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Plane Stupid foils infiltration attempt

Plane Stupid | 07.04.2008 22:46 | Climate Camp 2007 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Repression

Since late summer 2007, an employee of a corporate espionage agency has been trying to infiltrate Plane Stupid. Toby Kendall, who works for C2i International, a "special risk management" firm, thought he was undercover in our London group, gathering information on what we're up to. Instead we've been feeding the 'revenge movie' obssesed mole false information, which he's been reporting to the aviation industry for months.

Toby Kendall - wannabe spy
Toby Kendall - wannabe spy


After last year's Camp for Climate Action new activists began turning up to London Plane Stupid meetings. Most were perfectly normal people angry at the expansion of Heathrow airport. But one newbie didn't fit in with the rest - Ken Tobias, an Oxford graduate who claimed to have just got back from China. Something about him just wasn't right.

Check out our mole hunt gallery for more photos of the mole.

We carried out a quick background check. Although Ken lived in London, he wasn't on the electoral register, nor on the records of the rugby team he claimed to have played for. We fed him false information about a fake action and were told by an industry insider two days later that security at airports around the country had been alerted. The ludicrous idea of a Climate Camp in Hyde Park soon ended up in the papers, as did the content and locations of meetings he'd attended.

We had hit a dead end. We couldn't identify or find any record of him, so three of us met Ken in a Japanese restaurant and asked him if he was a spy. He denied everything, claiming that he'd lost his wallet and had no photo ID. We secretly recorded the meeting and took a photo of him leaving to show other groups - but still had no concrete evidence of who he was working for.

Then came the a breakthrough - a contact at Oxford University recognised a photo we'd taken. Our spy wasn't called 'Ken Tobias', but Toby Kendall - an Oriental Studies student from Wadham College. A quick google search revealed a Bebo page with a photo. Snap! It also took us to Linked In, a high-flying corporate networking site, where 'Ken' claimed to be an analyst at C2i International, working in "Security and Investigations".

C2i are an interesting bunch. According to their website, "C2i’s specialists are drawn from commerce, the military and government agencies. They include internationally recognised authorities on special risk management, industrial espionage and law enforcement, and senior personnel from Special Forces and Special Operations, London Metropolitan Police." Professional spooks - just like those which infiltrated the McLibel campaign and the anti-roads movement in the 1990s.

Take a good look at the photo above, and those in our mole hunt gallery. If you see 'Ken' at your meetings, be warned. You could be being watched by bungling spooks...

Plane Stupid
- e-mail: info@planestupid.com
- Homepage: http://www.planestupid.com

Comments

Hide the following 10 comments

Moles will be outed

07.04.2008 23:36

Nice one for collecting this info & sharing it, gotta watch each others backs.
Sorry you lot had to deal with this shit, though it sounds like you handled it really well.
Guess it shows that Plane Stupid's rattling the aviation industry eh?!

-


new age james bond...

08.04.2008 10:00


he´s like a new age thick and aggressive version of james bond fighting for further corporate power.
how exciting for him.
what a twat.

cool


Or perhaps not?

08.04.2008 11:43

BAA surely declined to use C2i's services.

So how does this incident demonstrate that the aviation industry is concerned about Plane Stupid?

Jules


of course they werent interested! yeah right!

08.04.2008 16:14

jules, wake up!

the Heathrow expansion project is worth a LOT of money to BAA Ltd. If us unwashed hippies push the cost up by just 1% the bill will still run into millions. So lets look at the past and learn. The Newbury bypass was supposed to cost £75m. Once we got involved the costs tripled.

I bet you that since this expose a few people at the top of BAA Ltd will be shopping for new underwear and bicycle clips!

Of course, they will deny this as well! So would anyone faced with their situation.

fitwatcher


Brooke Bond more like!

09.04.2008 04:13

I recognise him – he’s often hanging out in bars in Fulham pretending to be important.

He recently tried to chat up one of my girlfriends. When she asked him what job he did, he said ‘security – but I can’t say anything more, it’s all hush hush if you know what I mean’ But two minutes later he was telling me that he had been ‘working undercover’ and he had been ‘infiltrating an extremist group that posed a threat to national security’.

This confirms what we suspected – he IS a plonker!

Michaela


Shurely

09.04.2008 11:51

...the NIKE cap was a give-away? ;-)

fashionista


The Spy Who Shagged Me?!

10.04.2008 18:05

From reading Tamsin Omond's blog on the Plane Stupid website, it seems to me that this may be more personal! She seems like a woman scorned! Do you think maybe this Ken/Toby guy was just too busy perfecting one of James Bond's other famous traits? Maybe there's more to the story and it was a case of 'The Spy Who Shagged Me' leaving her a little shaken and stirred?!

sarah
mail e-mail: smith-sarah@hotmail.co.uk


xxx

10.04.2008 23:11

spot the news of the screws journo fishing for a story for this sundays edition

Jonesy


Shagadelic Sarah

10.04.2008 23:29

Remember FBI Anna from the G8 05 ? She stitched up Eric Mc David, her 'boyfriend' using the basest of entrapment techniques. The rules that used to apply to undercover agents no longer apply. Just because someone has fucked you does not imply that they won't later fuck you in a court of law. . How would you feel if the person fucking you was being paid to do so to betray you ? Isn't that a form of rape ?

Speculating about the motives of someone who has been in a group that has been infiltrated is extremely dodgy territory. Unless you have been in that position then you can have little idea of how damaging it is to everyone involved. Of course any innocent who realises this feels an emotional response, but that hardly invalidates their complaint.

Danny


Thank you richard of PlaneStupid!

17.04.2008 14:37

Richard,
your write up of the molebust had me in tears of laughter - top workl

DaanSaaf


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