Quote:
Originally Posted by R Jones
I'm in a rush - but does what the HO minister said about no contacts prior to... pan out with what is in Dephormation's FOI bundles on Counter Terrorism unit contacts about Phorm?
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In the HoL debate, Lord West of Spithead said:
Quote:
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"The Home Office, BERR and the Information Commissioner were not aware of the two tests conducted by BT, which was not good."
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This is what an official in the Home Office told me... I haven't circulated or uploaded this email yet... I was waiting for the final set of documents. Given they've punted that into the long grass here it is:
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"You have asked the Home Office before when it knew about the BT/Phorm trials and we responded that we were not aware of those trials. Neither BT nor Phorm or any of their representatives informed the Home Office that they were conducting the trials nor would we expect them to. The Home Office is does not regulate this activity, and it would be a police matter if RIPA was breached. And possibly anticipating your next question; we did we ask them (BT or Phorm) not to tell us of any trials tests scoping exercises etc that they were either planning to conduct or conducting or had conducted for that matter, etc . I hope I have established that the Home Office had no knowledge of the trials until after they became public knowledge."
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I think that speaks for itself really, in a confused sort of way. I can't make sense of "we did we". Did we or didn't we.
Perhaps they asked BT not to tell them, as if that would make it alright.
It seems strange that the Home Office would not expect to be informed that someone was conducting secret mass surveillance at the core of BT's network, twice, using Russian supplied systems, during a period of
critical/
severe security alert, as a courtesy perhaps if nothing else...
The Home Office still won't tell me when they first received enquiries, who the enquiries came from, or what the substance of those enquiries was.
See here for
current thoughts and HO FoI releases.
Pete.