“What you should not do is expose Joe Bloggs who might have been buried as a hero but was in fact an informant for the Brits.”

With this attempted distraction in mind, the latest comments by Denis Bradley make even more interesting reading. Bradley also expressed concern about the fate of thousands of one-time informers if there was “full disclosure” of all sensitive Troubles-related security files. “What Robin Eames and I found out in our investigations leading to the Consultative Group on the Past report was that at any given time there were at least 800 informers working within the ranks not only of the loyalist …

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New GCHQ head takes on Google over the terrorist threat

In the FT today, (£) Robert Hannigan now the new head of GCHQ  whom I knew well as the NIO  director of communications,  has opened a new chapter in the debate over privacy versus security in the digital world. He accuses the technology giants of being in denial about the internet as a command and control system for terrorists. Taking a bold initiative in a debate which is bogged down over where to draw the line between privacy and security, he …

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