Church and State blog: Interception of communications

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Interception of communications

Yesterday afternoon Declan emailed the Home Secretary Jacqueline Smith regarding interception of communications (a type of surveillance where a communication is intercepted before it reaches its destination). A few days ago I found a petition by the European Life Scientist Organization (ELSO) on European research funding containing almost 90 pages of the names and email addresses of scientists, and over two days I emailed more than two hundred of them. Of course, when over 30 automatically generated delivery status notifications (confirming failure or delay to transmit) are filtered to Declan’s Spam mailbox, there is not one single Out of Office AutoReply and only one scientist signs Declan’s petition to the UN on hESC research, you know you have to do something (the letter is presented below).

Yesterday also saw us yet again being visited by the City of London Police at the porch we sleep in at night – as I reported in my last blog, two police officers visited us the previous Friday, telling us that they had an order to evict us from the porch. This wasn't my only brush with the law though. Last Tuesday I was stopped by another two police officers at 7.20am as I walked the local train station asking people for some spare change: the previous Thursday I was stopped from selling The Big Issue (a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches) after my pitch was unceremoniously taken over by a street distributor of a free magazine.

PC 9191 – he issued me my first ticket for begging on 13 November as his partner proceeded to call me "the scum of the earth", and a third on 18 January as he told me I would be arrested the next time – is on top form. “You don’t know Maria?” he asks his new partner. “Maria is always begging around here. Maria, how are you?” Not much later, as his partner is writing out my forth ticket, he says that they “should put this piece of shit [me] away”. At the end I am ordered to leave the station immediately, his partner adding that if I return I will be arrested on the spot. I am even told what direction to take so I can’t get lost in the crowd.

It hit us quite hard because the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre was closed on a one-off the following day – after more than a week in which their food was particularly scarce – and I was under pressure to get some money. Of course, we could avail of the basic breakfast for 60p that the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission provides, including on weekends, except that the minister’s wife barred us back in June due to concerns about our safety.

Anyway, I haven’t been arrested yet, probably because I am leaving the station as soon as I put together the few pounds I need to get Declan by for the day. This weekend is the toughest yet. After putting away £2 – Declan has to travel to the Big Issue head office on Monday to ensure the proper registration of our pitches after repeated “administrative errors” in respect of same – and the admittance fee to wash in the public toilets of the train station, we have, well, less than £2. I have kept the bit of grated cheese and the two white sandwich bread that the nuns from the Dellow Centre give the homeless "for later" (plus some fruit that was given to pedestrians yesterday on some promotion), and so Declan needs to spend no money on me.

Needless to say, I am back begging in the train station on Monday, and probably again all week because I can’t see how I am going to be able to put aside the £1.40 we need to buy a couple of Big Issues – the Big Issue has refused to sell us magazines in quantities of one.

Maybe we are two belligerent people but I think we are just extremely lucky to be part of one of these “causes greater than self”, like therapeutic cloning and the use of stem cells for research and the treatment of disease. This is Declan’s letter to the Home Secretary:

Subject: Interception of communications

Dear Ms Smith

I am writing to you in your capacity as Home Secretary whose personal approval is required for an interception of communications warrant in the interests of national security, preventing or detecting serious crime, or safeguarding the UK's economic well-being. My name is Declan Heavey. I am the director of Network of those Abused by Church (NAC). My wife and I are of no fixed abode, and have been sleeping rough on the streets of London since 3 November 2006. I have lodged my case against the UK with the European Court of Human Rights by application of 8 September 2007 with an urgent request for expedition.

Since 22 October 2007, I have been contacting through Google Mail distinguished scientists and academics to invite them to sign my petition to the United Nations entitled "Consideration at the United Nations of a Declaration on Human Cloning for Therapeutic Reasons", which supports work on therapeutic cloning and the use of stem cells for research and the treatment of disease. To date, this petition has been signed by 415 scientists, including 22 Nobel prizewinners.

I wish to draw to your attention the following: (1) in the last week of December two emails from scientists, asking me to add their name to the aforementioned petition, were filtered to my Spam mailbox; (2) on 6 February I was informed by a signatory that an email I had sent him had not been received, despite Google Mail's record of it having been successfully transmitted; (3) on 8 February I received two Out of Office AutoReplys with "[SUSPECT SPAM]" in the subject; (4) on 27 February I was informed by a signatory that my email to him earlier that afternoon had been "filtered to a Spam mailbox"; (5) in the last two days over 30 automatically generated delivery status notifications (confirming failure or delay to transmit) have been filtered to my Spam mailbox; and (6) yesterday I received an email from a scientist, in response to my latest invitation to him to sign the petition, informing me that he was "sure" he said he was happy to have his name added to the list of signatories.

I should point out that on 26 January, while I had no access to a computer, all emails sent to me after 12 August 2007 were moved to the Trash and over 300 draft documents, which included the names and email addresses of approximately 2,500 scientists, were deleted for good.

I understand that in the UK my civil rights concerning surveillance are protected by: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000; Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and correspondence; Data Protection Act 1998; Covert Surveillance Code of Practice; and Interception of Communications Code of Practice.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

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Saturday, March 01, 2008

Interception of communications

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