Secret Diary of an Olympic Domestic Extremist

This post is by Netpol member Kevin Blowe of Newham Monitoring Project

After reports in June last year that Newham Monitoring Project, the east London community group I’ve been part of for over 20 years, was spied on during the 1990s by undercover Metropolitan police officers, I’ve wanted to find out if information about me is held on secret police databases. The Guardian reported estimates of up to 9000 people classified by police as potential ‘domestic extremists’ and so to find out if I’m one of them, I submitted a ‘subject access request’ under data protection legislation.

The Met were supposed to comply within 40 days but it has taken over six months and the intervention of the Information Commissioner’s Office to finally receive a response. If the details provided are complete, they confirm that the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU), part of the Met’s SO15 Counter Terrorism Command, began logging my activities in April 2011 because I spoke at Netpol’s ‘Stand Up To Surveillance’ conference – ironically, an event debating the rise of unaccountable police intelligence gathering on protests and local communities.

Help Netpol to challenge secretive ‘domestic extremist’ database

As the National Union of Journalists encourages members whose work brings them into contact with the police to challenge their inclusion on the national ‘domestic extremist’ database, NetPol is urging activists and campaigners to do the same.

Using the Data Protection Act, activists can submit Subject Access requests to the Metropolitan Police to check what information is held about them by the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU). Netpol wants to see all secret police databases shut down, because there is every reason to believe that data gathered in secret, with no checks and balances and no effective accountability, is not only unnecessary and intrusive but also riddled with gossip and rumour.

The results of a Subject Access Request remain private – nobody has any obligation to share personal data. However, if you discover inaccuracies or trivial information in any data that the police hold, we would like to work with you, in confidence, to expose this.