Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Paul Rigby]

Paul - is it your judgement that anything published by The Guardian on police or intelligence undercover assets must have come directly, or indirectly, from MI6?

Among other things, I was mightily impressed by the detailed biographical sketch of Officer A: Lynn Watson ("Police among protesters," 20 Jan 2011, p.7), which seemed to defy the infiltrator's compartmentalized career over a geographically-dispersed area and five years. Did she really give up all this info to her "friends" in Leeds; and did one or more really take notes?

I was additionally impressed by the thoroughly selective nature of the Grauniad's reporters' curiosity. One example, taken from the story by Paul Lewis, Rob Evans, & Rowena Davis, "How an activist fell in love with a police spy - and went on to have children by him," 20 Jan 2011, p6.

"Laura," the wronged woman, started an affair with undercover nasty "Jim Sutton" (alias of plod Jim Boyling). Sutton left Laura in September 2000, vanishing into thin air. Laura, love-lorn, hunted far and wide for her beloved, including, reportedly, a visit to that old bolt-hole for British spies, South Africa. No joy. But then...but then:

"Tipped off that Boyling had returned to England and was living in Kingston..."

Now, tell me, Jan, who would know that an undercover plod had returned to England? Did the Greenies have a spy in the passport office? Within NACPO? Or, rather more likely, I would have thought, was it a rival spook bureaucracy?

And so to one Paul Lewis, Grauniad hammer of the Met supreme. Who is Paul Lewis? Well, here's a brief sketch from the paper's own website:

Paul Lewis is Special Projects Editor for the Guardian. He was named Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards 2010 and won the 2009 Bevins Prize for outstanding investigative journalism. He previously worked at the Washington Post as the Stern Fellow.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/paullewis?page=5

So what exactly is a Stern Fellowship? What manner of disinterested truth-seeking org sponsors this jolly?

Laurence Stern, right, was a highly respected editor at the Washington Post. He died in 1979. He had a fascination with all things English. This internship was set up in his honor by friends in the Washington and international journalism communities. The money was originally managed by the Washington Journalism Center on behalf of the Stern Fellowship. In 1993 the Washington Journalism Center became a part of the National Press Foundation, which assumed the fund management. Each year the Washington Post selects a British journalist who works in Washington during the summer.

For further information, see the fellowship listing on City University's website or contact the Executive Editor's office at The Washington Post (202-344-6000).

http://nationalpress.org/awards/detail/l...gton-post/

Does this reassure me? Oddly, no.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Paul - here's the activists' account of how the undercover identities were discovered, with some self-serving quotes from Kennedy/Stone via the Mail:

In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Kennedy confirmed that the evidence in question consisted of tape recordings he had made, which police withheld from defence lawyers. Under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act of 1996, the police are duty-bound to make the CPS and the defence team aware of the evidence they have compiled. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is currently investigating whether Nottinghamshire Police made available all the evidence they had to the CPS.

Kennedy told the Mail, "The truth of the matter is that the tapes clearly show that the six defendants who were due to go on trial had not joined any conspiracy. The tapes I made meant that the police couldn't prove their case.

"I just assumed that the police would naturally put my tapes into evidence. Clearly I was wrong".

The six were accused of conspiring to shut down Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottingham. The court case followed the mass arrests of 114 people holding a meeting at Iona school in Nottingham on April 13, 2009. Among those arrested was Kennedy.

In December, 20 of the arrested were found guilty of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and sentenced to community orders. Two of the defendants were ordered to pay costs totalling £1,500. Their lawyers are considering an appeal based on Kennedy's involvement. Lawyer Mike Schwarz said, "The police allowed this trial, unlike the later one, to run all the way to conviction. In the light of events last week, this must be seen as a potential miscarriage of justice."

Kennedy infiltrated the environmental movement under the name of Mark Stone, playing a leading role in organising, financing and directing campaigns and protests. One of the six acquitted, Danny Chivers, said of Kennedy, "We're not talking about someone sitting at the back of the meeting taking noteshe was in the thick of it."

Kennedy had been "involved in organising" the Ratcliffe-on-Soar protest for months, Chivers said. The police "could have stopped it at the start".

Kennedy's identity was established last October, after a passport containing his real name was found by his activist girlfriend. Kennedy then confessed to six of the group members, before disappearing. Shortly after, he left the Metropolitan Police and is understood to be living abroad.

http://www.socialequality.org.uk/content...operations

So, one of "Mark Stone'" activist girlfriends found his passport in the name of Mark Kennedy. This was whilst six of the activist group were on trial for conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at a power station.

The girlfirend confronted Kennedy who revealed his police identity and Kennedy/Stone then disappeared into Daily Mail land.

However not before the following occurred:

In a phone recording between Kennedy and a member of the environmental group obtained by the BBC's Newsnight programme, he revealed he was not the only police officer active as an undercover agent. "I'm not the only one by a long shot," he said, adding the police operations were "like a hammer to crack a nut."

In the Mail on Sunday interview, he said he was aware of at least 15 agents who had worked undercover in the environmental movement, with 4 of these still active.

When his cover was blown, Kennedy confirmed to the environmental group that a female protester based in Leeds, whom several activists had suspected of being an undercover police officer, was also a spy.

As well as the two police agents identified in his case, another undercover police spy, known as "Officer B", was revealed in Saturday's Guardian, who had spent four years with an anarchist group in Cardiff.

http://www.socialequality.org.uk/content...operations

So, that's the activists' version of the route for the exposure and identification of these police undercover assets.

If this is correct, and it's certainly plausible, then ACPO plc and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIC) who were runinng these infiltrators, had a serious problem. They were bound to pull any assets out of active service whose identity was presumed blown. In addition, some of the undercovers, like Clown Cop, had already disappeared -causing concern to their former protest movement buddies.

So, the identity of the undercover assets would be confirmed by their historical, or immediate, flight from the protest movement.

Was there then an attempt at damage limitation by ACPO, NPOIC, and the British deep state? Absolutely.

Note The Guardian piece here revealing cooperation with ACPO and NPOIC to disguise the identity of an asset by pixellating a photo of her, and not naming her:

The controversy over a police surveillance network embedded in the environmental protest movement has deepened dramatically after the Guardian identified a second undercover officer who spent years living a double life as an activist.

The woman's name has been known to a group of six activists since Mark Kennedy the police infiltrator identified by the Guardian on Monday as having spent seven years inside the movement claimed she was also a police officer when confronted by them about his own identity last October.

Senior police chiefs said they were concerned for the safety of the second spy, and a major operation involving several UK forces is now under way to identify other operatives whose safety may have been compromised by Kennedy.

The second spy spent four years living as an environmental activist in Leeds, gaining the trust of dozens of activists and playing a central role in planning a demonstration to shut down Drax power station in North Yorkshire.

Her deployment ended in 2008, when she told activist friends she was leaving town for personal reasons. The Guardian has established the identity of the officer, who is from a force in the south-east of England, but has decided, after representations from senior police officers, to refer to her only as Officer A, and to use pixellated pictures of her.

I also agree that much of the journalism has been execrable, pursusing a tabloid agenda, and failing to pursue the implications of British deep state agent provocateur and false flag activity.

However, my own judgement is that this story did not emanate from MI6. My current working hypothesis is that the identity of Kennedy/Stone did emerge as described above, and that the deep state has been scrambling around in desperate damage limitation mode ever since.

Has MSM helped to limit the damage? Yes.

However, the fundamental point remains. It is now proven, on the record, in the public domain, that undercover assets infiltrated protest groups in Britan, Iceland, Germany, Ireland and elsewhere, incited these groups on occasion to commit criminal acts, and allegedly provided material assistance.

This is the key message that the British deep state wants to suppress, and since it's failed to do this, make us forget about.

The role, or not, of MI6 is, in my judgement, a secondary matter here.

[Paul Rigby]

Jan,

My disagreements with your position on this affair summarised:

1) Both the Grauniad and the Green movement are themselves deep state actors and milieux: any serious analysis must factor this in;

2) There is, by your own admission, at least one bureaucratic beneficiary (the Met) of this circumscribed expose, thus raising the question of how "innocent" the campaign of revelation is;

3) While I agree with you unreservedly that the deep state doesn't relish seeing its tawdry and criminal SOPs quite so thoroughly aired, this has precedent* and is an acceptable price to pay for scuppering a rival;

4) I think you overstate by a margin the impact of 3) - the function of the political "elite" & the MSM is, after all, to learn nothing and challenge nothing (at least, nothing of immediate utility or import to the higher levels of government & its allies);

5) Your explanation of how this story was put together can only explain so much: there is detail within it that cannot be attributed to even the most scrupulous pieces of investigative journalism (as commonly understood).

Still, an enjoyable exercise in thinking a subject through.

*MI5 v Special Branch in the early 1990s springs to mind. That got very nasty, as I recall.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Paul - you have your analysis of the existing evidence, and I have mine.

There's little point in continuing at this point in time.

But for the record:

Jan,

My disagreements with your position on this affair summarised:

1) Both the Grauniad and the Green movement are themselves deep state actors and milieux: any serious analysis must factor this in;

Massive and unhelpful over-simplification.

Not all journalists and green activists are deep state actors, and the fact that some (perhaps many) of their editors/leaders may be, does not negate the importance of either the protest movement or the principle of investigative journalism.

2) There is, by your own admission, at least one bureaucratic beneficiary (the Met) of this circumscribed expose, thus raising the question of how "innocent" the campaign of revelation is;

You've spent the rest of this thread claiming it's an MI6 operation to get the cops out of MI6 territory. You lost that argument, so now you come up with this one.

3) While I agree with you unreservedly that the deep state doesn't relish seeing its tawdry and criminal SOPs quite so thoroughly aired, this has precedent* and is an acceptable price to pay for scuppering a rival;

You're welcome to your opinon.

I don't share it, and see little extant evidence to support it.

4) I think you overstate by a margin the impact of 3) - the function of the political "elite" & the MSM is, after all, to learn nothing and challenge nothing (at least, nothing of immediate utility or import to the higher levels of government & its allies);

I think you understate by a margin the impact of the exposure of deep state sponsorship of agent provocateurs and false flag activities.

5) Your explanation of how this story was put together can only explain so much: there is detail within it that cannot be attributed to even the most scrupulous pieces of investigative journalism (as commonly understood).

Many investigative stories have as their starting point lawyers uncovering state or corporate shenanigans, and advising their clients that they should to speak to "respectable, broadsheet newspapers" to get the story "on the record" and prevent the state from closing the case down.

If I was a defence lawyer in the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station case, and uncovered the fact that key prosecution evidence (taped conversations) were recorded by an undercover police officer, who quite possibly "led the conversations" in certain directions, and that the prosecution had withheld this fact from the defence in evidential discovery, I would be absolutely furious. I would also want to ensure that any other agent provocateur evidence was properly disclosed, and I would definitely use the press to make this public domain and flush out any other such undisclosed behaviour.

In my judgement, and my experience of MSM newsrooms, once such information reaches an honest journalist, he or she runs with the story to the best of their ability (which may be mediocre or outstanding). The suppression, and shaping, of the story will occur when editorial staff get involved, (or, in the rarer cases when the particular hack receiving the story is in fact on the intel payroll).

It is clear in the piece I excerpted above that members of the protest movement identified several "protestors" as police undercover agents. Guardian editorial staff and lawyers would then have insisted that their hacks contact senior police officers in ACPO plc and NPOIC and put these allegations to them. It appears that ACPO plc and NPOIC confirmed that some of these "protestors", eg Officer A and Officer B, were police undercover assets, and requested that pictures of them be pixellated. The Guardian complied with this - indeed Guardian senior editors and lawyers probably insisted on this.

Like it or not, all this is standard national journalistic practice.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Courtesy of Indymedia, these are presumably the police undercover assets that The Guardian declined to identify.

There are unpixellated photos at the url:

Three undercover political Police unmasked as infiltrators into UK Anarchist, Anti-Fascist and Climate Justice movements

ABC Anarres / IMC UK Features | 19.01.2011 00:51 | Repression | World

Update: 4th Spy: "Jim Sutton" | 5th Spy: Peter Black | 6th Spy: Mark Cassidy

"Mark Stone", "Lynn Watson" and "Marco Jacobs".

Three police officers all thought to work for The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), a political police unit with extensive links to large corporations, have been exposed by activists in the UK.

Two of them are known to have worked outside of UK police jurisdiction. All have actively taken part in illegal activity.

Feature Articles:
Cop Infiltrators: PC Mark Kennedy AKA "Mark (Flash) Stone", "Lyn Watson", "Mark (Marco) Jacobs" and PC Jim Boyling, "Jim Sutton" | Undercover police officer back in the spotlight | Guilty verdict in Ratcliffe trial | Mark Kennedy/Stone exposed as undercover cop

Newswire:
Kennedy Mania in the Mainstream Media | Officer 'B' revealed as Cardiff based 'Marco' Jacobs | Mark Kennedy: secret policeman's sideline as corporate spy | Post Flash Fallout, Lessons and Activist security | I can't forgive Mark Kennedy's betrayal of activists | IMPORTANT: A respectful request to all activists regarding Mark "Stone" | Undercover police officer back in the spotlight | Release the Kennedy Files | Ratcliffe: 2nd Court Case of 6 activist Collapses | Ratcliffe trial collapses! | An account of Marco Jacobs' time in Brighton | Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN)on the infiltration by 'Marco'


PC Mark Kennedy (AKA "Mark Stone"), "Lyn Watson" and "Mark Jacobs"



"MARK STONE" Real name Mark Kennedy

Distributed Zapatista Coffee 'Rebelde' from Germany to UK social centres In 2004.

Extensive involvement in Ireland:

Ireland Early 2004 attended a grassroots gathering promoting Scotland G8,
Ireland 2004 Mayday protests. Involved in attacking police. Supplied defensive equipment. People serve prison sentences relating to material delivered by him from UK.
Ireland 2004 Protests against George Bush summit at Dromoland castle.
Ireland 2005 Attended EFYA winter meeting in Co Clare 2005 Attended a meeting and fund-raiser for the G8 in Belfast.
Ireland 2006 Attended the Anarchist Bookfair and then went to Rossport solidarity camp.
UK Coordinated transport for the Dissent network of resistance against the G8 camp in Stirling Scotland in 2005. (a fleet of minibuses) Gained name "Transport Mark"

Was involved in planing Camp for Climate Action "land group" from 2006 onwards often in driver role.

Was for a number of years involved in Climate Justice groups which faced repeated raids and arrests. These groups have been actively disrupted during this period.

Had sexual relationships with a number of activists.

Involved in anti-police anti corporate actions with Saving Iceland campaign in Iceland.

Was actively involved in Berlin radical left groups for some months prior to the Heligendam G8. Actively promoted a violent assault on Berlin business district. (Plan B)

Took part in riots surrounding the eviction of ungdomshuset "youth house" In Copenhagen Denmark.

Is believed to have visited Denmark after this point. (can Danish comrades confirm?)

Using established anarchist contacts in Denmark he was well placed to inform on UK activists and others attending the Cop 13 negotiations in 2009.

Involved in anti-fascist activity. Encouraged anti-EDL campaigners to attack coaches carrying members of the extreme nationalist group to Bradford in 2010.

More recent involvement in Animal Rights circles such as attending 2010 international AR gathering in Milan, Italy.

Appears to have moved into Private Spying. He shared a business address with a director of Global Open a company of private spies composed of ex -Special Branch, (political police.)

Kennedys role, has received intense media coverage in the UK, following the collapse of a court case against activists on Monday 10th January. This has led to highest ranking policeman Sir Hugh Orde defending infiltration of left wing groups on the Newsnight television programme.

Mark Kennedy spoke about his infiltration to extreme right-wing newspaper The Mail on Sunday, He claimed to have operational influence over German and Danish police.

Both "Marco Jacobs" and "Mark Stone" attended the Dissent! Europe gathering prior to Strasbourg, France anti NATO in 2009. They arrived together, very little real UK based activist involvement. (same time as G20 London)

"LYNN WATSON" Real name unknown

In late 2003 Lynn Watson attended event at Aldermaston nuclear weapons factory and then joined a Trident Ploughshares affinity group. NVDA anti nuclear weapons group.

She took part in non-violence training (one of the trainers didn't get there as he was picked up on a warrant as he came off the ferry!) and attended a TP planning meeting.

During 2004 she also went to Aldermaston Womens Peace Camp and was very active in the Block the Builders campaign. (Direct action) She said she lived in Bournemouth and did care work.

In 2005 she moved to Leeds, Yorkshire. Active in environmental activist groups centred around anarchist social centre, The Common Place.

"Lynn Watson" used Bank Account:

Sortcode: 560054
Account Number: 33516774
IBAN: GB97NWBK56005433516774
Bank: NATIONAL WESTMINSTER BANK PLC
Lynn was part of a small group who planned the site take for the Camp for Climate action in 2006 drax and 2007 Heathrow, less so 2008 kingsnorth.

Was member of UK Action medics collective, who provide first aid to the direct action community. Lynn was involved with UK action medics at Dissent G8 in Gleneagles 2005, and later that year at Earth First! gathering in Derbyshire. Later, she hosted an Action medics meeting at her house in Leeds.

She was also the UK contact when medics went to G8 in Russia, so the address they were staying at may have been passed on. (to Russian secret state?)

( "Marco Jacobs" filled similar role for CAN!)

Was member of the Rebel Clown Army. (unclear if this made them any less effective)

Had sexual relationships with some activists. Was "camera shy".

Is not known to have operated outside of the UK. (one unconfirmed sighting with "Mark Stone" in Berlin May 2006)

"Watson" "Stone" and "Jacobs" seem to have disappeared from left political circles in the UK.

"MARCO JACOBS" also known as "Mark Jacobs" Real name unknown

Infiltrated the Dissent! network of resistance against the G8 in Brighton, in 2004. Following suspicions that he was a policeman there, he moved to Cardiff, Wales where he successfully infiltrated Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN).

He encouraged ideological and personal splits within CAN.

He had at least one sexual relationship within activist circles.

Using his connections he then became involved in the Rising Tide Network. He was at the centre of a set of police raids and arrests that targeted climate justice activists, including one on his own flat.

He was involved in the No Border campaigns for freedom of movement. He was minute taker at UK wide gatherings. He had prior knowledge of No Borders successful blockades to prevent immigration snatch squad dawn raids on families,

He attended (with "Mark Stone") a meeting in Poland prior to the G8 in Heligendam, It is believed that only one genuine UK based activist was at this event!

He travelled with UK activists to Germany to oppose the G8 in Heligendam, Germany 2007 and was actively involved in autonomous block planning at the Redelich camp.

In 2009 he attended planning meetings in Dijon for the Anti NATO resistance to take place in Strasbourg. He arrived with "Stone" . Set up website promoting this action.

He suddenly pulled out of attending the resistance to the G8 in St Petersburg Russia. Remained in contact with CAN activists in Russia.

Towards the end of his career in Cardiff, friends became suspicious of him and he was increasingly being left out of sensitive discussions. Ironically this included the location of the 2008 Camp for Climate Action, the location of which was known by a small group including "Watson" and "Stone".


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please add factual comments/corrections here so that statement can been produced for distribution through Indymedia and associated networks.

Please do not post anything you do not have direct knowledge of or can show where it comes from.

Please do not reveal any names or information that may reveal names of people other than the police themselves.

Please do not post the fact you once had tea with one of the infiltrators, only facts which develop a picture of their political involvement.

If groups could make statements that would be helpful.

Face to camera shots of "Marco" and "Lynn" would be very useful Please do not repost information from other media there is a discussion of other media here.

Comrades worldwide feel free to post here if you have information on these police officers.

This post includes comments left here....

ABC Anarres / IMC UK Features
e-mail: imc-uk-features@lists.indymedia.org
Homepage: http://lists.indymedia.org/imc-uk-features

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472363.html

[Jan Klimkowski]

Top cop Hugh Orde has called for "independent pre-authority", probably by a judge, for future police undercover operations.

So far so good. Currently, an undercover operation can apparently be approved by a police Superintendent with no need for independent approval. Orde's proposal would require approval by a judge, as with say a search warrant or phone tap.

However, it seems that Orde's proposal would only require "pre-approval" - ie the police would present their evidence for an undercover operation, and the judge would Yay or Nay. It does not include any provision for oversight or review of the operation itself - by a judge or anyone else.

In other words, it's a transparent play by the deep state to limit the damage of the exposure of the ACPO plc agent provocateur operatoins, and to prevent future oversight of such operations.

Acpo chief calls for judicial oversight of undercover police operations

Sir Hugh Orde, president of Association of Chief Police Officers, says benefits of judicial oversight of future operations would 'far outweigh additional administrative burden'

Press Association guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 February 2011 11.48 GMT

Undercover policing operations should be authorised in advance by a judge, the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said today.

Sir Hugh Orde, the Acpo president, said the change was needed to restore public confidence in the system after concerns about the role played by the ex-Metropolitan police constable Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist.

Orde said the benefits of judicial oversight of future operations would "far outweigh the additional administrative burden".

Speaking at a policing seminar held by the human rights group Liberty in central London, he said: "The current system of retrospective inspection is, in my judgment, no longer sufficient to secure the confidence of right thinking people that such interference with citizens' rights with its foreseeable collateral intrusion on many is appropriate.

"Therefore, the solution must take the form of some independent pre-authority that is already a common feature in other areas of policing in this country.

"It is not for me to suggest the level or form, but I do believe that an additional element of judicial oversight, in keeping with our traditions of accountability to the rule of law, need not be over-bureaucratic and the benefit would far outweigh the additional administrative burden."

Control of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), to which undercover officer Kennedy belonged, was transferred from Acpo to Scotland Yard last Monday.

Kennedy spent seven years under cover posing as an environmental activist called Mark "Flash" Stone.

Six protesters accused of planning to invade the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, in Nottinghamshire, claimed prosecutors dropped charges against them after Kennedy offered to give evidence on their behalf.

Several inquiries by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and Scotland Yard are investigating aspects of undercover policing in the wake of the controversy.

The policing minister, Nick Herbert, said it was clear "that something operationally has gone very wrong" and that in future Acpo should act as a professional body and not run undercover units itself.

The director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, said: "Recent revelations of abusive infiltration into non-violent protest movements should shame every democrat in Britain. In past years, some senior officers accepted politicians' promises of ever-more unchecked power.

"At last, one of the most important voices in British policing calls for greater legal restraint on intrusive surveillance. We agree with Sir Hugh that such an important service should be accountable not to politics but to the law."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/07...operations

[Paul Rigby]

Courtesy of Indymedia, these are presumably the police undercover assets that The Guardian declined to identify.

There are unpixellated photos at the url:

Three undercover political Police unmasked as infiltrators into UK Anarchist, Anti-Fascist and Climate Justice movements

ABC Anarres / IMC UK Features | 19.01.2011 00:51 | Repression | World

Update: 4th Spy: "Jim Sutton" | 5th Spy: Peter Black | 6th Spy: Mark Cassidy

"Mark Stone", "Lynn Watson" and "Marco Jacobs".

Oh dear, not true. In fact, photographs of "Watson," "Sutton," & "Jacobs," complete with biographical sketches, are to be found in the Grauniad edition of Thursday, 20 January 2011, pp6-7.

And I bloody loathe the paper.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Courtesy of Indymedia, these are presumably the police undercover assets that The Guardian declined to identify.

There are unpixellated photos at the url:

Three undercover political Police unmasked as infiltrators into UK Anarchist, Anti-Fascist and Climate Justice movements

ABC Anarres / IMC UK Features | 19.01.2011 00:51 | Repression | World

Update: 4th Spy: "Jim Sutton" | 5th Spy: Peter Black | 6th Spy: Mark Cassidy

"Mark Stone", "Lynn Watson" and "Marco Jacobs".

Oh dear, not true. In fact, photographs of "Watson," "Sutton," & "Jacobs," complete with biographical sketches, are to be found in the Grauniad edition of Thursday, 20 January 2011, pp6-7.

And I bloody loathe the paper.

Paul - you're simply wrong.

The IndyMedia piece is from January 19 - the day before The Guardian piece.

The photos on the IndyMedia link I provided are unpixellated, clearly showing faces.

[Paul Rigby]

Courtesy of Indymedia, these are presumably the police undercover assets that The Guardian declined to identify.

There are unpixellated photos at the url:

Three undercover political Police unmasked as infiltrators into UK Anarchist, Anti-Fascist and Climate Justice movements

ABC Anarres / IMC UK Features | 19.01.2011 00:51 | Repression | World

Update: 4th Spy: "Jim Sutton" | 5th Spy: Peter Black | 6th Spy: Mark Cassidy

"Mark Stone", "Lynn Watson" and "Marco Jacobs".

Oh dear, not true. In fact, photographs of "Watson," "Sutton," & "Jacobs," complete with biographical sketches, are to be found in the Grauniad edition of Thursday, 20 January 2011, pp6-7.

And I bloody loathe the paper.

Paul - you're simply wrong.

The IndyMedia piece is from January 19 - the day before The Guardian piece.

The photos on the IndyMedia link I provided are unpixellated, clearly showing faces.

No, Jan, you are.

In fact, the picture of "Watson" which accompanied the Grauniad piece in its edition of Jan 20 is, by some distance, a better one than that which appeared in the IndyMedia link, where "Watson" appears to have entered an unofficial Tara Palmer-Tomkinson look-alike gurning-while-tongue-pulling competition. Readers can judge for themselves:

Here's the IndyMedia one:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472363.html

And now the Grauniad one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/19...intcmp=239

The difference in the photos suggests that The Grauniad had better sources - MI6? - than the Greenies at IndyMedia.

I note with amusement that your claim has less than subtly shifted from the original one - Guardian suppression of the undercover legover merchants' photos - to an all-new improved one, to wit the Greenies beat the Grauniad to the punch in publishing the photos. Hey-ho. As we can see, the truth is much more interesting: The Grauniad went one better.

[Paul Rigby]

Now, somewhere in this thread - I hope/suspect/recall - was a speculation that an important function of this scandal is to clear the decks for US action in the UK along the lines of that recently witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt. Tonight I noticed this passage in an excellent Engdahl piece on events Egyptian - one so good it might usefully be added to the main DPF thread on the US-orchestrated insurrection there:

RAND researchers have spent years perfecting techniques of unconventional regime change under the name "swarming," the method of deploying mass mobs of digitally-linked youth in hit-and-run protest formations moving like swarms of bees.[13]

Washington and the stable of "human rights" and "democracy" and "non-violence" NGOs it oversees, over the past decade or more has increasingly relied on sophisticated "spontaneous" nurturing of local indigenous protest movements to create pro-Washington regime change and to advance the Pentagon agenda of global Full Spectrum Dominance

Egypt's Revolution-Creative Destruction For A Greater Middle East'?
The G8 Map of Washington's Greater Middle East extends right to the borders of China and Russia and West to Morocco

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, February 7, 2011

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=23131

Now take a look at this recent piece from the CIA's favourite liberal British daily:

Inside the anti-kettling HQ

A group of young computer geeks is wielding a new weapon in the fight against controversial police tactics at demonstrations

Patrick Kingsley
The Guardian, G2, Thursday 3 February 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/02...ettling-hq

Cairo, it wasn't. But at about a quarter to four last Saturday afternoon, on a crowded backstreet in central London, something happened outside the Egyptian embassy that deserves at least a footnote in the annals of protest history. A crowd of students weren't kettled.

In the context of recent British protests, this was a near-miracle. At each of the previous four major student protests in London since the Millbank riot on 10 November, police have kettled or, in their terminology, "contained" thousands of protesters, preventing them from leaving an area for several hours, and often from accessing basic amenities such as food, water and toilets.

Police kettle protesters supposedly to quell violence, but protesters arguably only turn to violence out of frustration at being kettled. Most notoriously, police trapped hundreds of teenage schoolchildren inside a tight grid on Whitehall on 24 November and only subsequently did a few of them smash up a police van abandoned in their midst.

Saturday's non-kettle, then, was a victory in itself. But the real excitement wasn't that it didn't happen but how it didn't happen. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why police and protesters behave in a certain way at a certain time, but one explanation for the kettle's failure to form lies with a new communications network, which launched that afternoon: Sukey.

The brainchild of a group of young, recently politicised computer programmers, Sukey's main goal is to stop people getting kettled. On the day of a protest, founders collate information from individual protesters tweets, texts and GPS positions about what is happening on the ground. The Sukey team then update an online live-map of the protest, accessible from smartphones. Simultaneously, they tweet and text brief summaries of events to all their subscribers, telling them where other protesters are situated, and most significantly where kettles are forming. As the nursery rhyme (from which Sukey takes its name) aptly suggests: "Polly put the kettle on, Sukey take it off again."

And, in London last Saturday, that might well be what happened. Around 500 students coming from a 5,000- strong anti-cuts march on Millbank joined the ongoing, separate protest at the Egyptian embassy. After around an hour and a half, a few demonstrators said they had overheard kettling tactics being discussed on police radios, and thought they had seen police lines closing in. They relayed this to the Sukey team at their computers in an east London office block, and the team quickly texted the news to their entire mailing list on the ground. Recipients of the text alerted those around them, many protesters left the area, and, perhaps as a result, no kettling took place.

One of the protesters who alerted Sukey to the potential kettle was Ben, 21, a member of last year's University College London (UCL) occupation, whose participants still form a fulcrum for the London anti-cuts movement. Ben is certain that Sukey played an important role in people moving quickly away from the embassy. "Everyone who was getting the Sukey updates was telling everyone who wasn't what was happening," he says. "It took about five minutes for us to mobilise."

There are, of course, other potential explanations for what happened: a genuine softening of police tactics; an existing awareness of kettling procedure among protesters; a police double-bluff; coincidence. It is also important to note that not everyone welcomed the presence of the anti-cuts protesters outside the Egyptian embassy. Sunny Hundal, editor of Liberal Conspiracy, argued that those protesters who had left an education-themed march to join a rally based around foreign policy were displaying a lack of ideological direction. This, coupled with the abusing of NUS president Aaron Porter, led Hundal to conclude that Saturday's protest "was when the student movement died".

Back at Sukey's secret nerve-centre in east London, however, the team are celebrating a measured success. "We'll take that as a win," says Sam Gaus, 19, a first-year computer science student at UCL, and one of Sukey's co-founders. There were kettles in Manchester and Edinburgh. But in London, for the first time in five marches, there was none. Coincidence? Gaus thinks not.

On 9 December, the day of the parliamentary vote on tuition fees, thousands of protesters were kettled in Parliament Square. Many of those present myself included were not aware until too late that they had either strayed from the march's designated route, or were in the process of being "contained". The result: students trapped for up to 12 hours; the supreme court trashed; dozens injured; 60 arrested. In London last Saturday, with no kettles, there were only nine arrests.

Sam Carlisle, 23, an electronics engineer who graduated from Durham, became politicised after his girlfriend was trampled in a horse-charge at the protest on 24 November. Outraged, he decided to offer his exceptional technical skills to the UCL occupation, where he met Gaus. To differentiate between the two Sams, other occupiers christened them "Sam the techie" (Carlisle), and "Techie Sam" (Gaus). Physically, the pair are chalk-and-cheese Carlisle is pale and stocky; Gaus dark-haired and tall but intellectually they seem united. The night before the 9 December protest, both independently came up with the same idea: a live, online map that could show people at home where protest troublespots were located.

"I came to Sam on the eighth and I said: 'I've got this great idea,'" says Gaus. "And then he showed me this flow-chart with exactly the same plan."

The map was up and running for the protest the next day, prompting excited praise from Guardian science writer Ben Goldacre and backhanded compliments from American security analysts. But though the map was an innovative development, because there was no way of quickly communicating what it showed to people on the ground, it didn't fulfil the Sams' ultimate goal: to help protesters avoid kettles.

So, over the next month, they set about coding what became Sukey: a text-based warning service (used to great effect on Saturday); a similarly successful Twitter feed; and an auto-updating map of the protest, accessible from smartphones, which users complained didn't update fast enough. A compass-based application for smartphones, which would have told users in which direction kettles were to be found, was not ready in time. It was not through lack of effort. By the time I arrived at Sukey headquarters on Saturday afternoon, Carlisle hadn't slept in a bed for a week.

Four other team members are also integral to the process. On the march itself was Amit, who spread the gospel of Sukey to every protester he could. Then there is Tom Bance, 22, a physicist at UCL, who sends out Sukey's texts. Matt Gaffen, 23, a freelance graphic designer, devises Sukey's visuals, and Bernie, a man with greying hair who looks too old to be a student is an IT developer and Sam Gaus's dad.

As the afternoon unfolded, it was primarily Bance's job to work out what was happening on the ground. With Marie, another UCL student, he sifted through all tweets tagged with "#sukey". Once he was clear what was going on, he relayed the synthesised information back through Sukey's official Twitter and texts. When trouble started brewing at the Egyptian embassy, for example, Bance's text read: "LOTS of reports say a Kettle is about to be formed outside the Egyptian embassy. Stay sensible, stay safe. #sukey." If, as was the case, an area looks likely to be kettled, it is the Gauses who are tasked with delineating it on the online map. Carlisle, meanwhile, was desperately trying to finish the code for the compass application, and Gaffen was on hand to update any graphics that needed changing.

"We're like a busy newsroom," says Bernie. "We have to get information in, check it makes sense, and then get it back out again."

When Sukey's arrival was announced last Friday, some critics warned it would merely facilitate rioting, rather than help keep protesters safe. Tory blogger Harry Cole said in a tweet that he has since deleted: "Is there something discustingly ironic about riot organising iphone ap http://sukey.org/ Just about says it all about this country's kids."

Some announcements made by Sukey probably did indirectly assist those protesters who were less interested in the original "A-to-B" march, and more interested in a new kind of protest tactic that has emerged in the last few months: the "civic swarm", which sees large groups of demonstrators peel off from official marching routes and instigate flashmobs at shops such as Vodafone and Topshop, but which is arguably a perfectly justifiable form of protest.

But the Sukey team take umbrage at the idea that their goal is to cause disruption rather than to aid safety. They see themselves as distributors of information rather than battle tactics. Early in the day, they had sent out a text reminding everyone about the exact route of the march; later, they ended every announcement with the suffix: "Stay sensible, stay safe." When the march ended, and split into three groups of protesters, the team had a brief debate about whether they should carry on texting and tweeting. "We aren't there to lead people to the palace gates for the revolution," says Gaus Sr. By reporting the activities of the three meandering groups, he feared that "effectively, we're not just supporting it, we are instructing it". Eventually, however, they agreed that it is exactly at those moments that protesters are in need of information. "We're never going to be able to stop people leaving," Gaus Jr points out. "But when they do leave, and there is trouble that's when we can be most useful. We can protect people from those troublespots."

Sukey is by no means the finished article. Though the events outside the Egyptian embassy seemed like a genuine success, plenty of people were frustrated that the compass-based application wasn't ready, and that the live map was either difficult to decipher, or slow to load and update. Additionally, since mobile phone reception is often scarce at protests, some complained that texts took too long to filter through. Carlisle accepts these criticisms: "I'm expecting people to come back and say it's shit, it doesn't work." But for him, it seems Saturday was almost a dry-run for future, larger protests, such as the Trades Union Congress protest on 26 March, which might attract hundreds of thousands of protesters to London.

But even if Sukey isn't yet working like clockwork, it appeared to have two effects on Saturday. Several activists said just the knowledge that such a communications tool was in operation made people more aware of the need to share information, and to keep in touch. Similarly, there was a sense inside Sukey HQ that their presence was, at least in part, making the police more careful about their behaviour.

It would certainly make sense for the Metropolitan police to pay close attention to Sukey: communication is not the police's strongpoint. On a day when students were keeping in touch by Twitter and mobile phone, the police were handing out little slips of paper. As Bance says: "The police don't understand Twitter. They might as well be shouting at the screen with a megaphone."

There is an argument going on about the part technology has played in recent protests across Europe and north Africa. But while it is lazy to brand these revolts "twitter revolutions", as Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov have broadly argued, it seems equally silly to deny that social media does not have a role to play in facilitating protest and debate.

Sukey seems a prime example, and endorsement comes from an unlikely source: Tim Hardy, the founder of a blog called Beyond Clicktivism, and a self-proclaimed cyber-sceptic. Six months ago, sick of the excesses of social media, Hardy removed himself from Facebook and Twitter. "It was difficult to know what to listen to," Hardy says. "As Clay Shirky says, the internet needs more filters." But in Sukey, Hardy thinks he has found one such filter. He was so impressed by what he had seen, that by the end of Saturday he had agreed to be the team's spokesman. "It's really being used to enable something to happen," he says.

Quite what Sukey will go on to enable is not yet clear. The team plan to make their coding available to protest-minded programmers across the UK, but it remains to be seen what kind of impact it could have in, say, Egypt, where the government recently cut off the two keys to Sukey's London success: mobile and internet access. To stay ahead of the curve, Sukey will have to find ways round these problems. Protesters in Egypt have already improvised by using dial-up connections and new "speak to tweet" technology, which converts voicemail recordings into Twitter messages.

Further afield, international programmers from the Open Mesh Project are developing a system that turns laptops into temporary internet routers, and so allows protesters to communicate even without a conventional internet connection. But Sukey is unlikely to be behind the times for long. The team are tight-lipped about the details, but two of them say they might have found a way of doing without mobile reception. "We've got some ideas," says Gaus Sr, with a grin.

Exactly the sort of preparation for a pseudo-people power revolution one would expect in the face of sophisticated secret police structure.