Interception of emails: Home Office minister advises Declan to find himself a solicitor

Home office minister Lynne Featherstone

In February Declan received his third letter from our MP, Lynne Featherstone, a minister in the Home Office, regarding the interception of our emails. Initially she said she would try to prompt a response into why we are encountering these problems (see blog of 20 June 2010 Interception of communications: Our MP responds). Almost a year later, she is recommending that Declan finds himself a solicitor. What she appears to be saying, however, is that the Home Secretary hasn't issued a warrant and that the on-going interception and manipulation of our email - this week we received undelivered emails in our spam box! - is unauthorised and unlawful:

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This is particularly concerning because last Saturday I uploaded a statement to our website for President Obama and members of Congress about forest funding and we are seeking the endorsement of scientists and economists from around the world. In light of our on-going difficulties with email, we believe that our only chance of success is to aim for the endorsement of 30 or 40 leading experts in the field of climate change, and to get through to as many as we can by email with use of the phone. Declan's petition to the United Nations regarding therapeutic cloning has been signed by no less than 28 Nobel Laureates as well as hundreds of other distinguished scholars, but it took years and the manipulation of email got so bad that last April Declan had to shelve it (see blog of 20 January, A4E refuse me a Journey Plan, which contains an open letter from a distinguished American professor who last April was "truly appalled by the unlawful violation of the Heaveys' basic right to send and receive email without interference").

Another reason why we can't send personalised emails in their hundreds is because there is a high probability we would lose our website. In 2008, we lost our original site due to a Spamcop report that was drawn up the day after the Home Office denied that a warrant had been issued to intercept our communications (see blog of 14 March 2008 SpamCop reports Declan as a spammer). Only last month, I titled a blog Website brought down as we are about to publish our first book excerpt from a Nobel Prize winner, so somebody is trigger happy!