The story goes that the philosopher was asked, which animal besides man is the most intelligent?
The answer: the one that man has not discovered yet. By the same token, if we ask what is the most sensitive aspect of private security, an answer could be: the one we do not know about. That would not make a long article, however. Mark Rowe writes.<br><br>Generally speaking, there are contrasting pulls on security. There is the need for secrecy so that malicious people lack knowledge of how to steal the asset, human or object, being protected. On the other hand there can be what one former council CCTV man termed ‘kiddology’, in his case showing known offenders around the control room, to impress on them that the authorities could see what the offenders were doing out there. The aim of such openness: to deter the offenders from more wrong-doing. The recent public profile of MI5 could stand as another example. Some secrecy is always called for – MI5 ‘does not have a press office and does not comment on intelligence matters’; but is too much secrecy counter-productive? If as the Security Service website puts it, MI5 is ‘responsible for protecting the United Kingdom against threats to national security’ it is only prudent to offer – as the website does – security advice on ‘what your business or organisation can do to protect against terrorism and other security threats’, such as industrial espionage. <br><br>Visit http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page17.html <br><br>While the Jewish community does not wish to draw attention to security measures for its schools, synagogues and other buildings, it does log and publicise anti-semitic attacks (see separate article, below). To put it briefly, making public a catalogue of such attacks is part of an effort to combat violent, and more insiduous, anti-semitism; and to alert members of the Jewish community into taking reasonable steps for their own security. <br><br>Staff of the CST, to quote one, ‘do not have a public profile and therefore should never be named in any articles’. Even so, no man is an island; I saw a (quiet) CST man attend last year’s Skills for Security conference. <br><br>Some things are open to some public scrutiny because of public money or safety or other interests involved, such as the protection of nuclear power stations. Guidance for the nuclear industry on the sensitivity of nuclear and related information, and its disclosure, was telling named by the regulator, the Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS), ‘Finding a balance’, and is available on the OCNS website. The OCNS, now part of the Health and Safety Executive, brings out an annual report, for the Department for Business. Commercial and national security considerations – practically, the OCNS recovers the costs of its regulatory activity from industry – are balanced by among other things the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) and parliamentary questions that the OCNS helps government answer – or not. For example the OCNS’ investigation report into a Daily Mirror article in July 2006 – alleging lapses in security of nuclear fuel at Willesden Brent Sidings – was exempt from FoI, ‘ since the information it contains could be of use to those with a malicious agenda and disclosure would be likely to prejudice the prevention of crime’, according to the OCNS 2006-7 annual report. <br><br>There are besides international questions such as illicit nuclear trafficking, the subject of a conference in Edinburgh last year. People working in nuclear power generation have to know something about security, so as to do the right things: hence a bi-annual briefing for two dozen senior non-security managers, previously at Porton Down and next at Buxton in November; and a shorter version at Sellafield in October ‘to brief up to 30 senior managers’. <br><br>Some public, open organisations have sensitive aspects. Universities are there to do research, including on animals, or on scientific subjects (GM food) that activists protest against. <br><br>On a one-to-one level, there is the need to respect client confidentiality. On the other hand, though, an installer of electronic security or any other provider of a service might gain more business if he could advertise that he fitted alarms to a royal’s or David Beckham’s property. <br><br>Understandably, any individual or organisation may be loath to say quite how they are secured. According to a recent North Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce survey, more than half (56 per cent) of firms did not report all crimes to the police. Again, the consequences are political; the less business crime reported to police, the lower priority crime against business will remain for the authorities. The main reasons given to the chamber for non-reporting were that the crime was considered low cost (72pc) and because the businesses had no confidence in the police response (33pc). Surely that is only part of the story. Besides the wish for privacy, there can be a reputational risk if security is, publicly, compromised – the shame of loss, and the potential loss of business if your customers read that of your loss, whether of equipment or something even relatively small that however reflects badly on the victim. For instance the group chief exec of HBOS reportedly had cash taken out of his bank account by someone impersonating him. <br><br>And I recall as a trainee reporter in Trowbridge in the early 1990s, a West Wiltshire show ran in the park. As a reporter I interviewed a security guard from a local Somerset company, that was patrolling the marquees at night. He admitted that there were thefts from the grounds. That was embarrassing for organisers – and the story was not run by my then newspaper, because it was among the organisers, but that is as they say another story. The park and marquees by the way were over the road from the town police station. <br><br>An exception to the rule may be the royal family, or others rich and famous; the public clamour for knowing about their habits outweighs other considerations such as client privacy. Hence ‘inside story’ publications by people who work for the royals, not only those who protect them. Two famous examples are Trevor Rees-Jones’ The Bodyguard’s Story, which is actually the former soldier’s story of working for Dodi and Mohamed al-Fayed, and in the summer of 1997 until the fatal car crash in Paris – Rees-Jones was the only survivor – guarding Diana Princess of Wales as well as Dodi. <br><br>Former Met Police man Ron Evans recently provoked controversy (and more book sales?!) when Sir Salman Rushdie took issue with bodyguard Evans’ memoir On Her Majesty’s Service: <br><br>http://www.blake.co.uk/e-store/product.php?productid=5631&cat=0&page=1<br><br>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7538875.stm <br><br>An add here – you could say that the Ron Evans book did not tell secrets as in the High Court on August 26 Evans apologised through his solicitor for 11 counts of falsehood. As widely reported, for instance in The Times:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article4612468.ece
Another exception to the unwritten rule of – not so much secrecy but client confidentiality: Manchester United. Former head of security Ned Kelly in a memoir tells of the inside workings of the football club, for instance guarding footballer Eric Cantona around the time of the court case after the Frenchman’s notorious attack on a Crystal Palace football fan. Does the telling of such tales about a former employer make it in practice impossible for the author to get another employer? <br><br>It was noticeable that the Daily Telegraph report of a book by another former Met Police man and Diana bodyguard, former (and inevitably ‘SAS-trained’) royal protection officer Ken Wharfe, titled nonsensically Diana: Closely Guarded Secret stressed that that writer broke a police ‘code-of-silence’. And significantly Kelly’s story ends with him – on paper at least – raising a fond glass to the club, from his home in Florida. Who says there is no money in security?! Ned Kelly was a former SAS soldier – this is perhaps the place to nail the myth that members of the SAS are or ever were since its Second World War beginnings somehow highly secret. Compared with other similarly-sized units in the British armed forces, it must be the most written about and argued over?! <br><br>However it appears that telling all in a memoir does not necessarily harm or end your career in security. Ron Evans has a website as an international security consultant for his ‘Ron Evans International Protection Service ‘:<br><br>http://www.reips.co.uk<br><br>The news however sensational and the security around an international financier or diplomat that the newspapers have never heard of can remain secret it seems because there isn’t a market in retailing their story. Nor can you ask for a fee of thousands of pounds as an after-dinner speaker for telling about bodyguarding a ball-bearing magnate. Ken Wharfe recently featured in The Times leaning against a tree outside Kensington Palace, the former home of Princess Diana, recalling his work there (‘On many occasions, Diana said that to sit alone in Kensington Palace was like being locked up in a cell’): <br><br>http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/buying_and_selling/article4219793.ece<br><br>Bodyguarding is one of those walks of life with its own code, a small sector, where CP people know each other’s business. Quite a closed occupation, regarding what you could call as in any walk of life the ‘tricks of the trade’ and the personal merits of the people being guarded. Close protection of VIPs is aired in Kevin Horak’s book, The New Bodyguard. While Kevin Horak and his company Clearwater Special Projects have had and do have VIP clients – on the cover of the book, reviewed in the January issue of Professional Security, Kevin Horak is standing by the singer Michael Jackson – Kevin Horak writes responsibly. He is not telling tales but rather describing CP work for those thinking of entering the sector – or to put it another way, considering sinking thousands of pounds into the weeks of training for a Security Industry Authority CP licence. In the book, Kevin does make plain that success in CP work requires the right character, including discretion: people who want to become a bodyguard to boast that they rub shoulders with the stars need not apply. The book does not shy from the knotty, very personal dilemmas that any job has; for instance, what if the client asks the bodyguard to carry shopping, or to do other non-security tasks? The CP person has conflict between wanting to concentrate on his job, but not disobey the request of the paying client. Is this the deepest secret; that security is a service, no more or less, and like many others? <br><br>About the CST<br><br>The Community Security Trust (CST) provides security advice and training for Jewish schools, synagogues and communal bodies. <br><br>Its annual incidents report – the most recent one covers 2007 – catalogues words and deeds against UK Jews from a threatening message left on a synagogue answerphone to websites hacked into and defaced, besides graffiti and assaults. <br><br>The 23-page report that you can download from the CST website includes incidents at universities: "31 incidents recorded on campus included 11 universities and three further education colleges. Six on-campus incidents took place in the direct context of political campaigning. Other incidents that involved political content, for instance in cases of graffiti using swastikas or other political imagery or language, did not occur in the immediate setting of otherwise legitimate political activity. Off campus, 13 of the 28 incidents recorded took place in Leeds, where there is a large Jewish student body. Other incidents took place off campus in Manchester, London, Birmingham and Wolverhampton." <br>Visit:<br>
