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Police to tap calls at May Day protest from the Observer - Sunday April 23, 2000 Civil rights group attacks move as unjustified intrusion Nick Paton Walsh Police will be listening in when demonstrators use mobile phones to plan tactics during the expected 1 May demonstrations in London, The Observer has learnt. Scotland Yard has said it will 'pursue all legal avenues' to prevent and monitor crime. A number of legal loopholes give police the power to intercept conversations. May Day is known to be the date of the next series of anti-capitalist protests, and Special Branch is believed to have kept alleged ringleaders under surveillance. The protests are expected to be organised by a few individuals in constant contact by mobile phone. This was the pattern at the 'N30' demonstration outside Euston station on 30 November last year, where organisers co-ordinated attacks on financial institutions. 
Mobile phones may be legally monitored in two ways. The network to which the phones are connected can be tapped if the police obtain a warrant from the Home Secretary. But to do so, they must suspect that a crime may be committed which carries a penalty of more than three years or which involves a number of people. A warrant allows the police to intercept all communications to and from one individual. Riots such as those caused by the N30 protests involve sufficiently serious crimes for such warrants to be issued. Additionally and more controversially, police may also intercept signals between a mobile phone and a phone mast. While it was all too easy to intercept old analogue phones, the vast majority of new digital phones send encrypted signals, and the equipment required to tap such phones is not publicly available. 'Technology of that sort would only be owned by the Government,' said an engineer with telecoms security firm Spymaster. John Wadham, director of civil rights group Liberty, said: 'Listening in to someone's telephone conversations is a serious intrusion that should only be justified if police are investigating really serious offences. The planning of a peaceful protest should never be subject to such intrusive surveillance. The real solution for the future is to ensure that there is an independent check on this, and the only real way to ensure this is to have a judge - not a politician - issue the warrant.' There are now 2,000 ministerial warrants approving phone and mail tapping every year, an increase of 50 per cent over the past three years.
The May Day 2000 protests will start on Friday with a Radicals' Walk of the East End, and conclude on 1 May with a series of demonstrations and 'direct action' around the capital. Police consider the likely flashpoint to be the 'Guerrilla Gardening' action co-ordinated by the protest group Reclaim the Streets to 'reclaim open space'. This is scheduled to meet on May Day at 11am in Parliament Square. Protesters have been asked to bring gardening implements, which police fear may be used as weapons. A police officer is still recovering from a spinal injury caused, say police, by a blow from a rioter's spade during City demonstrations last June. As well as preparing for attacks on buildings, firms across the capital are bracing themselves for cyber-attacks similar to those that damaged the internet sites of Yahoo! and Amazon earlier this year. Anarchist hackers are believed to be targeting large corporations with 'denial-of-service' attacks which bombard computers with e-mails.
Emma, 29, is an artist from London who intends to take part in planting seeds in Parliament Square and hopes it will pass peacefully. 'This protest is trying to be more conceptual. We're doing some real work,' she said. 'It's a very fluffy form of direct action. I've found the police reaction rather scary. I have a little girl who will come with me, and I hope she comes away from the day with a pleasant image of the bobby on the beat. There will only be violence if there's some provocation.' Tony, 40, an unemployed former finance worker and organiser of one of the May Day events, said: 'People have started realising that Parliament does not represent them in the way they thought, and want to say something about that.' Scotland Yard has said preparations for the May Day protests will amount to the biggest law enforcement operation in the capital for 30 years. |
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