PublicOrgTheory

It’s not surprising that this happens, but I’m mildly surprised that these things don’t hit the headlines more often:

Undercover police are running a network of hundreds of informants inside protest organisations who secretly feed them intelligence in return for cash, according to evidence handed to the Guardian.

They claim to have infiltrated a number of environmental groups and said they are receiving information about leaders, tactics and plans of future demonstrations.

The dramatic disclosures are revealed in almost three hours of secretly recorded discussions between covert officers claiming to be from Strathclyde police, and an activist from the protest group Plane Stupid, whom the officers attempted to recruit as a paid spy after she had been released on bail following a demonstration at Aberdeen airport last month.

Plane Stupid, by the way, is an organization that protests airport expansions because of climate concerns and “has no heirachy [sic] or central leadership, but is instead made up of small ‘affinity groups’ who organise themselves.”  From a cursory glance, they appear to be non-violent and minimally disruptive.

The first rule in running a network of infiltrators should be “don’t get caught”.  Since the reveal, the police can assume that their informants are compromised, suspected from within their groups, and perhaps passing on misinformation.  New intelligence would best be taken with a grain of salt.

They might also expect a little blowback from the public, who might not care much for groups like Plane Stupid (or Greenpeace, or WWF, or Westboro Baptist Church) but are troubled by the invasiveness of surveillance or jealous of the fringe benefits for being an informer:

During the taped discussions, the officers:

• Indicate that she could receive tens of thousands of pounds to pay off her student loans in return for information about individuals within Plane Stupid.

• Say they will not pay money direct into her bank account because that would leave an audit trail that would leave her compromised. They said the money would be tax-free, and added: “UK plc can afford more than 20 quid.”

…They intimated that in return for updates on Plane Stupid’s plans she could receive large sums of money in cash.

The police, for their part, assert that it’s all on the up-and-up:

In a statement last night, assistant chief constable George Hamilton said the force had “a responsibility to gather intelligence”, and such operations were conducted according to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

I’m not sure how the Home Office would feel about the tax-free income.  I find the police espionage unsettling for many of the reasons above, and also because I strongly question the value of the intelligence, especially after reading this account of infiltrating a militant anarchist protest organization.  I’m not convinced it all adds up to anything.