As Scots headed to polls in a bid for independence from Britain, the SNP had every right to be paranoid that they were all monitored by UK intelligence services, as the referendum constituted a “national security threat” to the UK, says Julian Assange.
The founder of
WikiLeaks, speaking via video link from the Ecuadorian Embassy in
London to a crowd of some 400 lawyers in Glasgow, was quick to
confirm earlier voiced fears of the Scottish National Party
members who claimed that MI5 had been playing “dirty
tricks” in sabotaging the pro-independence campaign in
2014.
“They are correct for a number of reasons,” Assange told
the Commonwealth Law Conference in Glasgow. “The attitude of
the UK government is that this is a national security issue, that
Scottish independence is, in effect, a threat to the state.”
Perception of such a threat, according to Assange, meant a green
light for the security apparatus to do anything in their reach to
influence the vote, meaning “that the full capacities of the
GCHQ, for example, could be deployed.”
Such an operation, Assange says, would still be challenging, as
an overwhelming amount of Scots who work for the UK’s security
agencies would leak details of such efforts, just as Foreign
Office’s campaign to preserve the image of UK unity had been
leaked.
“There are many Scots employed in these agencies. So care has
to be undertaken because Scots in those agencies may well reveal
what is being done,” said Assange. “As they did reveal
that information from the FCO going out across the world to lobby
other states to influence the result.”
Last September Scotland held a referendum on its independence
from the United Kingdom. The idea of independence was rejected by
just over 55 percent of the Scottish electorate.