Proud to have a paper on my work published in (Vol 13, No 3/4, 2015) – in fact a write-up of my presentation at the Surveillance Studies Network / Surveillance & Society Biennial Conference in Barcelona 2014.

Full paper in .pdf at the Surveillance & Society website.

Undercover Research: Corporate and police spying on activists.
An introduction to activist intelligence as a new field of study.
Eveline Lubbers

Abstract

Building on previous research published in Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark, corporate and police spying on activists (2012), the author proposes a new field of research called Activist intelligence and covert strategy.

Using exclusive access to previously confidential sources, Secret Manoeuvres showed how companies such as Nestlé, Shell and McDonald’s use covert methods to evade accountability. The author concluded that corporate intelligence gathering has shifted from being reactive to proactive, and identified a seriously under-researched area: the state’s concern with corporate interests, their close cooperation in collecting intelligence on campaigners, and a shared agenda in dealing with dissent.

This paper encompasses an introduction to the published case studies, a definition of the proposed research field, and an exploration of its positioning in a multidisciplinary area as well as its theoretical embedding. The discussion under Methods: Hybrid Projects makes a case for the fusion of journalistic and social scientific approaches to the subject matter.

Keywords Surveillance; political policing; infiltration; undercover policing; covert operations; transparency; accountability; secrecy.

Full paper in Surveillance & Society.

Going to Berlin at long last, we thought we’d make the best of it and set up some more talks. All about Undercover Research Group project, and the work before that. Here they are.

Saturday, 26 September 2015, 14.00 Uhr.
KonzernProtest

Honoured to be invited to the KonzernProtest conference, which focusses on issues discussed in my first book (co-authored/edited) Battling Big Business, published in 2002 but still very timely:

Battling Big Business

Countering greenwash, front groups and other forms of corporate deception

Sunday, 27 September 2015, 19.30 Uhr
CILIP/Bürgerrechte & Polizei

Galerie Zeitzone, Waldemarstraße/ Ecke Adalbertstraße, Berlin-Kreuzberg

Monday, 28 September 2015, 20.00 Uhr
CCC C-base.org

From Secret Manoeuvres to Undercover Research

Eveline Lubbers the author of Battling Big Business and Secret Manoeuvres in the dark, on corporate and police spying on activists, talks about the importance of research in exposing political policing and the underminding of dissent.

Since Secret Manoeuvres with its detailed case studies of corporate spying and networks with of former police, Eveline has set up the Undercover Research Group. A project of people who were instrumental in exposing Mark Kennedy and other undercover officers, the group publishes profiles of officers and units involved and the networks of careers
since.
How does this support the activist groups?
And how can you help the Undercover Research group?

C-base, Rungestrasse 20, 10179 Berlin

Dazu auf Deutch. 2010 enttarnten britische Aktivist_innen einen verdeckten Ermittler, der als Aktivist seit sieben Jahren unter ihnen lebte. Die Enttarnung von Mark Kennedy war der Anfang, danach gab es eine ganze Reihe weiterer Fälle. Wir wissen, dass geheime Polizei-Einheiten seit mehr als 40 Jahren politische Gruppen und soziale Bewegungen infiltrieren – seit den Demonstrationen in den 60ern gegen den Vietnamkrieg der USA.
Wie arbeiten die verdeckten Ermittler_innen und was sind die Auswirkungen?

Auch in Deutschland wurden in den letzten Jahren Spitzel enttarnt, in Hamburg und in Heidelberg. Im Vergleich zu Großbritannien sind es wenige Fälle. Muss das Thema stärker erforscht werden? Wie findet man sie und wo fängt man an?

Eveline Lubbers berichtet, wie sie anfing, sich mit dem Thema zu beschäftigen; erst in den Niederlanden und jetzt in Großbritannien. Wie sie festgestellt hat, dass nicht nur Polizei und Geheimdienste Aktivist_innen ausspionieren, sondern auch Unternehmen. Einige ehemalige Polizeibeamt_innen haben Beraterfirmen gegründet, oder arbeiten in den Sicherheitsabteilungen großer Unternehmen, etwa für Stromkonzerne oder Flughäfen. Als Ziele von Klimaschutz-Kampagnen arbeiten solche Unternehmen eng mit der Polizei zusammen, um auf mögliche Kampagnen vorbereitet zu sein.

Es wird auch darum gehen, wie Aktivist_innen mit Verdächtigungen umgehen und wie Eveline sie dabei in der Vergangenheit unterstützt hat. Was können Hacker tun? Und was hat Online-Überwachung mit Infiltration und Spitzelei zu tun?

More in English. Eveline Lubbers will talk about what is now the undercover police scandal in the UK, wondering how the situation is in Germany, whether this does happen at the same scale here.

In 2010 activists exposed an undercover officer who had lived amongst them as an activist for seven years. The exposure of Mark Kennedy was the start of many more stories coming out. As we know now, secret police units infiltrated political and activist groups for more than 40 years, since 1968 demonstrations against the American war in Vietnam? What does the spying involve, what is the impact?
In Germany over the past year, several spies have been exposed as well, in Hamburg and Heidelberg. Only a few stories compared to the UK. Is more research needed? How to find out, and where to start?

Eveline will explain how she got into exposing spies, first in the Netherlands, and now in the UK. How she found out it’s not just police and intelligence services spying on activist, but also corporate spies. Former police officers move on to start their own consultancy, or to work at the security department of large corporations, such as energy companies or airports. Being at the receiving end of climate campaigns, such companies work closely with the police to be prepared to what is coming.

Detailing her work supporting activists in dealing with suspicions, we can discuss how hackers could be of help. Which leads to the question of how online surveillance relates to infiltration and spying…

Repost from the new project I’m involved in: UndercoverResearch.net

The book Blacklisted, the secret war between big business and union activists finally hit the shelves this week. Authored by Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain, Blacklisted tells the controversial story of the illegal strategies that transnational construction companies used to keep union activists away from work. We have the honour to publish an extract, and we selected something from chapter 9, Under constant watch. Dealing with spying on activists it ties in with the work of the Undercover Research Group.

This particular piece shows how the authors found out that information gathered by undercover officers ended up in the files of the Consultancy Association, the secret blacklisting service set up by the large building companies. It was a matter of meticulously going through files, after campaigning to get access to the material seized by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), who in turn had acted upon an article in the Guardian written by Phil Chamberlain. Interviews with those blacklisted, with whistle blowers and people professionally involved in blacklisting added a further layer of understanding.

The story published here adds some interesting detail to our profile of Mark Jenner spying on the Colin Roach Centre in Stoke Newington, London, in the mid 1990s, the same time as his former colleague and now whistleblower Peter Francis was also infiltrating left wing and anti-racism groups in London.

Continue reading “Blacklisted the book is out.” →

Update: Interviews

rabble.ca
Dragging secrets into daylight: An interview with Eveline Lubbers
Aaron Leonard
11 April 2013

I see my role as an active one, chasing evidence where most of it is secret, bringing together the work of investigative reporters, whistle blowers, and people spied upon. Why? To empower activists, to engage in the debate, to help prepare the right questions in official investigations — to stand up for a vibrant democracy, or what’s left of it, that’s what scholars should do.

ParaPolitical
5 Questions for Eveline Lubbers – the Business of Intelligence
10 April 2013

The exposure, in 2010, of British NPIOU officer Mark Kennedy as an undercover agent in the environmental activist movement offered insight into how governments monitor political activism. But is intelligence gathering targeting activist groups limited to the state?

Reviews

London Review of Books
I want you to know I know who you are
Katrina Forrester
3 January 2013

In Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark: Corporate and Police Spying on Activists, Eveline Lubbers, an academic, activist journalist and researcher with the organisations SpinWatch and Buro Jansen & Janssen, focuses on what she calls ‘grey intelligence’, the informal networks of co-operation between corporate interests and state agencies that are now central to the surveillance of dissent in Western European democracies.

A World to Win
Corporate spooks and their dirty tricks
by Peter Arkell
16 January 2013

Spying on activists and disrupting their campaigns against the corporations has become a sinister growth industry. What they get up to is brilliantly exposed in a new book by Eveline Lubbers.

Counterpunch
Everything They Don’t Want You to Know
by Adam Federman
February 2013
p.21-23

McDonald’s and Shell are two of the mega corporations featured in Eveline Lubbers’s book, Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark: Corporate and Police Spying on Activists. Their efforts to undermine activist campaigns, from anti-apartheid groups to animal right’s advocates, reveal just how seriously these corporations take the threat of any opposition no matter how weak or loosely organized it may be.

Marxist Review
The State, Espionage and Counter-revolution
by Chris Anglin
Jan/Feb 2013 issue