Inquiry calls after MI6 chief's facebook details
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Independent Minds
The Liberal Democrats were calling for an inquiry today into whether the new head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, should be allowed to take up his post after his wife apparently published personal details and photographs on the Facebook website.
Lady Shelley Sawers disclosed potentially compromising information, including the location of the London flat used by the couple and the whereabouts of their three children and of Sir John's parents on the social networking site, The Mail on Sunday reported.
The details, which were removed after the newspaper contacted the Foreign Office, also revealed the couple's friendships with actors Moir Leslie and Alister Cameron.
Lady Sawers' half-brother, Hugo Haig-Thomas, a former diplomat, was said to be among those featured in family photographs on Facebook.
Mr Haig-Thomas was an associate and researcher for controversial historian David Irving, who was jailed for three years in Austria in 2006 after pleading guilty to Holocaust denial, the paper reported.
Lady Sawers put no privacy protection on her account, allowing any of Facebook's 200 million users in the open-access "London" network to see the entries, the paper said.
Senior politicians said the security lapse raised concerns about Sir John's ability to take up his post as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, giving him responsibility for Britain's overseas spying operations.
Edward Davy, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, called on Gordon Brown to launch an inquiry into the matter.
He told the paper: "Normally, I would welcome greater openness in Government for officials or politicians but this type of exposure verges on the reckless.
"The Prime Minister should immediately commission an internal inquiry as to whether this has breached the security of the incoming head of MI6 too seriously to allow him to take up the post."
Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, chairman of the counter-terrorism sub-committee, told the paper the MI6 chief had left himself open to blackmail.
He said: "Sir John Sawers is in a very sensitive position and by revealing this sort of material his family have left him open to criticism and blackmail.
"As a long-serving diplomat and ambassador, his whole family have been involved in his line of business for decades. I would have hoped they would have been much more sensitive to potential security compromises like this."
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Comments
I would prefer to see an inquiry into how/why the position of head of MI6 was gifted to a career diplomat. Surely the role should be filled by someone with substantial experience of the intelligence services - or at least to someone with enough basic common sense not to post their lives on Facebook!
I'm surprised that this is even being reported on given that where Sir Sawers lives, who he is friends with, and how many children he has are not state secrets.
MI6 have deliberately put foreign intelligence agencies off the track of the reacl "C".
I can exclusively announce it is Britains greatest brain, a person of integrity, never known to lie, a patriot of our country and its values:
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you
Gordon Brown "C".
Please send your e-mails and letters of congratulatons to The Times of The Guardian, alternatively, the secret drop off point by Westminster, a little pink bench commissioned by the Conservatives.