Why doesn't anyone trust the NCA?
Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) posted a series of tweets today following a six-month review revealing that its warrants were legally flawed in 89% of ongoing cases.
NCA is often called the British FBI, but differs in that it operates at a much higher level of secrecy, perhaps part of the reason these flawed warrants have gone unnoticed for the agency’s entire history.
Since it’s rare for NCA to release any information at all, these tweets are worth analysis.
NCA DG: Private sector are partners in NCA efforts against most serious offenders. This is great strength we must build on.
DG refers most probably to the NCA’s current Director General, Lynne Owens. NCA’s staffing numbers, budget and the names of employees are a state secret, with the exception of the director’s name. The NCA spokesperson at the IP Bill hearing was identified a temporary member, and even the officers who reject all Freedom of Information requests are anonymous.
The UK Home Office’s “Be Cyber Streetwise” initiative involves several partnerships with private companies and the NCA. Exactly what these partnerships entail is a mystery. They include banks, security software retailers, and for some reason the UK’s university admissions service UCAS. The NCA’s partners outside of this list are unknown.
The NCA identifies itself as a special task force for “serious offenders”, something that dates back to the agency’s previous identity, the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The current definition of serious crime in UK law is quite broad, involving almost all violent crime, any crime that groups of people do together, and any crime that would impose a three year sentence or more.
How the NCA plans to build on its private sector “partnerships” is difficult to explain without knowing what those partnerships entail.
NCA DG: To be ‘a force to be reckoned with’ success depends on professionalism, integrity, partner relationships and public confidence
The director knows that these attributes have been in doubt with the recent news on improperly acquired warrants. The agency’s predecessor had a poor reputation before the name change, and the new agency relies heavily on PR and comparisons to the much longer established FBI for public legitimacy.
NCA DG: Route to public confidence is clear narrative about what we do and why, results not just as an end in themselves but why they matter
The NCA spends a lot of effort promoting itself to the public to gain legitimacy. This is hard to do while at the same time maintaining secrecy. Nobody is really sure what exactly NCA is or does, and the NCA fights to keep it that way.
NCA DG: I want to see whole law enforcement community use every asset available to identify and capture iconic untouchable offenders
The director is probably referring to intelligence technology here. This reveals the NCA’s intent to promote intelligence sharing that police are either slow to adopt or are legally barred from using.
This is remarkable given a recent money laundering case where the NCA was forced to pay £10,000 in compensation to men whose house was bugged during an NCA search. The NCA withheld from the judge that they intentionally made the search as a pretext to plant bugs. Ordinary law enforcement would not have been able to make such a request and would never have gotten away with it.
“Iconic untouchable offenders” is an interesting phrase. It sounds like it refers to mafia bosses, the kind of high-profile organised criminal that the NCA loves to be able to take credit for.
A criminal being “iconic” only matters for PR purposes. The NCA wants to catch people and make good headlines. Victims don’t care if their attacker was iconic.
NCA DG: It builds trust to show people our human side and that they are not just dealing with a faceless organisation
This is a remarkable claim. The NCA doesn’t even reveal the names of the officers who reject all of its Freedom of Information claims. It operates in extreme secrecy. How does NCA expect to be anything but faceless in these circumstances?
The director Lynne Owens is literally the only public face NCA has. That is the limit of the “human side” the NCA insists is necessary to build public trust.
Goals
NCA DG: We will be proud but not arrogant; determined but not ruthless and thoughtful but not timid, operating with absolute integrity
Lets try to measure the exact meaning of this.
The difference between pride and arrogance is specific. A proud person feels self-satisfaction at what they’re capable of. It suggests that they have power, control, and perhaps social prestige. This only becomes arrogance when pride exceeds actual capability. Arrogance costs prestige.
The difference between determination and ruthlessness is that a determined person continues executing their function and doesn’t change their goals, which only becomes ruthlessness when it does not stop for compassion.
Thoughtfulness is being careful before taking action, but it becomes timidity if it prevents taking action. This is an improvement over recklessness, which involves taking action without thinking.
Integrity is more or less honesty, but that’s a tall order from an agency that operates in extreme secrecy. It seems to suggest that, having been caught operating poorly due to an independent analysis that breached their expectation of secrecy, they must now operate correctly and rightly, or at least appear to, to prevent prestige loss.
The approximate meaning of this tweet, then, is that that the NCA intends to continue doing what it has, but without taking hits to its reputation by being overly boastful, ineffective, careless, uncaring, dishonest or corrupt.
Reputation
The NCA’s new director appears to care a considerable amount about the agency’s prestige and reputation.
Building a public reputation is very difficult for the NCA, since it operates in general secrecy, unlike the police who patrol the streets, take reports in person from the public, and so on.
The result, as the new director appears to be aware, is that the NCA now faces a significant challenge in the public eye, where it’s largely invisible.
The NCA’s traditional solution of self-promotion through carefully crafted PR statements hasn’t rung true for the public, who are usually skeptical of advertising.
The result is that the public has very little clue who the NCA are, how they operate, or what they do that police can’t, and as a result the public has very little basis for trust.