UK
Proposed laws to restrict ‘noisy’ protests breach human rights and must be scrapped, government told

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED TRY, TRY AGAIN

Say it loud: Demonstrators attend a protest against a new proposed policing bill in Manchester (Reuters)

Lizzie Dearden
Mon, June 21, 2021, 11:54 PM·5 min read

Concerning new policing laws will hand too much power to the home secretary and give authorities “oppressive” rights to quash protests, a cross-party group of MPs and peers has warned.

Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights found that proposals to allow police to restrict “noisy” protests were “not necessary in a democratic society” and must be scrapped.

A report published on Tuesday said it was also unacceptable to give the home secretary the power to define “serious disruption”, or to increase prison sentences for non-violent crimes related to protest.


The plans are contained within the wide-ranging Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is currently undergoing parliamentary scrutiny after being backed by MPs in March.

It has sparked a wave of demonstrations, including some that resulted in vandalism and violence against police officers, amid accusations that the government was stifling the right to protest.

Labour MP Harriet Harman, who chairs the human rights committee, said protest was the “essence” of British democracy and allowed the public to literally make their voices heard.

“The government proposals to allow police to restrict ‘noisy’ protests are oppressive and wrong,” she added.

“Noisy protests are the exercises of the lungs of a healthy democracy. They should not be treated as an inconvenience by those in power.”

Ms Harman said police already had access to “perfectly adequate” powers for protests, and that demonstrations themselves should be given explicit statutory protection in the law.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights said that peaceful protests had to be “seen and, crucially in this context, heard” to fulfil the European Convention on Human Rights.

“A power that would allow the police to move the location of a demonstration, limit its numbers or duration, or even to silence certain shouts or chants, in order to suppress noise is therefore of significant concern,” it added.

Members said interference with the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly can only be justified by a “pressing social need”, or “legitimate aims” such as to prevent disorder, preserve public safety and protect the rights of others.

“It is not clear to us what right the public has to be free from ‘serious unease’ that might result from peaceful and otherwise lawful protest,” the committee added.

“Despite receiving a large number of submissions addressing part three of the bill, we did not receive a single piece of written evidence welcoming the changes it proposes.”

The report found that political rhetoric had been “downplaying the importance of the right to peaceful protest and treating it as an inconvenience”, and that public authorities should be reminded of their obligation to “refrain from interfering unlawfully” with the right to demonstrate.

The draft bill would create a power for the home secretary to clarify the meaning of “serious disruption” in law, for the purpose of protest restrictions, without parliamentary scrutiny.

“It raises the risk that a future home secretary could respond to particular protests to which the government objects and specify those as falling within the ‘serious disruption’ triggers,” the report said.

“It is vitally important that peaceful protests are policed on the basis of the harm they cause, not their political content.”

The committee also called for changes to proposals to lower the threshold for prosecuting protesters for breaching police conditions, saying they “increased the risk of peaceful protesters being arrested or prosecuted for innocent mistakes”.

Members said the government should omit part of the bill that would, for the first time, allow police to impose restrictions on protests by a single person.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights found a proposed new criminal offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance” – which would be punishable by up to 10 years in prison – was unclear and risked criminalising some forms of peaceful protest.

It called for the wording of the law to be changed to ensure it required “serious harm” to be caused to the public, and to make non-violent protest a defence.

The human rights group Liberty said the bill followed heavy restrictions on protest during the coronavirus pandemic and would hand police “the power to choose where, when and how people can protest”.

Its policy and campaigns manager Rosalind Comyn said: “Giving police even more powers to control and limit our right to protest is incredibly dangerous. We urge those in power to listen to the warnings about what this bill would mean for the future of civil liberties in the UK – and to oppose it at every chance they get.”

Campaign group Big Brother Watch called the report “damning” and called for MPs to remove the “draconian” protest powers from the bill.

Ministers have argued that “recent changes in tactics” used by Extinction Rebellion protesters, including gluing themselves to buildings and vehicles, have highlighted gaps in existing public order laws from 1986.

Demonstrators in Bristol stand near a burning police vehicle during a protest against the proposed policing bill (Reuters/Peter Cziborra)

However, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said it had seen no evidence that any gaps justified plans to make noise a threshold for imposing restrictions on demonstrations.

The committee said that national police leaders did not routinely collect data on the use of current powers, and there was no indication they were being used to their utmost extent or proving ineffective.

It found that neither the police nor a key HM Inspectorate of Constabulary report on protest powers called for the ability to restrict protests based on noise.

“We also note that the larger and more well-supported a demonstration, the louder it is likely to be,” the report added. “Restrictions on noise could disproportionately impact the demonstrations that have the greatest public backing.”

It warned that the proposed law would require police officers to interpret vague wording such as “intensity” and “serious unease” to trigger noise provisions, which could lead to bias against different groups or cause “arbitrary or discriminatory” enforcement.

The report also rejected arguments over the costs incurred for policing large protests, saying: “The fundamental right to protest should not be restricted simply because its exercise is too expensive.”

In total, the committee called for five clauses to be removed from the bill, five to be significantly changed and the addition of a statutory protection for peaceful protest.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The right to protest is a cornerstone of our democracy and our proposed measures are in line with human rights legislation and in no way impinge on the right to protest.“

Read More

Policing bill: Plan to crack down on protests passes first Commons hurdle despite civil liberties warning

New protest laws ‘go too far’ and are not needed, police commissioners say

Priti Patel fails to explain what is ‘a noisy protest’ to be banned under tough new laws

Priti Patel accused of undermining democracy with planned crackdown on protests

New crackdown on Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter needed due to ‘huge inconvenience’, minister says

Legal experts define a new international crime: 'Ecocide'



Legal experts define a new international crime: 'Ecocide'

Katie Surma, Inside Climate News and Yuliya Talmazan
Tue, June 22, 2021, 

This article was published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is part of "The Fifth Crime," a series on ecocide.

A panel of 12 lawyers from around the world has proposed a legal definition for a new crime that the lawyers want to see outlawed internationally: ecocide, or widespread destruction of the environment.

The definition’s unveiling on Tuesday is the first major step in a global campaign aimed at preventing environmental catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest — and, more broadly, climate change.

The Netherlands-based Stop Ecocide Foundation, along with a coalition of environmentalists, lawyers and human rights advocates, has been pushing since 2017 to make ecocide a crime prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. The court currently prosecutes just four offenses: genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression and war crimes.

If the campaign to criminalize ecocide succeeds, the international court would be able to hold accountable those most responsible for major ecological harms, including business and government leaders.

The definition released on Tuesday, the result of months of work by the team of a dozen lawyers, describes ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

If this definition is adopted as the fifth crime before the international court, it would signal that mass environmental destruction is one of the most morally reprehensible crimes in the world, advocates said.

“None of the existing international criminal laws protect the environment as an end in itself, and that's what the crime of ecocide does,” Philippe Sands, professor of international law at University College London and co-chair of the panel that drafted the definition, said at an online news conference Tuesday.

The International Criminal Court has not commented on the panel’s efforts.

There is still a long road ahead before the ecocide definition could be adopted by the court. One of the court’s 123 member countries would need to submit the definition to the United Nations secretary-general, triggering a formal multistep process that could lead to an amendment of the Rome Statute, which sets the court’s rules.

But legal scholars say the panel’s work could still have effects at the International Criminal Court and beyond, regardless of whether ecocide is officially made an international crime.

“It is an essential exercise because environmental damage is growing phenomenally,” said David J. Scheffer, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues who led the U.S. delegation that negotiated the International Criminal Court’s founding treaty. “Ecocide, by its mere existence, will heighten the issue of the environment.”
The campaign

The International Criminal Court’s four existing crimes focus on harm to humans, not the planet — so the lawyers who began working late last year to craft an ecocide definition had to largely start from scratch.

They wanted it to be strict enough to be meaningful, but they also wanted it to be appealing enough to win support from most of the world’s nations, which are historically reluctant to cede sovereignty to international institutions.

“A perfect definition does you no good if states ignore it or worse, become hostile to the enterprise and set the effort back,” said Nancy Combs, an expert in international criminal law and professor at William and Mary Law School. “If the panel’s calculations are wrong, the whole thing could go bust.”

Related: A growing number of world leaders advocate making ecocide a crime before the International Criminal Court, to serve as a “moral line” for the planet.

The definition aims to be less of a sledgehammer and more of a guardrail for governments and businesses that are most responsible for ecological harm.

“We hope that that approach comes up with something which is potentially effective,” Sands said, but not “so widespread in its effects that states run away and throw their arms up in horror.”

The definition also had to be general enough to address all manner of environmental harms and keep pace with evolving science but specific enough to put would-be wrongdoers on notice of what counts as criminal behavior.

The six-month endeavor required an unprecedented collaborative effort between international criminal lawyers and environmental lawyers, two professions that until now have rarely intersected.
The definition

The 165-word definition resembles the court’s other four crimes in some ways, including by implementing high thresholds, like “widespread” and “severe” damage.

But the new potential crime differs in one major respect: harm to human beings is not a prerequisite for ecocide. That shift would be a major development for international criminal law, which mainly focuses on human injuries, Richard Rogers, a British lawyer and one of the panelists, said.

The definition is also notable for what it doesn’t include. The panel chose not to incorporate a list of examples of ecocide for fear that something would inevitably be left out, possibly signaling that the excluded act may not qualify, lawyers said.

That choice also had a political dimension. The panel did not want countries to feel they were being targeted by examples. “We felt that it was best to keep that door shut,” Sands said.

Sands believes the definition would cover actions that contribute to climate change, though the specifics aren’t yet clear. It may come down to whether the actions are also unlawful, under other national or international laws, he said.
What’s next

Now that the panel has delivered its definition, Stop Ecocide’s diplomatic work will kick into high gear to marshal political backing.

The support, or lack thereof, will act as a bellwether for how serious governments are about combating climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.

Lawmakers from close U.S. allies like France, Belgium, Finland, Spain, Canada, Luxemburg and the European Union have voiced their support for making ecocide a crime. Major greenhouse gas emitters like the United States, China, India and Russia are not members of the court but could weigh in on diplomatic negotiations.

If one of the court’s member countries formally proposes an ecocide crime, triggering the start of the amendment process, then at the court’s next annual meeting in December, the countries would hold a vote on whether to take up the proposal. Then, the countries would debate the crime’s definition, a process that could take years, or even decades.

In the meantime, Jojo Mehta, the co-founder of Stop Ecocide Foundation, expects just the prospect of the crime to shift the behavior of some businesses, governments, insurers and financers.

And lawmakers from around the world have already expressed interest in enacting their own national ecocide laws, using the panel’s definition as a starting point.

“Even if some states only revise their domestic law, that would be a success,” Christina Voigt, a Norway-based international law professor and one of the panelists, said.

Above all, the new definition is stimulating debate about whether mass environmental damage should be illegal.

“We fully expect that attention from around the world will expand significantly as a result of this definition emerging,” Mehta said, “and that public interest and demand for this very concrete legal solution will steadily increase.”

America's gas tax's tortured history shows how hard it is to fund new infrastructure

Theodore J. Kury, Director of Energy Studies, University of Florida
Tue, June 22, 2021

Gas taxes have long been used to pay for roads and bridges. AP Photo/Seth Perlman

As the Biden administration and Republicans negotiate a possible infrastructure spending package, how to pay for it has been a key sticking point.

President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress want to raise taxes on the rich, while some Republicans have been pushing for an increase in the gas tax – which would be the first in 28 years. A bipartisan group of senators recently crafted a compromise bill that would pay for just under US$1 trillion in spending on rail, roads and bridges over five years in part by indexing the gas tax to inflation. Democrats call this regressive because it would raise taxes on working Americans.

As the director of energy studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, I’ve studied both taxes on energy and how the government spends money on infrastructure.

Throughout the gas tax’s controversial history, leaders have frequently called upon this revenue source when serious infrastructure investment is needed.

The first 40 years

This resilient levy is a major source of U.S. funding for roads and transit today. It originated during the Great Depression as a “temporary” penny-per-gallon gasoline tax. At the time, a gallon cost about 18 cents, or about $2.90 in 2021 dollars.

As he signed the Revenue Act of 1932 into law, President Herbert Hoover lauded “the willingness of our people to accept this added burden in these times in order impregnably to establish the credit of the federal government.”

The original gas tax, an emergency measure intended to bolster the budget and fund national defense spending, not to meet transportation needs, was slated to expire in 1933. Instead, persistent budget deficits throughout the New Deal and World War II kept it in force throughout Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration over the objections of the oil, automotive and travel industries. It became a permanent 1.5-cent levy in 1941.

Multiple efforts to do away with the gas tax ever since have failed.

For example, Congress again scheduled the tax’s repeal in 1951 when it increased it to 2 cents as a source of revenue related to the Korean War. Instead, lawmakers agreed to keep the tax on the books to help pay for one of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s top priorities, the national interstate highway system.

In 1956 the levy rose once more, to 3 cents, when Americans were paying about 30 cents for a gallon of gas. At the same time, the government established the Highway Trust Fund to use the gas tax revenue to pay for building and maintaining the new interstates.

The tax rose to 4 cents per gallon in 1959 and froze at that level for more than two decades.

Running on empty

Gas tax revenue stopped keeping up with the expenses it was supposed to cover in the early 1970s following a severe bout of inflation and OPEC’s oil embargo. U.S. gas prices soared from about 36 cents per gallon in 1972 to $1.31 in 1981.

Responding to what members of both major political parties saw as a transportation infrastructure crisis, Congress more than doubled the tax to 9 cents per gallon as part of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982. The same law split the Highway Trust Fund and its revenue stream into two parts: The first 8 cents would finance roadwork while the other penny would finance mass transit projects.

This hike may have struck drivers as a sharp increase, but public spending on transportation infrastructure would continue to fall as a percentage of all outlays.

In 1984, Congress increased spending on highways by funneling proceeds from fines and other penalties that businesses pay for safety violations, such as failing to label hazardous materials or forcing drivers to work too many hours in a row.

Congress boosted the tax twice more in the 1990s but primarily to reduce the then-ballooning federal deficit. Only half of a 5-cent increase in 1990 went to highways and transit, while a 4.3-cent lift three years later went entirely to lowering the deficit.

By 1997, the government had redirected all gas tax revenue reserved for deficit reduction to the Highway Trust Fund, where it still flows today.

Along the way, other federal fuel taxes arose, including a 24.4-cent-per-gallon diesel tax and taxes on methanol and compressed natural gas. And state fuel taxes, which in most cases began before the federal gas tax, range from as low as 8.95 cents per gallon in Alaska to as high as 57.6 cents per gallon in Pennsylvania.

[Understand key political developments, each week. Subscribe to The Conversation’s politics newsletter.]
Making do

Since 1993, when the federal gas tax was first parked at 18.4 cents, inflation and rising construction costs have eroded its effectiveness as a transportation-related revenue source. In addition, U.S. vehicles have grown more fuel-efficient overall – which means Americans use less fuel for every mile they drive.

As a result, highway and transit spending has significantly outpaced the revenue collected from the gas tax and other sources. Since 2008, the government has transferred over $80 billion to the fund that it had to take from other sources.

But it’s still not enough. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which gives U.S. infrastructure a C-minus, is calling on the government and private sector to increase spending on roads and bridges by at least $2.5 trillion within a decade.

While it’s true the gas tax may be regressive because lower-income people pay the same rate as those who earn higher incomes, there are still advantages to this tax.

For one thing, it follows the “user pays” principle of providing government services. Under this principle, the people using the roads are held responsible for paying for their upkeep. As the number of motorists using electric vehicles increases, however, this may become less true over time.

Further, it would also create an incentive to at least marginally decrease the use of fossil fuels, accomplishing another goal of the administration.

Finally, the government could always subsidize the tax for the poor, perhaps through annual lump-sum payments, making it less regressive.

Clearly, U.S. infrastructure is in dire need of upgrading and investment. At the end of the day, Americans will pay for it one way or another – whether in taxes or through costs of unsafe and inadequate infrastructure, including in lost lives. How the government pays for investment may matter less than that it finally does it.

This is an updated version of an article first published on Feb. 27, 2018.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Theodore J. Kury, University of Florida.

Read more:

Want to fix America’s infrastructure? Build in the places that need help the most


Women-dominated child and home care work is critical infrastructure that has long been devalued

Theodore J. Kury is the Director of Energy Studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, which is sponsored in part by the Florida electric and gas utilities and the Florida Public Service Commission, none of which has editorial control of any of the content the Center produces.

Senate Republicans balk at bulking up IRS because they don't want to chase wealthy tax evaders

 Joseph Zeballos-Roig

Tue, June 22, 2021, 

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). Sarah Silbiger-Pool/Getty Images

• Senate Republicans are balking at bulking up IRS enforcement to finance infrastructure.

• "I am very skeptical that there's a lot of easy money to be had from so-called tax enforcement,' one GOP senator said.

• The IRS is already under GOP scrutiny following a leak of wealthy Americans' personal tax records.

• See more stories on Insider's business page.

There's one measure receiving fresh debate in bipartisan negotiations for a $1 trillion infrastructure plan: bulking up the IRS so it collects more money from wealthy tax evaders.

That's been pushed by moderate Democrats this week as a source of extra revenue that could finance infrastructure spending, but the idea looks like to collide into opposition from Republicans, who have long accused the tax agency of overstepping into the personal lives of Americans. The IRS is already under major GOP scrutiny following a recent ProPublica report that featured a leak of wealthy Americans' tax records.

They also don't believe that chasing wealthy tax evaders will actually generate a major amount of money.

"I am very skeptical that there's a lot of easy money to be had from so-called tax enforcement," Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, told Insider. "We could spend a lot more money, we could have a lot of intrusive rules, and find we don't have very much difference in revenue."

IRS chief Charles Rettig told a Congressional panel in May the amount of taxes going uncollected every year could exceed $1 trillion. Several Republicans including Toomey told Insider they're skeptical the number is that high.

The Biden administration put forward $80 billion in extra IRS funding as part of its spending plans, to correct years of GOP-led budget cuts at the agency - and a related decline in the number of audits. The White House forecasts the funds could raise $700 billion in new revenue, though some experts have challenged their estimate.

The bipartisan group is leaning towards putting $40 billion into the IRS. That could generate $103 billion in total tax revenue, or $63 billion for fresh spending towards overhauling infrastructure, the CBO estimates.

"We think we have a nice balance with where we are, and there are colleagues on my side of the aisle who are nervous about the [$63 billion] net figure because they're concerned about intrusion," Sen. Rob Portman, a GOP negotiator, told reporters, per The Wall Street Journal.

Other Republicans suggested that closing the tax gap could be worthwhile, though they were still cautious on how much money it could produce.

"We don't want people to be harassed, but I think everybody should pay their taxes," Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi told Insider. "I don't think there's as much 'there' there as people think."

Other leading Republicans pushed back against the idea. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia disputed the administration's estimate as too rosy and said it could lead to "ramped-up reporting" and yield ineffective results.

"You have to get a better number," said Capito, who had been Republicans' lead negotiator on an infrastructure package before President Joe Biden cut off talks with her weeks ago, citing a failure to agree on how to fund a package.

Moderate Democrats in bipartisan gang

 lean towards IRS enforcement 

as a way to raise revenues for

 infrastructure: 'That's found money'

Joseph Zeballos-Roig

Tue, June 22, 2021, 

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) speaks during a Senate hearing in Washington DC. Graeme Jennings-Pool/Getty Images

• Moderate Democrats are eyeing bulking up the IRS to finance infrastructure as bipartisan talks continue.

• "I think there's lots of documentation on the tax gap issue," Mark Warner said in an interview.

• Another Democratic senator said extra money for the IRS was "a good possibility" in the nascent blueprint.

• See more stories on Insider's business page.

A bipartisan gang of 21 lawmakers is in fluid negotiations over a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, with the crucial difference being how to pay for some of it. Some moderate Democrats in the group are leaning in a certain direction on revenue: strengthening the IRS' ability to pursue tax evaders.

A pair of the group's last financing ideas, indexing the gas tax to inflation and charging drivers of electric vehicles, was thrown out by the White House on Monday. Top officials called them a violation of President Joe Biden's pledge to shield households earning below 400,000 from new taxes.

As the working group scrambled for new sources of revenue to cover its plan, which is focused on core infrastructure like roads and bridges, the idea of beefing up the IRS has gained steam.

"I think there's lots of documentation on the tax gap issue," Warner said in an interview with Insider. "It's not linear, but the more you put into the IRS, the better enforcement - that number could go as high as $700 billion."

He went on: "I do think there's an awful lot of evidence that we've had not the most effective enforcement over the last few years, particularly under the last administration."

Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican negotiator, said last week the deal would include around $40 billion for the IRS, which has undergone a decade of GOP-led funding cuts that have weakened the agency's ability to gather taxes from very wealthy Americans.

Sen. Angus King of Maine, another member of the group, told Insider beefing up the IRS is among "the clearest opportunities" for new infrastructure revenue. He's co-sponsored a bill to reinvigorate the IRS with $80 billion in new funding to pursue wealthy tax evaders - the same level that Biden put forward in May.

"That's found money," he said. "But the trick is what will CBO score. It's not a question of how much money we put in for enforcement, it's what the CBO scores."

Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado told Insider that extra money for the IRS was "a good possibility."

"There are lots of different ideas out there," he said about the negotiations. Other proposed measures for infrastructure financing include repurposed stimulus money, a step the Biden administration has signaled it doesn't support.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in a report last year that $40 billion in IRS funding would collect $103 billion in total tax dollars, or $63 billion in new federal revenue.

Other analysts are skeptical of the administration's projection that their tax proposals directed at wealthy Americans would draw $700 billion over a decade. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated the administration's tax plans would instead generate $480 billion in new revenue over ten years.

Warner told reporters he believed the group was close to unveiling their proposal this week.

"I think it is overall very settled," Warner said. "We want to get the details right."

A British army email mishap publicly mentioned a military intel unit so secretive its members are banned from social media

Stavros Atlamazoglou
Tue, June 22, 2021, 

A British SAS member, right, enters a building in Nairobi during a terrorist attack, January 15, 2019. KABIR DHANJI/AFP via Getty Images

A recent email error publicly revealed the names of British commandos, including members of the SAS's E Squadron.

E Squadron is a secretive unit in the secretive world of British special operations, tasked with high-risk operations overseas.

The British Ministry of Defense had an unusual security breach recently when an email containing the promotions of non-commissioned officers, some of whom serve in special-missions units, was accidentally distributed across the government.

Among the regular promotions of conventional troops were the names of commandos with the Special Air Service (SAS), Special Boat Service (SBS), and Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), as well as the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG).

Some of those named serve in an elite, classified outfit known as Special Air Service, E Squadron, or the "Increment."


A secret unit within a secret world, E Squadron works for the British intelligence services in high-risk operations overseas.

When special-operations meets intelligence

Long Range Desert Group patrols in the desert during the North African campaign, 1940-1943. British Army/Lt. Graham

The British military is a pioneer in modern special-operations forces, creating the first modern units during World War II.

Since then, British special-operations units have led the way, establishing doctrine and tactics, techniques, and procedures that are now in common use across the world, including in the US.

The SAS, SBS, and SRR are the British military's three main Tier 1 units.

The first two focus on direct-action, counterterrorism, and hostage-rescue operations and are the British equivalents of the US's Delta Force and SEAL Team 6, with which the British units work closely and even exchange operators.

The SRR specializes in gathering human intelligence and signals intelligence and in the operational preparation of the battlefield.

The British Ministry of Defense is currently working on modernizing the country's special-operations units to reflect lessons learned from the past two decades of combat experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Africa.

SAS troops during a weapons test a secret location, August 1981. PA Images/Getty Images

Interestingly, the British are basing their modernization process on US special-operations forces and their evolution over the past 40 years. The teacher has slowly become the pupil.

But in some instances, intelligence services need the specialized skills and training of commandos. That is where E Squadron comes in.

The British intelligence apparatus is composed of three agencies.

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), known as "MI6," is the British equivalent of the CIA and specializes in foreign intelligence gathering and covert action.

The British also have the Security Service, better known as "MI5," that conducts domestic counterintelligence and is the equivalent of the FBI.

Finally, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), specializing in signals intelligence, is the equivalent of the NSA.
The Increment

MI6 headquarters in London, November 9, 2006. Reuters/Kieran Doherty

Although E Squadron's mission sets are classified, open-source information suggests that the unit provides manpower to MI6 operations abroad.

Their missions can include close-protection details, in which they act essentially as bodyguards, as well as exfiltrating assets from, conducting special reconnaissance of, and supporting covert action in denied environments, such as Russia, Iran, China, or North Korea.

E Squadron operators work undercover, using aliases and backstories.

The British government played a big part in the campaign to overthrow Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Not only was MI6 deeply involved, British special-operations units, including E Squadron operators, saw limited action in the country while conducting special reconnaissance and close protection.

However, an E Squadron mission was compromised during the insertion, resulting in the capture of several operators, who were later released, and the embarrassment of the British government.

Although E Squadron recruited mainly from the SAS in the past, it targets candidates from across the British Tier 1 community, with SBS and SRR operators also joining the shadowy outfit.

Besides a special-missions unit background, E Squadron recruits candidates based on their ethnic background, a reflection of the UK's colonial past and the fact that people from many foreign countries, such as Fiji, Malta, or Jamaica, can join the British armed forces.

Troops on the Fan Dance, a 24 km march in the Brecon Beacons mountains of South Wales, as part of SAS Selection, January 6, 2018. Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images

The British military wields that openness as a strategic advantage. British citizens of Pakistani, Indian, Yemeni, Syrian, or Nigerian background can join and slowly work their way up to the SAS, SBS, or SRR.

If they perform well in a demanding environment, completing several overseas deployments, and shine beyond the direct-action and counterterrorism aspects of the job - such as reliably working on their own to conduct the low-visibility work that prepares the operational environment - they would be assessed for service in E Squadron.

They would have to pass an additional selection and a demanding training course that would emphasize intelligence tradecraft more than additional special-operations skills.

"You don't know a lot about them. There's a veil of secrecy and guys who end up there just disappear," a former SBS commando told Insider of E Squadron members.

"But honestly that also happens in the Regiment [SAS] and in my own old unit and also at the SRR," the former commando added. "Guys who you might be close mates with will go on an assignment, and you won't know where they're or what they're doing. It's standard and part of the job. But it's on a completely different level" with E Squadron.

Maintaining the covert nature of the Increment's missions demands absolute secrecy, meaning an email flap could be a potential disaster for operational security, burning commandos and sidelining them from future operations abroad.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Exclusive: Biden's top intelligence official says COVID origins may never be known

Daniel Klaidman

·Editor in Chief, Yahoo News

Tue, June 22, 2021

 

The top U.S. intelligence official said in an interview with Yahoo News on Monday that the true origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed 600,000 Americans and almost 4 million people worldwide, may never be known.

Last month, President Biden directed the intelligence community to conduct a 90-day review of what he described as the two plausible theories for how the pandemic originated. In one scenario, the virus emerged from human contact with an animal. In the other, it leaked out of a lab in Wuhan, China.

But Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, expressed considerable caution about the likelihood of the U.S. government solving this vexing mystery.

Asked if it’s possible the intelligence community will never have “high confidence” or a smoking gun on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, Haines responded, “Yes, absolutely.” Haines, who studied physics at the University of Chicago, held out the possibility of a eureka moment but refused to predict a breakthrough. “We’re hoping to find a smoking gun,” she said, but “it’s challenging to do that,” adding that “it might happen, but it might not.”

Haines said she has been closely overseeing the review, which involves dozens of analysts and intelligence officials, and has immersed herself in the details. She is regularly briefed by analysts who represent the rival theories, which may explain her caution about predicting a breakthrough. “I don’t know between these two plausible theories which one is the right answer,” she said in the interview. “But I’ve listened to the analysts, and I really see why it is that they perceive these two theories as being in contest with each other and why it’s very challenging for them to assess one over the other.”

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where authorities said a man who died from a respiratory illness in January 2020 had purchased goods. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevailing theory among scientists and public health experts is that the virus had a natural origin — that it likely jumped from bats to another species before transferring to humans at a wet market in Wuhan. The theory that it may have leaked from a Chinese lab also emerged in the earliest days of the pandemic, but the consensus among scientists was that a natural occurrence was the far more likely explanation.

Earlier this year, the World Health Organization sent a team of scientists to Wuhan to investigate the source of the pandemic and concluded that a lab accident was “extremely unlikely.” Over time, the lab accident theory was increasingly marginalized in the public sphere and even derided by many as a conspiracy theory propagated by the Trump administration to deflect from criticism that it had botched its response to the pandemic.

The American news media, with notable exceptions, was criticized for engaging in groupthink for its collective failure to take the lab leak theory seriously. And yet from the earliest days of the pandemic, the U.S. intelligence community has been steadfastly pursuing the lab accident hypothesis, with some officials even arguing that a leak from a research lab was the most likely scenario. Last month, the theory started to gain more traction publicly after Bloomberg News revealed a classified U.S. intelligence report indicating that three researchers at the Wuhan laboratory fell ill and sought hospital treatment in November 2019, right around the time the virus began infecting people in the Chinese city. Soon thereafter, Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to discover the origins of the coronavirus, an implicit but clear indication that the new administration was taking seriously the possibility that the virus had accidentally leaked from a lab.

Security personnel outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the World Health Organization’s visit in February. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Responsibility for getting to the bottom of this mystery now lay in the hands of Haines, a former deputy CIA director and national security adviser in the Obama administration. She had 90 days to report back to Biden while presiding over an intelligence community that has been deeply divided over the question. There have been other major obstacles as well, including China’s unwillingness to cooperate, notably refusing to turn over lab records that would help in the investigation.

In her only public comments since the start of the review, Haines told Yahoo News that her teams were seeking to collect new intelligence that might shed light on the pandemic’s source, while also applying fresh analysis to the intelligence that has already been gathered. Her agencies, she said, “are trying to get as much information as possible, new information that could be applied against the challenge,” but also “just brainstorming about different ways to approach the problem that might reveal how information that you hadn’t thought could be relevant might be useful.”

To that end, Haines has deployed “red cells,” or groups of contrarian thinkers to challenge the assumptions of analysts and ensure that the intelligence is being examined from every relevant angle. “There’s an effort to do exercises,” she said. “Do one exercise, look at one hypothesis, do another exercise looking at the other hypothesis.”

The effort has been coordinated by the National Counterproliferation Center, which has been tapping resources across the intelligence community, making sure that all collection avenues are being pursued and that foreign intelligence liaisons and other overseas partners are tapped “to ensure we have as much information and any information that they might have on the table,” Haines said.

But nearly a month into the review, it appears that the intelligence community is no closer to settling on one explanation of how the deadly virus originated. Haines pointed out the difficulties of “proving a negative.”

National Intelligence Director Avril Haines. (Graeme Jennings/Pool via Reuters)

From listening intently to both sides of the debate, Haines does understand why both arguments seem so plausible. “It’s true that the vast majority of pandemics and novel diseases have originated through human contact with animals, but you also look at the fact that it appears to have come from the area in which this lab was doing work on coronaviruses and you have to look at that option as well. You can make an argument in either direction.”

Haines even posited a third, hybrid theory for the virus’s origin. “It could be, for example, a scenario in which a scientist comes into contact with an animal that they’re sampling from” and contracts the virus in that way.

Should the review end with no definitive resolution on the origins of the virus, Haines will have no choice but to give Biden and other senior policymakers that unsatisfying answer.

Insight into how COVID-19 spread could provide crucial information to public health officials looking for strategies to prevent the next outbreak. And if it turned out it leaked from a Chinese lab, that would be important information guiding Washington’s tense competition with Beijing, not to mention leverage to push for stricter safety regimes of international research labs.

But Haines said that as much as she’d like to solve this scientific and national security conundrum, the intelligence community has to stick to its core mission of calling it as they see it. “The best thing I can do is to present the facts as we know them and to present the analysis that we’ve done in as unbiased a way possible,” she said.

Added Haines, “We’re going to do our damnedest to try to get an answer. But what policymakers hope and expect from me, I think, is that I present to them what we do and what we don’t know, and I don’t try to make something up or give them an answer that I think they might like to have.”