occur within the human realm, but the technical competition and the will to dominate, and if necessary slaughter the non-compliant quarrelsome elements.
It seems to be a back-handed form of denialism.
It is suggesting it’s not the things that people do, it is some interminably constant unspeakable unknowable universal element of the human psyche which is beyond our capacity to control. I don’t accept that. We have the capacity to communicate these matters and take action to avoid adverse developments. It seems convenient to deny agency for those who have a (usually financial, government or military) interest in suppressing dissent.
It’d be ironic if you were hacked by the state, given the UK govt is making such a brouhaha in recent weeks over alleged Russian hackers.
On that. Whether a ‘spear phishing’ email campaign amounts to ‘hacking’ is surely debatable, as it’s the lowest of low hanging fruit – akin to falling for the dodgy Nigerian Prince wanting to transfer $100,000, the missing part being your to-be-provided bank details on the promise of a 10% share.
You claimed you’d ‘obtained’ Stewart McDonald’s emails in February 2023, and you knew they weren’t hacked by the Russians. With the recent indictment, McDonald is claiming he has been completely vindicated in his assertion he was a victim of Russian state activity, as are Paul Mason and Dr Emma Briant.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/02/i-have-stewart-mcdonalds-emails/
But even the published US indictment qualifies itself with this, in italics: An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
The US has also, bizarrely, issued a plea for more evidence(?) on the two named Russians and any associated others, with a huge $10 million reward offered for information “on Individuals associated with the Callisto Group, run by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), conducted a sophisticated spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. and foreign government entities”. Are Paul Mason and Dr Emma Briant effectively confirming they are govt. employees by publicising this indictment?
Again, how on earth can spear phishing be described as ‘sophisticated’ when the template tools, covering all the major ’email service providers’, come with free penetration-testing Kali Linux distributions? And the instructions on how to deploy them are all over the internet? When you stated in your blog piece some 12-year-old could’ve carried it out, you weren’t joking – that’s the reality.
I’m not condoning the people responsible; hacking is illegal and unauthorised access is always wrong.
But however the email data was obtained, the Grayzone’s reports did shed light things undoubtedly in the public interest, and the hypocrisy of certain public figures. Paul Mason’s revealed behaviour, for example, was incredibly sinister. Compiling lists on groups he presumably views as ‘subversive’ including, quite ridiculously, Novara media. And his plotting against anti-war, left-wing academics with the complicity of state officials, also seems sinister. Abusing state power to silence critics in academia is straight out of the playbook of the human rights infringing dictatorships/regimes, that people like Mason are supposedly highly critical of.
What kind of state uses the military to spy on its own citizens ?
“… analysts from RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire helped to scour social media posts by the public. … the Army’s secretive “information warfare brigade” was tasked with scrutinising online posts. Dossiers were compiled on public figures … ”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/12/10/raf-intelligence-officers-joined-in-spying-on-covid-lockdown-critics/
Remember, we are the enemy.
I think in all these cases, a difference has to be drawn between private citizens and public figures. If a public figure’s private views are totally at odds with their public pronouncements, then I think that information is in the public interest.
By the same token, I have very little sympathy for the ministers using WhatsApp to avoid normal democratic scrutiny via record keeping. While at the same time, demanding a halt to the rollout of end-to-end encryption for the public – hypocrisy much? I don’t think hacking/doxxing of powerless private citizens is ever justified.
Some of these public figures who fell victim to these illegal phishing emails, are trying to have it both ways, by maintaining they are purely private citizens – while it’s clearly evident they were abusing their powerful, privileged positions, to scheme and plot against their fellow citizens.
Stevie Boy
As @Glenn_Diesen pointed out on Twitter/X (below). This is the age of Kakistocracy in the West. The future is bleak.
Democratic decline:
– Biden will not debate opponents
– Democrats will not allow primary election in Florida
– Efforts are made to remove Trump from the ballot in several states
– The mantra is: vote for Biden or democracy ends
– Why even have elections?
Trump’s ineligibility for the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is not only clear as day, but was first publicised by a Republican Judge and a couple of Republican legal scholars. Yes, Biden is a poor candidate on so many levels, but nothing like as poor as Don The Con.
dan75
Biden must be praying they don’t pick Vivek Ramaswamy.
Can you imagine those presidential debates if they did. What he said about Nikki Haley applies to Joe Biden x1000. Holy moly!
It’s reported today in the Israeli press, that Biden is demanding they wind up their military action in Gaza, ‘early in the new year.’ He’s taking so much understandable criticism from party members over his support for Israel it’s hurting his appeal, especially with younger voters. Obviously, the last thing Biden wants in a Presidential year, is being constantly dogged and quizzed over his support for genocide.
“Remember, we are the enemy.”
When the Russians got some of their gold back from the wreck of the “Aberdeen”, they decided to give medals, made from that gold, to all the surviving sailors who had taken part in the Arctic convoys in WWII. One of the recipients was given a write-up by his local newspaper, resulting in a shirty phone call from the MOD, informing the editor that he had published classified information. When asked where he had obtained the information, the editor replied, “the Russian Embassy”.
“What kind of state uses the military to spy on its own citizens?”
One that can.
MI6 is deeply embedded in all aspects of the establishment and appear to track our host where ever he goes. Related to this, an interesting report on some of the spooks and their associates previously mentioned on this blog. I wonder if Mr Murray in his past life ran into any of these ‘Embassy Staff’?
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/pablo-miller-the-people-working-alongside-the-real-james-bond
Is the D notice on Pablo Miller still in effect?
I believe a ‘D notice’ is an advisory ‘please don’t publish’ notice, not mandatory. Therefore, not illegal to publish. In this case all the information is, and has been, in the public domain for a while, It’s just joining the dots.
Here is United Nations resolution 3246 November 29th [1974]:
“Affirms the legitimacy of armed resistance by oppressed peoples in pursuit of the right to self determination, and condemns governments which do not support that right.”
An American commenter was advised several weeks ago that when you next come to the UK you must not let anyone trap you into saying you support Hamas. Instead, how about saying you support any non-proscribed group taking up armed resistance against Israeli aggression against Palestinians, as I do, as allowed for in UN resolution 3246?
Here in the UK you can go to jail for 14 years simply for expressions of support for Hamas or Hezbollah.
« Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019
1 Expressions of support for a proscribed organisation
In section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (support), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) A person commits an offence if the person—
(a) Expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and
(b) In doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.” »
— https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/3/section/1/enacted
Both Hezbollah and Hamas are proscribed organisations. I think they are legitimate resistance movements acting as defenders/liberators of their respective peoples, as allowed under international law. Who else can people look to for protection against Genocide?
The UK government disagrees and has enacted this legislation. I think the penalty has been increased to 14 years in prison.
As someone pointed out in the earlier comments…
Hamas was set up with Israeli assistance in the 1980s as a counterweight to the PLO. And Hezbollah are just the result of the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, an invasion that led to several massacres at Sabra and Shatila by their allies. And as for blaming Iran. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been the main financial backers of Hamas in recent times.
Oh dear. What a chilling amendment. I never imagined I’d live long enough to read “A person commits an offense if the person expresses an opinion…” in a British statute. What have we let them do to us!
I think our host had better not return home, and might want to consider now relocating to a state not likely to extradite to the UK for a terrorism-related offense.
Or there’s a very real probability of several years in Saughton gaol.
Blank and all
https://twitter.com/zn_ebrahimi/status/1734226579734024607
I honestly don’t see why the London Met think splashing this woman’s face across social media is justified based on her placard (shown in link). The similarities are ominous. Do the Met know the fate of those men? Have they investigated?
Another example is the guy who had a placard with ‘The final solution?’ The reference is potentially offensive, but the question mark was important. The placard showed Palestinians being driven into the sea, i.e. the placard questioned Israel’s ultimate plan for the Palestinians. It wasn’t a call for Nazi’s infamous ‘final solution’ to, the Jewish problem.
I don’t know if the Met have some sort of arrest quota, from ministers who believe these to be hate marches. But these placards seem open to subjective interpretation – it’s not clear cut incitement, nor is it hate speech, and therefore it’s disproportionate to publicly shame people like this, when the consequences can be so severe.
“Here in the UK you can go to jail for 14 years simply for expressions of support for Hamas or Hezbollah”.
So the UK is not a state that supports human rights or liberty. I suppose we have always known that.
Maybe not precisely relevant here, but I just saw this:
« Israel Palestine UN 181 1947
(Extract from UN authorisation for Israeli/Palestine States 1947)
No expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish State (by a Jew in the Arab State)(4) shall be allowed except for public purposes. In all cases of expropriation full compensation as fixed by the Supreme Court shall be paid previous to dispossession. »
The significant part of your comment, Colin, is “UN”. As soon as one sees that, one knows that whatever is said or wished is meaningless and will be ignored.
Yes, but it’s not just some “UN says this, UN demands that” kind of document. It’s the founding document, the charter which the Israelis rely on to justify the existence of their state. They claim it validates them (well, legally, and morally who cares, they say!) but all it validates legally is their claim to be a state. Not to dispossess the people who already lived on that land. It’s the award of a pound of flesh, but not a drop of blood, so to speak. So their own founding document isn’t even legally valid at all.
Having said which, I know neither they nor the US, give a toss.
Hello Craig; just to confirm I’m still reading your blog. Sorry I’m too short of money to contribute.
Hullo Clark, good to see you still here. I don’t comment much these days, but still read the articles.
I’ll make a contribution later, and I’ll pop in an additional fifty squids on your behalf. 🐙
Re: ‘That letter was a formal complaint about the *unlawful* actions of your officers in examining Mr Murray under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000’ [my emphasis]
From Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000:
‘An examining officer may question a person to whom this paragraph applies for the purpose of determining whether he appears to be a person falling within section 40(1)(b)’
‘This paragraph applies to a person if he is at a port or in the border area the examining officer believes that the person’s presence at the port or in the area is connected with his entering or leaving Great Britain or Northern Ireland’
‘An examining officer may exercise his powers under this paragraph *whether or not* he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40(1)(b)’ [my emphasis]
From Section 40(1)(b):
‘- a person who is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism’
The investigating officers’ actions may have been against Police Scotland’s Code of Practice and thus grounds for disciplinary action, but they weren’t unlawful. Until last month, I didn’t know about that, but then I’m not a hot-shot lawyer being paid hundreds of pounds an hour for my services.
Lapsed Agnostc, in my opinion section 40[1] [b] refering to – a person who is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism has now been amended to read as below, see my previous comment above.
Section 12 in terrorism Act 2000 is the same as Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019
[F1(1A)A person commits an offence if the person—
(a)expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and
(b)in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation
Thanks for your reply Harry. As far as I can make out, officers questioning people under Schedule 7 can only pursue lines of questioning concerned with ascertaining whether the person they’ve detained has been involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism – 40(1)(b), not whether they’ve expressed support for a proscribed terrorist organisation which comes under 40(1)(a). Apart from the irrelevant ones about Wikileaks & Don’t Extradite Assange, most of the questions our host was asked would fall under the former as they asked him what he’d been doing in various places and what organisations he was a member of – though a real terrorist would be unlikely to tell them the truth:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/10/incredibly-i-face-investigation-for-terrorism-defence-funds-appeal/
Craig,
Fight the good fight!
I can’t imagine lawyers often write letters containing the phrase “British ruling class” but it makes me smile when they do. Throwing punches indeed! 🏆
That jumped out at me too….when I think of the “The British ruling class ” I think of The Queen and aristocracy which might have been the case when I was a child, but now who are they, and to whom are you referring ?
Who are the “the British ruling class” now ?
Indeed, a deeply mysterious term, like neoliberalism, post-democracy, settler-colonialism, genocide… We never hear such terms mentioned by our political leaders or media, so what could they possibly refer to, if indeed they refer to anything at all? 🤔
Oh, I didn’t mean it was confusing. I think it is still much the same: the moneyed classes, the owners of corporations, the politician-media nexus, the think-tanks and lobby groups, the security services, and so forth. The royal family underpin the class system, yes. What I find odd about a lawyer using this phrase is that it is rather a pop at the Establishment of which, erm, lawyers are firmly a component!
This is depressing. Mr Murray is throwing punches alright, but at himself. Police Scotland is very probably both corrupt and stupid, but the idiocy implied here is so implausible it serves only to reinforce belief in the subservience of Mr Murray’s impressive intellect to a childish emotionality. As does invoking genocide in Gaza but not in Israel, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and all the other theatres where the lines between combatants and civilians are hard to draw.
Don’t be so stupid. CM has unfailingly campaigned for actual people and human rights regardless of the politics involved.
“but not in Israel, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and all the other theatres where the lines between combatants and civilians are hard to draw.”
Apart from yourself and other people who are too lazy to do any research, no-one uses as the definition of genocide, “the killing of civilians in a war zone”. Genocide means something else. It might be a good idea to find this out before slating our blog host.
Tdg is very maturely unemotional about thousands of trapped children being blown up with British bombs. The British government, and Israel’s, would need to do something a lot worse than that to justify criticism.
TDG, Not implausible at all.
Every civilised Nation has a “deep state” and the police and security services have control of it. Craig Murray has caused serious offence to The Powers that Be in Israel, the UK and the US. Of course there are attempts to shut him up.
It may be that terrorism is a pretext charge to get the contents of his phone and update their copies of the information on his laptop which they already have as a result of its theft when Craig was in Europe.
There are conspiracy theories and conspiracy theory believers but there are also real conspiracies and that by all nations of the West to support ridding Palestine of Palestinians is real.
This is how seized hardware is handled:
The computers or smartphones are sent to specialized companies, those will take a snapshot of the devices storage. All further investigation is then done with that image file, no change whatsoever on the original device. Usually the devices are given back once the encryption has succesfully been broken, by given back, i mean to the authorities.
The threat of analysing activities on the phone will therefore fall flat.
The authorities might claim, that said image files had been stolen, going for incompetence instead of blatant abuse of power, thereby also obfuscating who might have gained access.
I will be surprised if you get a helpful response. One of my friends was defrauded many years ago (I have forgotten how long ago but could be 7 years). He presented evidence to the police and was then fobbed off with what he can prove are lies from the Chief Constable. He has pursued every avenue for redress, several regulatory bodies, his MP and got nowhere. The tactic is to wear you out as you know. He is retired and determined now thinking of bringing a private prosecution. It’s the principle of accountability for him.
With all due respect, kindly note an error at the beginning of the letter. It states 2013 when I believe it is meant to be 2023. In depth, comprehensive letter to which I truly hope is answered fully as requested. Keep going Mr. Murray. It does seem that we are living in the 1984 book doesn’t it? Kind regards
You seem to be going to an awful lot of trouble and expense making an issue out of something which is actually rather easy to check. Did you report your phone as lost/stolen to your service provider? If not, do it now. They will supply a replacement SIM (same number), and then you can go online to your phone account and check exactly when and for what it was used after it was taken from you. Anybody trying to change your Twitter details would have had to use that phone number to receive the security code.
It seems a bit pointless wasting your supporters’ money by paying a lawyer to make accusations of police misconduct until you have some evidence that they did.
Are you really that stupid? The police will immediately have taken a full copy of all the information on my phone, including the Twitter login details. Ditto my laptop. They would not have had physically to use the phone, though they might have. If you read the questions we ask to the police with any intelligence, that would be plain to you.
Also neither the phone nor the SIM can ever be used again, since they must be considered compromised.
[ MOD: Caught in spam-filter ]
___
I think you missed the point(s). Of course they could take copies, but that’s irrelevant. They could only (unless they hacked Twitter’s servers) change the login details after receiving a security code to your phone number (i.e. your SIM). If they had hacked Twitter then they wouldn’t need your phone at all! They could have done it any time in the last few years.
The usage data to/from your SIM is not only held on the phone, is it also held by your service provider. When you have a replacement SIM then you can then access the call/text/data information being held by your service provider, so you can see if the police used any calls/texts/data during the period after your phone was taken from you. If they were acting legitimately there should be none. As a bonus you can also resume getting your calls and texts, use your banking apps, etc! I guess from what you say you didn’t report anything to your service provider. Isn’t that worth doing just to find out? It’s not too late……
By the way, I don’t think I’m that stupid. Do you?
In a country with free speech the newspapers would be all over this story. They would report on a colleague’s writings being suppressed and his reputation being tarnished.
Of course we are not in a country with free speech..
Dear Craig.
Would you permit me to feature this police Scotland phone hacking story on my video blog “Inde-Car”?
As a fellow free speaker and independence campaigner, I regularly post 20minute live broadcasts on Facebook and this tale of spooks trashing your social media reputation is a worrying (but expected) development.
The boilerplate text at the end of every article states:
“This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation.”
So you’re welcome to feature it on your video blog – and kindly post a comment here with the URL.