MI5 wrongly collected subscriber data on 134 telephone numbers as a result of a software error, according to interception of communications commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy’s annual report.
A spreadsheet formatting error caused the service to apply for data on the identity of telephone numbers ending in 000, rather than the actual last three digits. “The subscriber data acquired had no connection or relevance to any investigation or operation being undertaken by the Security Service,” writes Kennedy.
He adds that the resulting material was destroyed, the formatting fault fixed and numbers are now checked manually before MI5 requests subscriber data from communications providers.
MI5 also acquired data on the histories of 927 internet protocol addresses without authorisation from a sufficiently senior officer, of GD3 rank or above. This was due to an “incorrect setting on the system used by the Security Service,” according to Kennedy, although the requests themselves were necessary and proportionate. MI5 has corrected the setting on its systems.
Overall, Kennedy reported that public authorities submitted 552,550 requests for communications data during 2010, and the number is increasing by about 5 per cent a year. He could not give a precise reason for the growth, but said “it is indicative of the growth in communications technology”, with “certain police forces” increasing their use.
Nearly two-thirds of requests for communications data â about communications rather than contents â were for subscriber data. This was usually part of an attempt to find the owner of a mobile phone. About a quarter of requests were for traffic data.
Sir Peter Gibson, the intelligence services commissioner, also published his annual report. Having been granted powers under the Identity Cards Act to monitor use of the National Identity Register by intelligence services, he reported that he is “not aware of any acquisition, storage and use made” by such organisations before the register was destroyed earlier this year.
He collected statistics on the number of warrants and authorisations issued to the security and intelligence agencies or armed forces, but these have only been included in a confidential annex. He defended the secrecy by saying publication would “assist those unfriendly to the UK were they able to know the extent of the work” of those agencies.
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New Delhi, Jun 21 (PTI) BJP today said the reported case of bugging of the office of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was a “serious” issue, especially as it has occurred at a time when several high-profile cases of financial scams have come to light.
“It is a serious matter. If what has come to light is true then it needs to be investigated. This has come at a time when there are so many cases of financial irregularities and scams,” BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.
He wondered as to who could be behind such an act and alluded to somebody in government having an interest in bugging the Finance Minister”s office.
“Pranab Mukherjee is no. 2 in the Cabinet. Who is bugging its own ministers. It needs to be investigated. This raises a lot of disturbing questions,” Naqvi said.
In reply to another question on differences between the government panel- headed by Mukherjee- and civil society members of the Joint Drafting Committee on Lokpal Bill, Naqvi said, “This has become a war of words between those who want a Lokpal Bill and the others who are for a Jokepal.”
He maintained that BJP will take a call on the proposed all-party meeting on Lokpal when it receives an invitation from the government.
“We are against corruption and want that strong steps are taken to end it,” Naqvi said.
NEW DELHI: In his first remarks on the issue of bugging of Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s North Block office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram did not know about it.
During his interaction with five senior editors, Dr. Singh replied in the negative when asked if the complaint of bugging went through the Home Minister.
âNo. This was on a need-to-know principle,” Dr. Singh said. He admitted that there was a complaint that the office of the Finance Minister was bugged. âI asked the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to do a thorough check. The IB reported back to me that there was nothing of the sort,” Dr. Singh said.
The Prime Minister’s reply comes as a surprise because the Home Ministry which exercises control over IB had been completely kept out of the loop. Though both Mr. Mukherjee and Mr. Chidambaram have dismissed insinuations about any mistrust between them, it is surprising why Mr. Mukherjee, number two in the UPA government, chose to keep the Home Minister in the dark and went straight to the Prime Minister last year.
As part of the routine exercise also, the Home Minister was entitled to know about the sensitive issue rather than being kept out.
Mr. Chidambaram, in a recent interview to NDTV, had said that he came to know about the bugging incident from newspaper reports.
There rarely is a dull moment in Indian politics. The latest is the hasty attempt to hush up the bugging of the finance ministry offices. Pranab Mukherjee, the finance minister himself has dismissed the episode as âbogusâ. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) says no such bugging took place. And Home minister P. Chidambaran, to whom the IB reports, says he didnât know about the bugging till he saw it in the newspapers last week. But the controversy refuses to die down.
According to The Indian Express which broke the story, on September 4, 2010, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), an agency that reports to the Finance Ministry, brought in a team of private sleuths to conduct a security sweep of the offices to check for eavesdropping devices. They found âplantable adhesive substancesâ in 16 locations in the office of the Finance Minister, the offices of his long-time aide Omita Paul, and personal secretary Manoj Pant as well as two conference rooms. Groove marks were found on the âadhesive substancesâ, suggesting that bugging devices were planted and removed later to wipe out surveillance trail.
Three days later, Mukherjee wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to launch a âsecret probeâ into the âserious breach of securityâ. He said no âlive microphoneâ or recording devices were found but it could have âwider ramificationsâ. The Prime Minister then directly tasked the then IB chief, Rajiv Mathur, to probe Mukherjeeâs complaint rather than passing it on to Chidambaram. The IB conducted its investigations and reported that there was no breach of security. A Home Ministry official told The Economic Times, “The IB probe concluded that the adhesive may just be chewing gum left behind by careless visitors or maintenance staff. The matter was subsequently treated as closed around six months back.” But why would any visitor or cleaning staff discard chewing gum or adhesives in a ministerâs high-security office?
The corridors of power are rife with conspiracy theories. Leading the suspect list is Mukherjeeâs political opponents.
Observers point to the simmering mistrust within the higher echelons of government. Given that Mukherjee wields a great degree of influence within the UPA, and is a strong contender for prime ministership after Manmohan Singh, perhaps someone within the Congress party wanted to keep a tab on him or pull him down a notch or two. Itâs not the first time that such cloak and dagger activities have come to light. In May 2010, Outlook magazine reported how senior leaders like Sharad Pawar and Digvijay Singh had been illegally tapped. Sources told the Outlook that during the July 2008 no-confidence motion on the Indo-US nuclear deal, bugging devices were used extensively to listen in on the conversations of opposition leaders. Years ago, Zail Singh, former president of India felt that the Rashtrapati Bhawan was tapped. He told Vir Sanghvi, well known columnist and former editor, Hindustan Times, that he made it a point to discuss sensitive matters in the garden. Key officials and journalists are on the governmentâs watch list and their cell phones are allegedly tapped regularly.
Another theory doing the rounds is that a business house had engineered the bugging. Sources told The Times of India, “There are many private sector players who could be interested. If they were aware of a particular meeting on a subject crucial to their bottom line, then a corporate could take such a risk,” he said. So if a corporate house was to “buy off a lower level staff”, these transmitters could be smuggled in. “And the easiest way to plant them is using adhesives,” he adds. But why would businessmen adopt such risky options when they can easily find out what they want through their informants in the ministry or political cronies?
Yet another theory is the involvement of the foreign hand. Agencies seeking policy-related information critical for their governments to gain advantage from Indian deals or projects could have planted the bugs. For instance, there have been periodic reports of attempts from China to access classified information. Last year, Chinese hackers tried taking over websites and email accounts of government officials. Sounds a bit farfetched though!
But thereâs not enough evidence to conclusively prove any of the conspiracy theories.
Asked if Mukherjeeâs office bugged, B. Raman, a former senior RAW official, told the Outlook magazine, âCircumstantially yes if one takes into account the important position occupied by him in the Cabinet, his important role involving sensitive discussions in his office on many sensitive issues of a political nature and the suspicion that there are question marks over his head in the Congress leadership. Technically, it would depend on where the adhesive material was found. If it was found at places easily visible to the naked eye, then the allegations may not be correct. If the adhesive was found at places not easily visible to the naked eye, the allegation will acquire some credibility.â
Had the bugging device been found, there would have been valid ground for the charges. With just âadhesivesâ stuck in 16 locations, thereâs no way the bugging can be proved or traced. A retired senior official known for his expertise in technical intelligence told The Times of India that as a snooping operation, it was poorly done. “There are far more sophisticated ways of monitoring,” he said. For instance, the telephone could have been converted into a transmitter, using laser beams. Solar-charged transmitters could have been planted in photo-frames etc. âAdhesives are used to stick transmitters that secretly record voice in a premise. It is then transmitted to a recorder kept at a distance. If this was the case in Mukherjee’s office, he may have been either a victim of a one-off snooping for a few hours, or sustained snooping over a long period of time,â the official added.
The speculation will continue. And weâll likely never know the truth.
One of the worldâs best-paid businesswomen hired private investigators to bug her estranged husbandâs ÂŁ2âmillion home, according to papers lodged at the High Court.
Elena Ambrosiadou is being sued for spying and harassment by Dr Martin Coward. The pair, who separated in 2009, founded Ikos, one of Europeâs biggest hedge funds.
Dr Coward claims in papers obtained from the court that Miss Ambrosiadou hired a private detective agency called Kroll Associates to plant secret surveillance devices last December at his house in Steyning, West Sussex.
Separated: Martin Coward and Elena Ambrosiadou founded Ikos, one of Europeâs biggest hedge funds
He alleges that Kroll employees entered his property illegally and left bugsand video cameras in the kitchen and the fireplace of his study.
He claims that they also planted a GPS tracking device in his car. The court document also alleges that Dr Coward was covertly followed by detectives from another agency who photographed his meetings with people in Monaco and Cyprus.
Dr Coward, regarded as one of the worldâs greatest financial mathematicians, is suing his estranged wife for breaching his privacy and his human rights, which guarantee him a right to a private life.
He is also seeking an injunction against Miss Ambrosiadou and Kroll Associates âto prevent any further similar activityâ.
Greek-born Miss Ambrosiadou, 51, and Dr Coward amassed a ÂŁ200âmillion fortune through the hedge fund they jointly founded in 1993. She took a salary of ÂŁ16âmillion in 2004 as the chief executive of Ikos, and last year spent ÂŁ60âmillion on the Maltese Falcon, the worldâs largest private sailing yacht.
Last week The Mail on Sunday revealed how Miss Ambrosiadou hired a glamorous undercover agent called Laura Merts, 37, to spy on her former portfolio manager, Tobin Gover, and to extract âconfidential and private information about himâ.
Mr Gover was among 12 Ikos employees who were mysteriously sacked in 2008 while Dr Coward was on a skiing holiday. Miss Ambrosiadou has agreed to pay Mr Gover âsubstantialâ damages.
After the sackings, Ikos was hit by scandals and setbacks. In late 2009, Dr Coward, who was chief investment officer, resigned, saying he wanted to set up his own hedge fund. The couple also separated shortly afterwards.
The court papers claim that the bugs in Dr Cowardâs home ârecorded a long conversation between the claimant [Dr Coward] and his mother in the study, in which they discussed a number of highly private, confidential and sensitive issues, including issues concerning the claimantâs business plans, investments and tax affairsâ.
Dr Coward also claims that his estranged wife hired another agency to spy on his movements between November and December 2009 in Monaco. Dr Coward lives in the principality with his 24-year-old Brazilian girlfriend.
He claims he was also subjected to a more intensive surveillance when in Limassol, Cyprus.
Last night a spokesman for Dr Coward refused to comment.
Miss Ambrosiadouâs lawyers said there has been no finding of wrong-doing against her and she denies any allegations of unlawful conduct.
An Ikos spokesman said: âWe are not going to debate an ongoing situation through the media. There are a number of outstanding criminal cases to be dealt with.â
