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