Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Spies 'R Us
Public Service reports that the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and GCHQ are working on a new network to collaborate with other agencies.
It seems that a recent initiative (SCOPE phase two), which was designed to deliver intelligence to law enforcement, government departments and agencies, has failed.
However, the government is never afraid to have another go at improving its spying capabilities. As such a new initiative has been launched.
Collaboration in the Intelligence Community (CLiC) is intended to be a "low-risk, inexpensive approach".
Former chief of SIS, Sir John Scarlett, is quoted:
"CLiC is designed to shore up... some of the capability that SCOPE 2 would have given us... We are doing really quite well on this more modest CLiC programme, which is not being run out of the Cabinet Office, it is being run out of SIS and GCHQ... and it will be of community-wide value when it is delivered."
What has this got to do with HMRC? I hear you ask.
Well, guess which agency will be the first to benefit from CLiC?
Yes, that's right, HMRC!
On the assumption that all things go according to plan, HMRC will be able to receive Top Secret intelligence and communicate securely via email.
Seemingly the improbably named secure messaging system STRAP3A (do a Google of images for this, and you come up with some quite unusual pictures) will let GCHQ, SIS, MI5, the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office (FCO), the Cabinet Office, the Home Office et al exchange Top Secret information by April.
Needless to say, this being secret, the costs and contractor involved are all "hush hush". However, it seems that HMRC are footing part of the bill.
Let us trust that the information shared is better handled than other information that government agencies are prone to lose.
Tax does have to be taxing.
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There are more parts of HMRC than the call centres and tax offices. What you seem to forget is that they still have a law enforcement role in assigned matters. The billions lost through VAT / Excise and direct tax crime are not going to small "Robin Hood" criminals, "sticking it to the man", they are going to highly organised, violent criminal organisations from as far afield as Ukraine, Nigeria and Colombia. These organisations have access to funds and technology far beyond that of any government department. They are also unconstrained by the rule of law in their methods. In order to combat this haemorrhage of your taxes and the attack on quality of life in the UK, HMRC needs the access to top line intelligence. And before someone trots out tired comments about lost discs, security around high level intelligence and operations carried out by HMRC's investigators and intelligence staff, at home and abroad, is somewhat better than that sad debacle. Hundreds of millions, or billions, are saved and returned to the Treasury every year by the Investigation and Intelligence directorates' work, some extremely nasty people are put away and the tax integrity of the UK is protected (not totally, but give us the funds and people and we'll do more). No doubt the government wastes the proceeds of that hard and sometimes bloody dangerous work, but we at the "crime interface" (just invented that!) don't get much say in where the money goes. It certainly doesn't get reinvested in us. SOCA get a percentage of money they recover for reinvestment, HMRC don't. Now go and do some research on the budgets for the two agencies and the results over the past five years. Then you might realise why HMRC is a priority for this system.
ReplyDeleteWell said!!!
ReplyDeleteTop comment.
ReplyDeleteYour comment boils down to this: Not fair that assorted crimos are getting some of the money being demanded by the violent, thieving trash of the state.We want that money for schools'n'ospitals (actually its to fund our marxist police state)so we are going to sick a load of security dross onto the people of this country. And as for nasty types from the Ukraine etc--well they would have to be very,very nasty indeed to come anywhere near the worlds scum governments record of two hundred million human beings murdered in the last hundred years.To hell with you.
ReplyDeleteSo you wrote at 02:36, did you? Hmmmm, after chucking out time then. The facts in my first post stand (a little more coherently than yours). I don't want a controlling state or more surveillance of citizens any more than anyone with privacy and human rights concerns. This government does seem a little obsessed with watching its own citizens, but that is why there is a general election regularly.
ReplyDelete"We need that money....etc" in your comment. Try aiming lower. If there were no taxes and therefore no public servants , you could feel free to:
Defend yourself and your family and property from thugs and thieves;
Bury your own dead;
Diagnose and treat your own injuries and diseases with roadside weeds;
Ensure that your sewage and other waste didn't poison you;
control the quality of everything you ate, used, wore etc.
There is far too much Daily Mail thinking around at the moment. All I hear is how controlling, mad, bad and dangerous the UK is. Well try living elsewhere or vote for change. (Sorry Ken, a bit off-subject)
Crapola Mate,
ReplyDelete1 We already are having to face thugs and thieves alone because the bluebottles are more interested in arresting you for defending yourself when they are not driving around pestering smokers etc.
2. Funeral Directors do most of the work of Funerals--they could maintain graveyards and see to burying as well once all thieving jumped up local councils have been abolished(Labour and Tory alike--another layer of corrupt, thieving tinpot tyrants and parasites gone.)
3. Doctors deal with injuries not bureaucrats and political crooks. There were Doctors before the state stuck its nose into the medical arena and there will still be Doctors after the state has been seen off. If you love Govt healthcare so much you pay for you and yours and stop trying to rob me for a system I neither want nor trust. After you have died from God knows what NHS inflicted disease ( when you went in for an ingrowing toenail)I will have a private florist send some flowers to your grave. The Govt would send a bunch of weeds to the wrong grave and bill your grieving relatives.
As for sewage etc etc the state pays people to do these jobs in a useless and wasteful fashion at a collosal mark-up (very little of which is ever seen by the actual workers doing those jobs=they would be far better off booting the dross of the state out and running those industries themselves on a commercial basis). Qnly one quarter of the road tax rip-off is actually spent on the roads and perhaps our older readers can recall when binmen walked up the path and took your bin away instead of forcing you to spend time sorting out trash because of the EU and its insolent dictat and psychotic hatred of landfill.
HMMMMN I don't drink or give a monkey's for the Daily Mail which peddles the Tories line of Corporate Socialist crap not freedom. To hell with you again--nothing personal.
Wow. Good to be reminded every now and again that there are, actually, loonys who presumably live in our midst.Don't envy you your life mate. I wonder what sort of society you would like to live in? Hope you die soon. It's the only way you will ever be happy.
ReplyDeleteHe wants to live in an anarchist utopia where there are no governments. This means no one to enforce any kind of rules. People will sell goods and services to each other and because market forces always work out for the best. The masses will be educated and have access to health care so we will maintain our high living standards. Someone will provide roads, sewers, street lights, parks, libraries because people will voluntarily pay for them - if not we don't need them. Slum landlords won't exist because market forces will force them out. Despite the evidence of thousands of years of history we will have the best of civilisation without any of the negatives (taxes, governments etc).
ReplyDelete