Are our secret services too secret?

I don’t often agree with American Republicans,  but our Government would do  well to pay attention to the words of Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner,  author of their Patriot Act, who has challenged the US administration over its claims to have the authority to “sift through details of our private lives”.

It’s fascinating that in the States – and in France and Germany – legislators are in deep discussion about the issue of mass surveillance and what it means for the privacy of their citizens.  Here, some of our politicians seem more interested in attacking the Guardian.

I took part in a Westminster Hall debate on the issue today.  Because of leaks from whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, and media like the Guardian (which apparently used only 1% of the material available to it, and scrutinised it heavily) we are now aware of the scale of surveillance programmes run by the US and UK intelligence services.   The disclosures show that the vast majority of our internet communications are being seized, stored and searched by governments.

In the UK, we are supposed to be protected by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which theoretically ensures that internet surveillance is the exception, not the rule.  But it has failed.  Because internet activities can be deemed external to the UK, the Government is able to certify that they are tapped, stored and analysed by GCHQ.  The data also appears to be freely available to agencies overseas, such as the American NSA.  It’s equivalent to having all the letters passing through the UK intercepted, stored, copied, and made available to a potentially unlimited number of intelligence agencies across the world.

I appreciate the need for surveillance, but it needs to be proportionate and overseen by judicial authorities acting in public - GCHQ and the NSA appear to be deliberately operating at the edge of the law.  In the context of other revelations about state interference in our private lives – like undercover officers forming relationships with people they’re spying on – it’s time to ask fundamental questions about whether security services are behaving in line with their duty to respect our human rights.

Mass surveillance doesn’t target criminals but every one of us.  It seems we’ve got the balance wrong – our secret services have become too secret.