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MPs fear they are targets of Spooks
It could be a plot straight from the pages of the kind of implausible pot-boiler thriller that you only buy at an airport because there is nothing else to read.
Or it could be an epsiode from BBC 1's MI5 series Spooks which dramatises the murky world of espionage...
Either way, the astonishing arrest of Damian Green has set the corridors of Westminster swirling with gossip about moles and covert surveillance.
And for one Lancashire Tory MP, it has raised major concerns about the vulnerability of politicians to the nefarious activities of snoopers.
Lancaster and Wyre MP Ben Wallace has written to Gordon Brown demanding an urgent review of the so-called Wilson doctrine, the convention that is supposed to protect MPs from phone taps.
He is well qualified to know exactly how easy it is to spy on others – his seven years as an intelligence officer in the Scots Guards included time on the then mean streets of Northern Ireland.
Mr Wallace would have worked closely with RUC Special Branch and handled intelligence gleaned from using covert techniques.
After leaving the army he worked at QinetiQ, the UK's part-privatised defence technology company where the next generation of spying technology is put through its paces.
Mr Wallace contends that the public would be shocked to discover how easy it is to gather covert surveillance and how little authorisation is needed.
Read the rest of this feature in Wednesday's Lancashire Evening Post
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Weather for Preston
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Light sleet
Temperature: 2 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Light rain
Temperature: 0 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: South east
