Undercover Police Use Dead Children's Identities

[Zabo]

"Britain's largest police force stole the identities of an estimated 80 dead children and issued fake passports in their names for use by undercover police officers.

The Metropolitan police secretly authorised the practice for covert officers infiltrating protest groups without consulting or informing the children's parents.

The details are revealed in an investigation by the Guardian, which has established how over three decades generations of police officers trawled through national birth and death records in search of suitable matches.

Undercover officers created aliases based on the details of the dead children and were issued with accompanying identity records such as driving licences and national insurance numbers. Some of the police officers spent up to 10 years pretending to be people who had died."

Full story

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/03/police-spies-identities-dead-children

 

[Greebo]

How very Day of the Jackal.

 

[tufty79]

How very Day of the Jackal.

The technique of using dead children as aliases has remained classified intelligence for several decades, although it was fictionalised in Frederick Forsyth's novel The Day of the Jackal. As a result, police have internally nicknamed the process of searching for suitable identities as the "jackal run".

ugh. (@them, not you, greebo)

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

isn't that infeasible these days if you're not "in" the system?

 

[Belushi]

It's truly fucking vile.

 

[frogwoman]

wtf ??

 

[Belushi]

Losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to anyone, for the Police to then steal that identity is truly despicable.

 

[tufty79]

isn't that infeasible these days if you're not "in" the system?

'not currently authorised' (last known use 2003, according to the article), but goes back decades.

 

[Greebo]

It's truly fucking vile.

Unpleasant it may be, but it's something which was also when making ID to help people either escape or evade unwanted attention of the authorities. There's a reason to use the personal details of dead children, you're less at risk of bumping into the person whose name you've stolen or blowing your cover.

 

[19sixtysix]

So was Mark Kennedy using a stolen alias when he was spying as Mark Stone?

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Seems a bit petty to mention it, but this was also a strategy recommended by primtivist wankers Green Anarchist in the 1990s.

 

[cantsin]

It's truly fucking vile.

it's long reputed to have been used by anyone needing a false identity,poilitical /crims etc so not sure why the o.b. etc would be any different

Seems a bit petty to mention it, but this was also a strategy recommended by primtivist wankers Green Anarchist in the 1990s.

huh ? they may/may not have been " primtivist wankers", but this is fairly standard m.o. for anyone needing a false ID from what i gather,, so not sure what the moral tone of this thread is all about tbh .

 

[ExtraRefined]

Dead baby cover is apparently too dodgy for MI6, so it's surprising the police thought it was a good idea. From the Big Breach;

The FSB relied heavily on visa applications to screen visitors to their country, examining every detail against their records for discrepancies. The easiest to check was the birthdate because in the UK every birth is registered in a legend at St Katherine's House, which is open to public inspection. Each birth is entered consecutively when the child is born, so it is impossible to enter back-dated births and MI6 do not use `dead baby' aliases, as described in Frederick Forsyth's book The Day of the Jackal, for fear of legal action by angry relatives if the operation should go wrong and be publicly exposed. For most operations, this lack of birth registration is not a problem because the resources of the opposing counter-intelligence service were not that inquisitive, but to fool the enquiries of the FSB visa inspections a workaround was required.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

It's that whole dead children thing. People get all weird about it for some reason. Not iron-hearted revolutionaries, obviously.

Just norms who probably only have one identity anyway.

EDIT: cantsin

 

[cantsin]

It's that whole dead children thing. People get all weird about it for some reason. Not iron-hearted revolutionaries, obviously.

Just norms who probably only have one identity anyway.

EDIT: cantsin

purlease, you dont have to be some iron-hearted revolutionary wannabee to suspect that if you'd lost a child, the OB nickng his/her name would be the least of your problems, it's an abstract nothingness compared to the horrors of the objective reality.

of course, for the online offerenderati this may be a tough concept to grasp.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

purlease, you dont have to be some iron-hearted revolutionary wannabee to suspect that if you'd lost a child, the OB nickng his/her name would be the least of your problems, it's an abstract nothingness compared to the horrors of the objective reality.

I suspect it wouldn't help.

 

[cantsin]

It's that whole dead children thing. People get all weird about it for some reason. Not iron-hearted revolutionaries, obviously.

Just norms who probably only have one identity anyway.

EDIT: cantsin

even fully paid up members of the online offenderati must recognise that someone nicking a dead childs name,horrible though it sounds, is a nasty abstraction, 1000 light years away from the real horrors of losing that child ? your glib attempt to conflate the two is plain silly.

 

[cantsin]

(um, plse choose from response #1 or 2# , on train, thought i hadnt posted 1# . and now cant seem to edit )

 

[ViolentPanda]

"Britain's largest police force stole the identities of an estimated 80 dead children and issued fake passports in their names for use by undercover police officers.

The Metropolitan police secretly authorised the practice for covert officers infiltrating protest groups without consulting or informing the children's parents.

The details are revealed in an investigation by the Guardian, which has established how over three decades generations of police officers trawled through national birth and death records in search of suitable matches.

Undercover officers created aliases based on the details of the dead children and were issued with accompanying identity records such as driving licences and national insurance numbers. Some of the police officers spent up to 10 years pretending to be people who had died."

Full story

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/03/police-spies-identities-dead-children

Standard intelligence service procedure for establishing a legend, unfortunately. It makes assembling the chain of identity easier if the big lie is based on the fact of an actual birth that can be checked in official documents.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

even fully paid up members of the online offenderati must recognise that someone nicking a dead childs name,horrible though it sounds, is a nasty abstraction, 1000 light years away from the real horrors of losing that child ? your glib attempt to conflate the two is plain silly.

I think there are some degrees of difference between murdering a child and stealing their name, yes.

 

[ViolentPanda]

isn't that infeasible these days if you're not "in" the system?

Not if you're part of the apparatus that administers the system.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

wtf?

surely this means there's an (admittedly slight) risk that someone they encounter might just be related to the family whose child died.

wouldn't it be far safer to manufacture a complete new identity - i'm sure the powers of the state could manage to forge a few birth certificates...

 

[ViolentPanda]

Seems a bit petty to mention it, but this was also a strategy recommended by primtivist wankers Green Anarchist in the 1990s.

I have to confess that when someone says "primitivist", I usually add "wanker" as a suffix myself.
This isn't a character judgement, so much as a belief that if you're an unwashed Primmie, you're unlikely to find a sexual partner undiscerning enough to fuck you, hence "wanker".

 

[ViolentPanda]

wtf?

surely this means there's an (admittedly slight) risk that someone they encounter might just be related to the family whose child died.

wouldn't it be far safer to manufacture a complete new identity - i'm sure the powers of the state could manage to forge a few birth certificates...

Nope. You choose a deader from around the same birthdate as your operative, usually from a different part of the country.
It's not forgery of birth certs that's important here, either, it's the fact that anyone who thinks you're a bit dodge, who decides to check the BMD records where you were supposedly born or at the Central Office in Camden will find that entry in the register, and unless they wish to trawl every single death record between then and now, they're not going to find you out.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Dead baby cover is apparently too dodgy for MI6, so it's surprising the police thought it was a good idea. From the Big Breach;

Not the most credible source of info on MI6, given the "mixed" quality of what Tomlinson has had to say about their policies and practices.
Don't get me wrong - I personally think Tomlinson is more sinned against than sinning.
There's also the issue that Six are external - they supposedly operate to secure our interests abroad - while the police are internal. I'm not convinced there's an internal threat with the networks and resources available to the KGB/FSB.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Nope. You choose a deader from around the same birthdate as your operative, usually from a different part of the country.

It's not forgery of birth certs that's important here, either, it's the fact that anyone who thinks you're a bit dodge, who decides to check the BMD records where you were supposedly born or at the Central Office in Camden will find that entry in the register, and unless they wish to trawl every single death record between then and now, they're not going to find you out.

oh

fair enough

I didn't know there was a central register that you could go and check on

 

[Das Uberdog]

i think i agree with Cantsin here, the bigger issue should surely be that they're infiltrating legal organisations surely? not that i expect anything less of them

 

[dylanredefined]

i think i agree with Cantsin here, the bigger issue should surely be that they're infiltrating legal organisations surely? not that i expect anything less of them

So much this. If they were doing it for a training exercise so PC plod could then go off and infiltrate a dangerous group it would still be wankish ,but,understandable kind of. As it is pc plod seems to have been paid a lot of money to infiltrate a group who posed no danger to anyone. Why they did this for years I don't know did they suddenly think if he hung around long enough he would be invited into the inner circle who were planning to assassinate the queen or did someone see it as a cushy number instead of doing some real work?

 

[Pickman's model]

Nope. You choose a deader from around the same birthdate as your operative, usually from a different part of the country.
It's not forgery of birth certs that's important here, either, it's the fact that anyone who thinks you're a bit dodge, who decides to check the BMD records where you were supposedly born or at the Central Office in Camden will find that entry in the register, and unless they wish to trawl every single death record between then and now, they're not going to find you out.

I think you mean the family records centre at kew

 

[likesfish]

You could if you were exceptionaly stupid belive anarchists the morning star etc were planning armed revoultion etc.
But to run an Op for 6 fucking years !!!!!!!
Didnt somebody twig after a year it was a complete waste of cash*.


* obviously morally they'd completely lost the plot but even Tebbit would ask questions what the fuck they were playing at