Why Has the Spycops Inquiry Banned Livestreams?

Why are the hearings not being livestreamed any more?

Some of them might be, but the Inquiry announced last week that they were no longer committed to doing so:

‘the Inquiry is unlikely to be able to live-stream evidence, subject to a 10-minute delay, for witnesses appearing in the weeks commencing 4, 11, 25 November and 2 December.’

This came as a huge shock to the Non State Core Participants (NSCPs – essentially those who were spied on) and their legal representatives. The coordinator of the NSCP lawyers’ group was only informed in the afternoon of 31st October.

Why did they wait till then to tell anyone?

They claim this decision was due to a ‘late application’ for a Reporting Restriction Order. However it turns out it was actually an application that had been made much earlier, and denied by the Inquiry’s Chair Sir John Mtting, and was then resubmitted.

What is a Reporting Restriction Order (RRO)?

This is an order made to prevent particular parts of the evidence from being broadcast more widely, outside of the hearing room, either in the mainstream media or on social media.

Who’s applied for these RROs?

These applications have been made by Non State Core Participants (NSCPs).

They have been horrified to learn that rather than answering the Inquiry’s questions honestly, some of the former undercovers have chosen instead to make malicious comments and false allegations about individual activists, in an attempt to smear their names.

Although these NSCPs are keen for the Inquiry to be as open and public as possible, they do not want these trained liars to be given an opportunity to add a new layer of damage to the trauma they have already caused so many of us.

This is an issue that has been raised by NSCPs and their lawyers ever since the Inquiry began, back in 2015.

Why has it become a problem now?

Inquiry watchers suspect that the Inquiry has only realised recently how complicated all of this stuff is – especially when lots of different NSCPs have applied for different RROs covering overlapping evidence and witnesses – and rather than work out a good solution that works well for everyone, made this blanket announcement instead.

The Inquiry say that they have to safeguard the privacy of the spycops’ victims (who have ‘Article 8 rights’: ‘Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence’) and ensure that none of the RROs are breached.

According to them, they must strike a balance between this and their duty to examine the justification for these intrusive undercover operations. This will entail looking into matters such as criminality, and so they must investigate these unfounded allegations.

What did they do before?

Up till now, the Inquiry has used a range of measures to ensure that details which they think should be kept confidential don’t leak out into the public domain.
These have included:

• giving ‘ciphers’ (numbers) to officers whose names are being kept secret, providing witnesses with a list, and reminding them to use those, rather than the names.
• ensuring the live-streaming is done with a ten-minute delay, and anyone tweeting from the hearing room also delays their reporting by 10 minutes – this means that if a witness accidentally ‘blurts’ something they’re not supposed to, the Inquiry can stop that bit from going out.
• holding entire hearings ‘in closed’ with just the Chair present – no public, no media – for particularly confidential matters.
• showing and publishing ‘redacted’ copies of documents (with sections blacked out, or ‘gisted’: a description is given to explain the nature of the confidential details that have been covered up).

There are other tools that are being used to uphold witnesses’ anonymity, for example providing screens; audio-only streaming; voice modulation.

What would be a better solution now?

There have been a few suggestions made by NSCPs already.

One example is the possibility of holding a short segment of the day’s hearing ‘in closed’ and using that time to explore any controversial topics likely to be related to RROs. This could be done at the end of the day, or immediately before or after lunch, without causing too much disruption. This would allow the rest of the day’s hearing to be streamed as usual, without extra special measures.

What’s happened since last week’s shock announcement?

The NSCPs’ lawyers’ group wrote to the Inquiry about this issue on Friday. Their response was that it should have been obvious back in April that these RROs were going to be an issue.

So why didn’t the Inquiry start planning how they were going to deal with this in April themselves?

We don’t know the answer to this. Maybe they weren’t too concerned about the privacy of Non State Core Participants – in stark contrast to the way they’ve sought to protect the confidentiality of those who spied on us in our most private moments (both the real and ‘cover’ names of many officers, even those who are now deceased, are being kept confidential in this process).

Were any of the people who sought RROs consulted about how this would be implemented?

No, don’t be silly, of course not.

Neither were the media, some of whom are keen to follow the Inquiry and report its progress to the public. The Inquiry held a meeting with some members of the media on Monday 4th November, to discuss this with them.

The Inquiry also announced, at very short notice (over the weekend) that there will be a special hearing at 10am on Tuesday 5 November, to ‘assist’ our understanding of the decisions the Chair’s already made about Reporting Restriction Orders.

So if somebody who’s involved, and has been granted Core Participant status, can’t be there in person, how are they supposed to follow what’s going on?

It seems that they’re supposed to either (a) rely on the tweets of people sitting in the public gallery or (b) wait until the Inquiry gets round to publishing the transcript and other evidence, and uploading edited video footage of the hearings.

They can’t even rely on their lawyers to keep them updated, as the Inquiry has said they won’t even provide a livestream link for them.

Not even the lawyers?

Not even the lawyers, many of whom have been trying to follow proceedings remotely, and fitting this in around their other work. The Inquiry has refused to pay the majority of the Non-State Core Participants’ lawyers for attending hearings in person.

It is hard to see how they can be expected to adequately represent the interests of their clients whilst being excluded in this way.

But aren’t lawyers normally trusted not to divulge confidential information?

Normally yes. This is the case for most legal proceedings, including trials into serious criminality, matters of national security, vulnerable young people and much more. Both barristers and solicitors are expected to abide by professional ethics and standards of conduct, and usually do so.

It is bizarre that Mitting (an experienced judge) feels it appropriate to display so little respect for the legal profession.

So how will anyone know what they can and can’t talk about after attending the hearing in person?

The Inquiry’s approach to this so far has prompted a great deal of criticism. Some bright spark in the Inquiry team decided that the best way to prevent spurious allegations from being broadcast more widely was to compile a full list of all of these allegations, with the names of the NSCPs concerned, and display it on the door of the hearing room for everyone who came to see.

And not just on the day when there was a chance that those allegations might come out, but on all the other days too. Realising that this was problematic, they have now agreed to produce a ‘bespoke’ list for each day, but admitted that on some days the list will not be any shorter.

How long does it take to provide an edited transcript?

The Inquiry employs court reporters with good shorthand skills. All proceedings are video-recorded, providing a back-up source of exactly what each witness says. It is usually possible to produce a draft transcript of the day’s hearing at the end of the day. It shouldn’t take very long to remove any references to information covered by a RRO, yet the Inquiry say this will take them until lunchtime the following day.

We note that ‘ZWB’ appeared on Day 1, over two weeks ago. The Inquiry decided not to live-stream that day, and promised to supply a ‘gisted’ version of the transcript afterwards. However there is still no sign of it.

How long will it take them to produce an edited video?

They have suggested that it may take them ‘3-5 working days’ to do this. We’re left wondering why they couldn’t hire somebody with the skills to do this faster. They’ve promised to try to do this as quickly as possible, and claim they may be able to speed the process up once they’ve got some experience. We’ll wait and see.

Is this a case of incompetence or something else?

Some people have asked if this is the result of Mitting and his team getting annoyed by the NSCPs’ pesky habit of putting their hands up (literally) and asking pointed questions about why some witnesses (‘ZWB’ and various former officers) have their privacy protected more than others (whose privacy has already been trashed by the spycops).

Mitting does not like to be questioned or criticised. He’s very mindful that the Home Office want this Inquiry finished, on budget and on time, and having wasted so much time dealing with delays caused by the police, is now under pressure to deliver.

How much are these people being paid?

The Inquiry is staffed by civil servants who have all been through security vetting, and are presumably thought to be experienced and competent.

We don’t know exactly how much each member of the team is paid, but the entire Inquiry, to date, has cost over £100milllion (the figure passed £90m at the beginning of July) and the cost of staffing, including the Inquiry’s legal team, accounts for two thirds of this.

Non State Core Participants have been saying, right from the start, that they could do a better job, more quickly, and a lot more cheaply, if they’d just been given their files.

Is this what is called a ‘trauma-informed’ approach?

Allegedly so.