There are conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories

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“The reason there are conspiracy theories”, runs an old adage, “is because sometimes people conspire”. They do, which is one reason why the sneering condescension with which people talk about conspiracy theories is, well, unwise. It may make statistical sense (because the majority of conspiracy theories are unfounded), but it’s not good epistemology, because sometimes conspiracy theories are well-founded.

The critical difference is between theories we believe to be well-founded and those we believe to be unfounded or mistaken. To take just one obvious example, the official US explanation of the 9/11 attacks is, in a literal sense, a conspiracy theory: it says that a certain group of Al-Qaeda operatives conspired to launch a daring attack on the United States, an attack that could have been foiled if key government agencies had been more perceptive and acted more decisively. My guess is that most people prefer this explanation to the alternative conspiracy theories for various reasons — the scale of the investigation, the membership of the Presidential Commission, etc. But in the end it comes down to preferring one theory over another.

An example is a conspiracy theory that turned out to be correct was the theory that the British, French and Israeli governments had colluded to invade Egypt in order to overthrow Colonel Nasser and seize back control of the Suez Canal (which Nasser had nationalised).

And this week, another conspiracy theory focussed on the Middle East has turned out to be well-founded. Malcolm Byrne, the director of research at the US National Security Archive has confirmed that the August 1953 coup that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s populist prime minister, and reinstated the Shah of Persia — an obnoxious puppet of the US and the UK who was to remain in power for another twenty-six years, before fleeing the country in January 1979.

As John Cassidy reported in a recent issue of the New Yorker, “Six decades to the day since a pro-Shah mob, led by Iranian agents recruited by the U.S. and the British, marched on Mossadegh’s residence, Byrne published extracts from internal C.I.A. documents that, for the first time, explicitly acknowledge how the agency masterminded the change of government in Tehran”.

Theories about the C.I.A.’s involvement in the coup (which served as a template for subsequent clandestine operations in Guatemala, Cuba, and other countries), have been around for decades, and were often ridiculed by establishment figures. But an internal C.I.A. account of the coup, which was written in the nineteen-seventies and kept secret until Byrne obtained it, now confirms that the conspiracy theorists were right all along. “The military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet”, the report states, “was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government”.

The moral? The fact that a particular explanation of an event or a phenomenon is a conspiracy theory doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong. It may turn out to be the best explanation in the long run.

Groklaw: collateral damage of intrusive surveillance

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Everywhere I look at the moment, I see the consequences of the extent of NSA/GCHQ surveillance. (See here, here and here for examples.)

But this post from Pamela Jones, founder of one of the best and most enlightening sites on the Web, makes me really depressed because it demonstrates the damage that surveillance is doing to the public sphere. Here’s what she says:

The owner of Lavabit tells us that he’s stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we’d stop too.
There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum.

What to do?

What to do? I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I’ve reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly sad. But it’s good to be realistic. And the simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to one another, and no matter how “clean” we all are ourselves from the standpoint of the screeners, I don’t know how to function in such an atmosphere. I don’t know how to do Groklaw like this.

Years ago, when I was first on my own, I arrived in New York City, and being naive about the ways of evil doers in big cities, I rented a cheap apartment on the top floor of a six-floor walkup, in the back of the building. That of course, as all seasoned New Yorkers could have told me, meant that a burglar could climb the fire escape or get to the roof by going to the top floor via the stairs inside and then through the door to the roof and climb down to the open window of my apartment.

That is exactly what happened. I wasn’t there when it happened, so I wasn’t hurt in any way physically. And I didn’t then own much of any worth, so only a few things were taken. But everything had been pawed through and thrown about. I can’t tell how deeply disturbing it is to know that someone, some stranger, has gone through and touched all your underwear, looked at all your photographs of your family, and taken some small piece of jewelry that’s been in your family for generations.

If it’s ever happened to you, you know I couldn’t live there any more, not one night more. It turned out, by the way, according to my neighbors, that it was almost certainly the janitor’s son, which stunned me at the time but didn’t seem to surprise any of my more-seasoned neighbors. The police just told me not to expect to get anything back. I felt assaulted. The underwear was perfectly normal underwear. Nothing kinky or shameful, but it was the idea of them being touched by someone I didn’t know or want touching them. I threw them away, unused ever again.

I feel like that now, knowing that persons I don’t know can paw through all my thoughts and hopes and plans in my emails with you.

They tell us that if you send or receive an email from outside the US, it will be read. If it’s encrypted, they keep it for five years, presumably in the hopes of tech advancing to be able to decrypt it against your will and without your knowledge. Groklaw has readers all over the world.

I understand perfectly how she feels. We used to think that spammers and trolls were the main vandals in Cyberspace — polluting the public sphere with their noxious activities and their contempt for the public good. Now it turns out that they’ve been joined by governments and their agencies.

The National Security State

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Astonishing, chilling piece by the Guardian’s Editor, Alan Rusbridger.

A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.”

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian’s reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government’s intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. “We can call off the black helicopters,” joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

HMG: Journalism = Terrorism (contd.)

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Great comment by Simon Jenkins.

Greenwald himself is not known to have committed any offence, unless journalism is now a “terrorist” occupation in the eyes of British and American politicians. As for Miranda, his only offence seems to have been to be part of his family. Harassing the family of those who have upset authority is the most obscene form of state terrorism.

Last month, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, airily excused the apparently illegal hoovering of internet traffic by British and American spies on the grounds that “the innocent have nothing to fear,” the motto of police states down the ages. Hague’s apologists explained that he was a nice chap really, but that relations with America trumped every libertarian card.

The hysteria of the “war on terror” is now corrupting every area of democratic government. It extends from the arbitrary selection of drone targets to the quasi-torture of suspects, the intrusion on personal data and the harassing of journalists’ families. The disregard of statutory oversight – in Britain’s case pathetically inadequate – is giving western governments many of the characteristics of the enemies they profess to oppose. How Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee.

The innocent have nothing to fear? They do if they embarrass America and happen to visit British soil. The only land of the free today in this matter is Brazil.

David Miranda’s detention proves how sinister the state has become

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Terrific blog post by Nick Cohen.

Always remember mornings like these, the next time police officers and politicians demand more powers to protect us from terrorism. They always sound so reasonable and so concerned for our welfare when they do. For who wants to be blown apart?

But the state said its new powers to intercept communications would be used against terrorists. They ended up using them against fly tippers. Now the police are using the Terrorism Act against the partner of a journalist who is publishing stories the British and American governments would rather keep quiet.

The detention of David Miranda at Heathrow is a clarifying moment that reveals how far Britain has changed for the worse. Nearly everyone suspects the Met held Miranda on trumped up charges because the police, at the behest of the Americans, wanted to intimidate Miranda’s partner Glenn Greenwald, the conduit of Edward Snowden’s revelations, and find out whether more embarrassing information is on Greenwald’s laptop.

Cameron Proves Greenwald Right: HMG sees journalism as terrorism

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The harassment of David Miranda beggars belief. But, as Andrew Sullivan says, at least it shows us where Cameron & Co stand.

David was detained for nine hours – the maximum time under the law, to the minute. He therefore falls into the 3 percent of interviewees particularly, one assumes, likely to be linked to terrorist organizations. My obvious question is: what could possibly lead the British security services to suspect David of such ties to terror groups?

I have seen nothing anywhere that could even connect his spouse to such nefarious contacts. Unless Glenn is some kind of super-al-Qaeda mole, he has none to my knowledge and to suspect him of any is so close to unreasonable it qualifies as absurd. The idea that David may fomenting terrorism is even more ludicrous.

And yet they held him for three hours before informing his spouse and another six hours thereafter. I can see no reason for those extra six hours (or for that matter the entire nine hours) than brute psychological intimidation of the press, by attacking their families.

More to the point, although David was released, his entire digital library was confiscated – including his laptop and phone. So any journalist passing through London’s Heathrow has now been warned: do not take any documents with you. Britain is now a police state when it comes to journalists, just like Russia is.

In this respect, I can say this to David Cameron. Thank you for clearing the air on these matters of surveillance. You have now demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that these anti-terror provisions are capable of rank abuse. Unless some other facts emerge, there is really no difference in kind between you and Vladimir Putin. You have used police powers granted for anti-terrorism and deployed them to target and intimidate journalists deemed enemies of the state.

You have proven that these laws can be hideously abused.

Not in particular the advice to foreign journalists in transit. Leave your laptops, phones and USB sticks at home.

Smart meters might not be so clever after all

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This morning’s Observer column.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make credulous. In the case of technology, especially technology involving computers, that’s pretty easy to do. Quite why people are so overawed by computers when they are blase about, say, truly miraculous technologies such as high-speed trains, is a mystery that we will have to leave for another day. The only thing we need to remember is that when important people, for example government ministers, are confronted with what a sceptical friend of mine calls “computery” then they check in their brains at the door of the meeting room. From then on, credulity is their default setting.

In which state, they are easy meat for technological visionaries, evangelists and purveyors of snake oil. This would be touching if it weren’t serious. Exhibit A in this regard is the government’s plan for “smart meters”…