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Duncan Campbell (UK)
Journalist, IPTV Ltd
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Scottish born Duncan Campbell is an investigative journalist, author,
consultant and television producer specialising in privacy, civil liberties
and secrecy issues. His best-known investigations have led to major
legal clashes with successive British governments. In 1976, he was the
first journalist to reveal the existence of the global British electronic
spying agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). This led to
the "ABC" trial in 1978, when the government attempted to jail him for up
to 30 years for breaking Official Secrecy laws. The prosecution failed.
In 1980, he investigated the United States National Security Agency, and
exposed the role of the NSA's Menwith Hill Station in Yorkshire, England in
tapping European and worldwide communications. In another clash in 1987,
Special Branch officials raided his office, his house and the Scottish
headquarters of the BBC to seize tapes from a six part series Campbell had
made for BBC-2, called "Secret Society". One programme revealed plans for
the first ever British spy satellite, codenamed "Zircon".
From 1978 to 1994 he was an investigative writer, then an associate editor
and finally the chairman of the British political weekly New
Statesman. He founded his own production company, IPTV Ltd, in
1990. IPTV has made investigative documentaries for Britain's Channel
Four television. The subjects covered have included corruption in sport
and in the customs service, medical fraud and malpractice, and "Undercover
Britain" programmes for Channel 4, using concealed cameras to film abuses.
In 1988, he revealed the existence of the ECHELON project, which has since
1997 become controversial throughout the world and especially in
Europe. In 1998, he was asked by the European Parliament to report on the
development of surveillance technology and the risk of abuse of economic
information, especially in relation to the ECHELON system. His report,
"Interception Capabilities 2000" was approved by the European Parliament in
April 1999, and presented to the parliament in Brussels in February
2000. In July 2000, the European Parliament appointed a committee of 36
MEPs to further investigate the ECHELON system, which will report in July 2001.
In 1999 and 2000, Campbell participated in the joint investigation of
systematic smuggling and tax evasion by multinational tobacco companies,
publishing reports in the British Guardian in January 2000. He was then
asked to give evidence to the parliamentary committee on Health, which has
led to a full-scale British government investigation of British American
Tobacco plc, the world's second largest international tobacco company.
Campbell has reported on industrial espionage activities and policies, as
well as documentary evidence about ECHELON and other planned or existing
communications surveillance systems. He has also frequently been
appointed an expert witnesses in court cases involving communications,
defence and surveillance. In 2000, he was appointed one of two expert
witnesses for the defence in the planned trial of former Army officer Lt
Col Nigel Wylde under the 1989 Official Secrets Act. After receiving his
report showing that secrets which were allegedly revealed by the former
officer were in the public domain, the government abandoned the case on 1
November 2000.
Online
 http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan
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