Privacy ‘not an absolute right,’ says former UK spy boss

An aerial image of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Credit: Ministry of Defence — An aerial image of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Credit: Ministry of Defence

Widespread encryption and stopping bulk collection of communications data will cripple intelligence agencies, says a former top UK spy.

“Everything can’t be private or we’ll end up regretting it,” said Sir David Omand, director of the UK’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ from 1996-97, speaking at University College London January 15.

“Very serious damage” will be done to the ability to carry out foreign espionage and police domestically if “you have the right to have your private iChat and nobody has the right to intercept it,” Omand, now a visiting professor of war studies at King’s College London, added.

UK’s laws for foreign fighters returning from Syria need nuance

*(l-r) Shiraz Maher, Moazzam Begg and Richard Barrett*

Hundreds of young Britons who went to battle Syria's oppressive regime alongside rebel groups on the wings of the Arab Spring are now running for their lives from IS.

Yet they find themselves between a rock and a hard place with pending UK laws that bar them from returning to Britain for two years and would have them put on trial and imprisoned for terrorism if they return.

At the Frontline Club January 14, Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ISCR) at King’s College; Moazzam Begg a former Guantánamo Bay prisoner turned activist with the UK group Cage; and former MI6 director of global counter-terrorism Richard Barrett, now a senior VP with strategic security intelligence consultants The Soufan Group; discussed how an understanding of returning fighters motivations should inform the government’s response in both new laws and de-radicalization programs.

What brought down the Berlin Wall? Reflections 25 years after the fall

The young Harvard-educated economist Miklós Németh didn’t dream he would play a decisive role in the fall of the Berlin Wall when he was appointed Prime Minister by Hungary’s Communist Party to fix the nation’s finances in late 1988. Only a year later he was at the centre of it all.

On Wednesday 5 November, the Frontline Club tuned in to the world premier of 1989, a new documentary by Anders Østergaard detailing the months and days of Németh’s tense political manoeuvring that precipitated demolition of the wall, as it was shown in 57 cities across Europe during the 2014 Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (CPH:DOX).

UK's Unions still the enemy within 30 years after Miners' Strike

When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced on 6 March 1984 that she would close 20 coal mines, there was little clue it would spark the country’s longest strike and leave Britain’s trade unions sorely diminished decades later.

For a year roughly 160,000 coal miners from across the UK walked off the job as the government declared war on the unions. Thirty years on, “there’s a huge battle for interpretation about it,” said Owen Gower, director of Still the Enemy Within, at itsFrontline Club screening on Friday 3 October.

From Al Qaeda to ISIS: Shifting terrorists tactics

With graphic violence spread through social media, and the declaration of a new caliphate in Iraq and Syria in June, the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) has shown a swiftness and brutality that has shocked Western nations.

But what conditions have given rise to this army of jihadis? And what lies in the future following Obama’s call on UN world leaders to dismantle its "network of death”?

At the Frontline Club on September 24, four experts discussed the militant group’s origins, how its tactic and structure differ from Al Qaeda, and where it’s going as the West resolves to strike in what promises to be a years-long conflict.

Canada shouldn't be smug during black history month

Black history month doesn't get a lot of attention in Canada. A quick search pulls up a few small news stories here and there - one about Canada Post's new stamp commemorating MLB Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins, another about how local artists, musicians and writers are meeting up in Calgary to jam.

Our country was never gripped by a difficult civil rights movement, nor the L.A. riots, nor headline stealing photos of oppression at the end of a stick. And, as with most events in our nation, we don't have Hollywood to mythologize and bring them to life. As a result, we often shrug off our past as something uneventful and bland. This is dangerous, especially when it comes to human rights.