Britain may need anti-subversion laws to counter threats from states determined to undermine democracy, a government watchdog has said.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threat legislation, is due to report this week on using counter-terrorism laws against state interference.
Mr Hall was asked by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to review whether there were elements of counter-terrorism legislation which could be emulated to address state-based security threats last December.
In particular, he was asked to look at what legal measures would be useful against “highly aggressive state bodies” such as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank on Monday, Mr Hall will say the internet offers intelligence officers a “perfect way of directly recruiting tasking and paying individuals”.
“Young people who might once have been attracted to a terrorist cause are now willing to carry out sabotage for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s Russia,” he will add in the John Creaney Memorial Lecture.
“They are recruited in exactly the same way, by groups operating on Telegram”, an encrypted messaging app, the reviewer says.
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“I am thinking about the measures that may one day be needed to save democracy from itself. What do I mean? I am referring to counter-subversion,” he is set to add.
Counter-subversion was part of MI5’s role in the 1950s and 1970s but fell out of favour, associated with McCarthyism and infiltrations of domestic protest groups by undercover police, Mr Hall says.
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New laws may now be needed but they would need to come with legal safeguards.
“If I was a foreign intelligence officer, of course I would ensure that the UK hated itself and its history,” he says in the speech.
“That the very definition of woman should be put into question, and that masculinity would be presented as toxic.
“That white people should be ashamed and non-white people aggrieved. I would promote antisemitism within politics.
“My intention would be to cause both immediate and long-term damage to the national security of the UK by exploiting the freedom and openness of the UK by providing funds, exploiting social media, and entryism.”
Pro-Russia groups find ideological affinity with “lone actors” by posing as “protectors of Christian civilisation” and position Russia as a “true defender of crumbling Western civilisation,” he says.
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Foreign intelligence agents could already be using social media as a “delightful playground for wedge issues”.
They could seek to use online “sextortion” tactics to obtain kompromat and force individuals to carry out tasking, while they may also be seeking to meddle in Brexit, Scottish independence or the independence of overseas territories.
They could also sponsor contentious foreign policy issues such as Gaza, or amplify the lie that the Southport killer was a Muslim who arrived on a small boat, Mr Hall says.
They might encourage extreme forms of environmentalism, or policies that would damage adversaries’ economy “or at least sow discord or hopelessness”, the reviewer adds.
Content moderation – removing, blocking, or limiting access to certain content – is “never going to sufficiently address the unprecedented access that the internet accords to impressionable minds,” Mr Hall says.
Legal measures that have proved useful in dealing with domestic terrorist groups may need to be adapted for groups involved in state threats to stop them promoting themselves and inviting support online and offline, he says in the speech.
One answer is the offence of “foreign interference” under the new National Security Act 2023 but proving that a “foreign hand” is at work can be very difficult, Mr Hall says.
Another answer is “social resilience against disinformation” or even “a Cold War mentality that sniffs out subversion”.
“But what if it was necessary to go further? What if it was necessary to investigate, intrusively, the source of funding for protest movements?”
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Mr Hall asks if it might be necessary to “bring forward a law, in the interests of national security, banning extremism or subversion”.
He asks if it might be desirable to pass a law banning Muslim Brotherhood candidates from standing in elections.
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The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist social movement which arose in Egypt in the 1920s but also gave rise to Hamas.
Such laws would be difficult, he acknowledges, because they would have to be based on general principles that apply to individuals equally – such as separatism, hateful extremism, or subversiveness – which have so far eluded politicians.
If such new laws were introduced, they would “need sufficient safeguard in the form of judicial intervention, not cowed by excessive deference to the executive but ready to correct things when they go wrong”, Mr Hall concludes.
