
Activist tricked into 6-year relationship with undercover cop tells her story - sprucely
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/20/lisa-jones-girlfriend-of-undercover-police-office-mark-kennedy-interview
======
unabridged
All of this just to infiltrate environmental protesters, and this is just the
UK. I can't even imagine what the US government does with more serious
threats.

~~~
DanBC
A small number of environmental and animal rights groups are labeled
"terrorist" by the US gov, so infiltration and human rights abuses are
probably happening.

UK Special Branch have said (in the 1980s) that they want an informant on
every street. Duncan Campbell (who released information about eg ECHELON 30
years ago) has a great book about pervasive UK surveillance.

~~~
Ollinson
I wish the article would have talked more about the alleged danger this
environmental group posed to warrant a 6 year plant like this. Did these
environmentalists make threats, act on threats, how severe were the
threats/actions? It just seems so overblown.

~~~
DanBC
(Not trying to justify this undercover policing)

Here's a different group from the 1980s.

[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19841227&id=...](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19841227&id=3LZAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vaUMAAAAIBAJ&pg=2770,4847913&hl=en)

They tried to dig up a corpse in order to send the head to a member of the
royal family. That may have been posturing, but it's obviously going to draw
law enforcement attention.

Here's another group that did dig up a corpse in order to blackmail a family.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Newchurch_Guinea_Pigs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Newchurch_Guinea_Pigs)

There was a bunch of firebombing activity in the 1980s. The animal rights
activists said the intent was to create a small fire that would be discovered
by smoke detectors, triggering the sprinkler systems, causing water damage.
This happened in department stores selling fur coats.

Animal Liberation Front pretty much started in UK, and some people claim it's
caused many millions of pounds of economic damage. There are unacceptable
levels of harassment and intimidation in some recent animal rights campaigns
(and this is partly driven in changes to law which make protesting less
legal).

So, police have these spiky things which they probably should be
investigating. But it's hard to tell when someone has a "Rats Have Rights" mug
whether they're a peaceful protestor using strictly legal means, or if they're
going to become radicalised and start doing actions under the name of ALF. And
police clearly didn't understand the mostly youthy animal rights movement in
UK.

Anti hunt campaigns had uneasy alliances of anarchists, class war activists,
and animal rights campaigners. Class War caused extra attention because their
newsletter had "page 3 beauties" \- photos of police officers who'd been
hospitalised after violence, and they'd made many statements about being
prepared to use violence against people. (Hunt saboteurs had strict rules
about not using violence against people. There was some debate about whether
it was okay to use violence to defend yourself if you were attacked by hunt
followers.)

There were a bunch of legal, peaceful, campaigning groups that tackled things
like vegetarianism and veganism; vivisection; primate rights; farm animal
welfare. There were a bunch of groups that appeared to be peaceful but which
were used as feeder groups to more extreme groups. (EG the National Front and
British National Party set up an animal rights group, campaigning on ritual
slaughter, to drive people to their fascistic groups.) And then there were the
obvious activist groups who would raid laboratories. Some of those groups
tried to use legal loopholes - they would enter a lab, not cause any damage or
take any animals but take all the paperwork they could find, then scan and
copy as much of the paperwork and then return the papers. Theft requires the
intent to permanently deprive the owner. That tactic didn't work, they were
caught and prosecuted, and so activists went back to liberating animals and
causing as much damage as they could.)

If you're looking for an at the time account you could try to find back issues
of "ArkAngel", which had debate and information about activist action.

~~~
speeder
I am from Brazil, an animal rights group here invaded a laboratory that did
experiments with animals, and stole all the dogs.

Later they got backlash for stealing dogs, and not the rats and other un-cute
animals, so they invaded again, and released all the other animals.

Then people started to notice that the stolen dogs were being released on the
streets too, with the activists realizing they could not care for the dogs.

The laboratory if I remember correctly was working with antibiotics and some
other medicine, meaning that people spread in nature diseased animals, or
animals that needed medicine to survive anyway.

~~~
DanBC
Yes. There's a case in UK where they raided a fur farm, and released mink into
the wild.

Those animals are very destructive.

------
jacquesm
What value would you put on the next 6 years of your life? Keep in mind those
are not just any set of 6 years, those are likely your _best_ years.

What value would not having children of your own have if you were a woman of
childbearing age when the relationship started and that time had passed by the
time your fake relationship fell apart and a new one had gotten underway after
a long time of dealing with trust issues?

I hope she takes the government to the cleaners for an extremely large sum of
money. Millions of pounds at a minimum.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Similarly, if a woman pretends not to be a gold digger, lies to a man for 6
years and ruins his life, maybe she should also owe him compensation? Perhaps
she convinced him to get a vasectomy under false pretenses to avoid the
existence of other heirs, if you feel childbearing ability is the crucial
factor.

It's the same act, just for a worse motive (grabbing his wealth rather than
stopping terrorists). Yet few would suggest the law should get involved.

~~~
jacquesm
I got the impression from the article that this person was doing this because
they were part of a government operation, and not because they took a fancy to
the victim for any other reason. If you see any 'golddiggers' (male or female)
doing such a thing under a false identity with the express goal of getting
close to this person at the orders of their superior then yes, that too should
be a crime. But somehow I think that's not what you had in mind.

~~~
yummyfajitas
So doing it on your own rather than under orders is fine? If mark stone just
wanted a shag and kept things from his superiors then this would be OK?

~~~
jacquesm
If Mark Stone had a relationship with a woman outside of his profession then
he should be entirely free to do whatever he wants, within the limits of what
that particular society feels is acceptable.

The fact that he's doing this as a deception at the orders of his boss makes
this relationship a-symmetrical and causes the lady to lose a number of years
that she'll never have back and will likely cause her grave trust issues for
many years to come. The fact that it lasted for _6 whole years_ makes it a lot
worse. How big a chunk of someone's life wasted is 'acceptable damage'? 10?
50? All of it?

You don't mess with people like that, especially not when you're nominally
tasked with _protecting_ people.

Pretending to be someone else as a private individual would be deplorable
behavior, setting this up as a government institution makes it actionable and
in my opinion this sort of operation should be illegal unless there is a very
clear and very present danger related to that particular person, I see no
evidence of that.

Note that the lady was never charged with anything whatsoever, she was simply
used as a tool for a substantial chunk of her life and then discarded the
moment the game was up.

~~~
yummyfajitas
She would lose 6 years and trust issues if he were a private actor also. Again
- would this be OK if he just wanted a shag while undercover and his bosses
were unaware? If not, then the boss thing is a red herring.

Is sending a sexy lady cop go seduce anti-gay terrorists also unacceptable?
Particularly if it turned out that they weren't actually gay bashing but
instead just protesting gay weddings, pushing employers to fire gay employees,
and other assholeish but legal behavior?

~~~
jacquesm
> She would lose 6 years and trust issues if he were a private actor also.

Yes, and that would be a very bad thing.

> Again - would this be OK if he just wanted a shag while undercover and his
> bosses were unaware?

He's an undercover cop, what his bosses are or are not aware of is immaterial.
He's on 'company time' so to speak and if he does things while on 'company
time' when interacting with people the company tasked him to interact with and
he does not tell them about it that does not absolve them, especially not if
that lasts for 6 years. That would make them dangerously incompetent if they
weren't aware of it.

> Is sending a sexy lady cop go seduce anti-gay terrorists also unacceptable?

To seduce them per-se: absolutely not acceptable, especially not if she sexy
lady cop is the one taking the initiative.

To gather evidence: to pretend to be their friend (not to seduce them) for a
limited time, maybe, _if_ the crimes those people are engaged in are serious
enough _and_ that is the only way that evidence can be gathered.

A police officer being ordered by their superior to have sex with a subject is
already crossing a whole pile of lines. After all, the police is supposedly
there to serve the public, not to get off on the public.

> Particularly if it turned out that they weren't actually gay bashing but
> instead just protesting gay weddings, pushing employers to fire gay
> employees, and other assholeish but legal behavior?

See above. It's all about proportionality.

~~~
blfr
What if he was a salesman seducing women on the job using the nice company
car. Perhaps leveraging requirements of his job to maintain more than one
relationship. Would the company employing him be responsible for the loss of
(reproductive?) years then?

~~~
jacquesm
I highly doubt a salesman seducing women 'on the job' using the nice company
car would be able to create an alternative identity good enough to pass
immigration inspection on holidays and so on. The fact that this dude had the
power of the government behind him is what allowed him to pull it off in the
first place and why it lasted as long as it did. If she had not found the
passport if would have continued even longer.

Depending on the jurisdiction such impersonation could be a crime all by
itself.

------
royroyroys
Woman pretending to be a man in a 2 year relationship gets 8 years in jail.
Wonder if the cop will get 24 years in jail?

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-
newland...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland-
sentenced-eight-years-prison-duping-friend-having-sex)

~~~
beeboop
God damn that's some terrible reporting. Never mentions what law she broke.
Why is pretending to be a man illegal? Is it because the victim consented to
sex under false pretenses? What if a woman only has sex with me because she
thinks I'm rich in when I'm not, is that illegal?

edit: I looked around a bit, apparently wherever this happened has "Sexual
Assault by Fraud" laws. Apparently the only law that exists of this type in
the US is pretending to be someone's spouse and having sex with them (written
in the 1800s but updated in California a few years ago):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception#United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception#United_States)

Though there have been attempts to make it illegal in the US to lie about
pretty much anything in order to get consent for sex:
[http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/11/rape_by_fraud_n...](http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/11/rape_by_fraud_nj_lawmaker_introduces_bill_to_make_it_a_crime.html)

How far will this go? What if I lie about loving someone to get them consent,
will whether I actually loved them suddenly be decided by a jury of my peers?
We're going to see a lot of jail sentences being given to people (let's be
honest - men) who lied about being single.

~~~
DanBC
> Never mentions what law she broke.

> > But the jury convicted the marketing manager of three counts of sexual
> assault at the complainant’s flat in Chester.

This is a serious criminal offence, as serious as rape. It's in the Sexual
Offences Act 2003 (which, incidentally, covers David Cameron's alleged
(totally not true) pig fucking - live animal is criminal, dead human is
criminal, dead animal = not criminal)

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents)

Sexual Assault by penetration:
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/assault/section/2)

Sexual Assault:
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/assault/section/3)

This person did not get consent and could not reasonably believe that consent
was given. (According to the court.)

------
confluence
Western intelligence seems to have a hard on for investigating pointless leads
for years. Maybe focus on actual threats? But that's just me.

~~~
Canada
What, and miss out on all that weed and free love?

~~~
Synaesthesia
"and all this time I've been smoking harmless tobacco he he he"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL25r7QxFMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL25r7QxFMU)

------
trhway
infiltrating environmental protesters, wow, what a way to put your live on a
line everyday... Always a lot of money, chicks digging you - that is one
dangerous life and attending Glastonbury festival - man, that was close! Leave
some schmucks do the ISIS ...

>According to The Guardian,[10] Kennedy sued the police for ruining his life
and failing to "protect" him from falling in love with one of the
environmental activists whose movement he infiltrated
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_%28police_officer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_%28police_officer%29))

no kidding. Now taxpayers are to pay him for all the pleasure he tortured
himself with. "The things i'm gonna do for my Country" (NSFW - detailed
picture of the dangers of an undercover agent's job. Very different from our
office jobs -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Rq...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RqO3XCOr8nk#t=43)
)

------
erdojo
State-sponsored rape. Both the officer and the head of the program should go
to jail for this.

~~~
fab13n
By calling everything and anything rape, one debases the word's meaning, and
the claims of actual rape victims.

Words have meaning, and rape is forcing someone to have sex with you when they
don't want to have sex with you. She wanted to have sex with him, although he
deceived her about some of his key features.

Is it rape when one discovers afterwards that their partner is a closet
alcoholic? No it isn't. What about if they're chronically unfaithful? Neither.
If a golddigger has sex with someone who made them falsely believe they were
rich, the former hasn't been raped, merely deceived. Even if they're HIV+,
it's not rape. It might be poisoning, or homicide attempt, it certainly is
awful and punishable, but it's not rape.

Concealing that you're a cop on duty is despicable and might be (at least
ought to be) illegal, but rape it isn't; pretending otherwise is unhelpful and
insulting to rape victims.

~~~
DanBC
> forcing

No, rape is sex without consent. Force isn't required for something to be
rape.

~~~
Natanael_L
Then this would rather be fraud, because consent was given _but based on
deceitful information_

~~~
danlindley
Actually, consent for sexual intercourse obtained through lies or deceipt is
unequivocally considered rape in common law.

~~~
fab13n
Can you provide a source?

I'd be surprised if, for instance, seducing someone and getting laid by
pretending to be substantially wealthier than you are was considered rape.
Even pretending that you aren't a convicted felon when you are one would
probably not constitute rape. I'd also be surprised if a woman who lied about
being a virgin (and maybe had hymenoplasty) was prosecuted as a rapist by her
devout husband.

My guess would be that it's considered rape if the deception made the victim
believe they _had_ to have intercourse with the liar. If the lie merely made
the liar more desirable, it's (possibly unethical) seduction.

This hypothesis would mean, to come back to the original case, that:

* telling you're not a cop when you actually are one is not rape;

* telling that you're a cop when you aren't, and hitting that a sexual favor would buy you some leniency, does constitute rape.

~~~
DanBC
There's several links in this thread to a recent UK case where a woman
pretended to be a man, and seduced her friend and had sex with that friend.

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-
newland...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland-
sentenced-eight-years-prison-duping-friend-having-sex)

There are other coses from different places. A Jewish woman was told by a man
that he was also Jewish. They had sex. He was in fact not Jewish, and he was
convicted.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7901025/Palestinian-
jailed-for-rape-after-claiming-to-be-Jewish.html)

I think the law is looking at what consent actually means.

------
openfuture
This is the sort of thing that changes peaceful protesters into enemies of the
state.

------
q-base
He either got a little to good at his assignment which then lead the
department to keep him going longer than originally planned or there is a lot
more of this going on than we can ever imagine, if they spend so much effort
on such low-risk activities as environmental activism - probably a combination
of both.

~~~
DanBC
This case is part of a larger set of cases where very similar things happened
to a bunch of women. (Long term relationships with men who were undercover
police and who had been provided false identities, sometimes using the dead-
child's name technique).

Nothing justifies this level of abuse, but it's important to remember that
"they" will say a small number of environmental and animal rights activists
are extremists who use "violence" (against property, with strict rules about
no violence against people).

"They" will give the examples of incendiary devices in department stores that
sell fur coats or anti fox hunt activists digging up a corpse, and say those
were the drivers of this style of surveillance.

They might forget to mention the police involvement in the incendiary devices
activity.

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/13/police-spies-
anima...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/13/police-spies-animal-
rights)

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/13/police](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/13/police)

------
dang
Url changed from [http://boingboing.net/2015/11/22/activist-tricked-
into-6-yea...](http://boingboing.net/2015/11/22/activist-tricked-
into-6-year-r.html), which points to this.

------
anon6_
This happens the other way around all the time. LEA use females as honeytraps
all the time.

[http://www.foodnotbombs.net/elle_anna.pdf](http://www.foodnotbombs.net/elle_anna.pdf)

Very interesting read.

