A parliament that cannot defend civil liberties and human
rights against the secret state is not fit for purpose and ought to be sent
packing. That’s one conclusion you could draw from the pathetic performance of
the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) yesterday.
Another is that members of the ISC have effectively been so
integrated into the three-ringed spying circus of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ that their
designated role to check on the work of the agencies is just for show, part of
a great game played at our expense.
Each and every member of the ISC is a trusted member of the
Commons or Lords, cleared in advance by the same security services they are
supposed to be checking up on! No danger of them ever rocking the boat and so
it turned out when the chiefs of the three agencies appeared in public together
for the first time.
If anyone was waiting for the ISC to grill the three over
the extent of mass surveillance revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, they
would have been sorely disappointed. "They faced a grilling that wouldn't
have scared a puppy," said Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty.
"It was tame, predictable, and limp," said Privacy International
about the
90-minute session.
They were not asked about issues do with mass surveillance
and privacy. No one even mentioned Tempora, the programme that
allows GCHQ to access mountains of date from transatlantic cables
that carry internet traffic.
Naturally, no one asked why international encryption
standards had been compromised by the joint work of the National Security
Agency in the US and GCHQ. Or the compromising of corporations like Google and
the eavesdropping on the phones of leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel.
Above all, no one on the ISC asked why these programmes had
been kept secret from the public and possibly the government. It’s not hard to
fathom why the spy chiefs got an easy ride. Hazel Blears, former New Labour
counter-terrorism minister, admitted on BBC2’s Newsnight that she had been on
“several visits” to GCHQ and was aware of the agency’s “broad capabilities”.
Presumably she was advised that to reveal this would
constitute some kind of crime. Blears didn’t take much convincing. “We've had
very, very confidential briefings about what the capabilities were and
obviously we were satisfied that they were operating within our legal
framework.” So that’s alright then.
As the gentle questioning proceeded, the spy chiefs took
advantage to assert that articles based on the Snowden material published by
the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post had played into the
hands of Al-Qaida. Why, the terrorists were even talking about what the leaks
meant for their own security, said GCHQ head Sir Iain Lobban.
The head of MI6, Sir John Sawers added: "Our
adversaries are rubbing their hands with glee. Al-Qaida is lapping
this up." He went so far as to claim that the leaks could help dangerous
criminals and even paedophiles evade the law.
Yes, the whole state is facing collapse as a result of
articles showing how the US and Britain have access to just about every
communication they want to intercept, with or without legal authority. This is
a standard scare tactic – blame the
messenger and accuse them of playing into the hands of the country’s enemies
when in fact the real threat comes from the secret spy agencies themselves who
are beyond oversight.
The secret state within the state considers itself above
parliament, above political control and above the rule of law. They don’t give
a jot about the warning from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist who
created the world wide web, that weakening encryption had put at risk
transactions made by ordinary people.
As for the ISC, if this is the best parliament can come up
with, it shows how unrepresentative and undemocratic this present body is. One
is reminded of the words used by Cromwell. When faced with a “Rump” parliament
that was doing absolutely nothing useful, he told the sitting: “You have sat
too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us
have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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