Julian Lewis MP 29/3/2001: on Hushmail(?), MI5 and subversion

[Caspar Bowden]

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200001/cmhansrd/cm010
329/debtext/10329-21.htm
From annual debate on Intelligence Agencies

Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East):

I raise the matter of those two demonstrations because a third is in the
pipeline. On 18 February, The Sunday Telegraph carried the following report.

"Thousands of anarchists plan to take over London streets on May Day in a
violent version of Monopoly, seizing hotels and company headquarters in an
effort to disrupt the general election expected on May 3.

...

A number of speakers in the debate so far have wisely referred to the
increasing importance of the role of the internet and of methods of
communication by that means. The information that I have may or may not be
reliable, but it suggests that the information that the police have managed
to gather so far has primarily come from a study of websites such as
www.mayday2001.org, or www.maydaymonopoly.net. Those sites include
information that the organisers of the forthcoming riots have chosen to make
available on the internet. I gather that details about how they are really
proposing to organise their events are contained in encrypted e-mails. That
encryption is easily available via a commercial firm--I will not name it
because I do not wish to give more publicity to its activities--which has
recently recruited a senior US encryption expert.

My information is that it would take the most powerful computers of the
American National Security Agency or our own GCHQ at least 24 hours to break
such a code. We are therefore facing the possibility of quite major, planned
disruption that could well spill over into the day on which the general
election may be held. However, our police are having to make do without the
advice of the Security Service that they would have had in the past if the
decision--erroneous, in my view, and in that of others with an interest in
this subject--had not been taken to destroy the counter-subversion arm of
MI5.