What Rubbish!
Malcolm Rifkind works himself up into a state of high dudgeon in this article which appeared in the Guardian recently.
The subject of Rifkind's wrath - which is both powerful and humorous - is Sir Simon Jenkins, a regular columnist in the Guardian newspaper.
For me it's Rifkind who has the better of the argument - but you can decide for yourself since the opinions of both knight os the realm are set out below.
What rubbish, Sir Simon! Our intelligence agencies are not outside the law
By Malcolm Rifkind
Real issues arise out of the Snowden affair, but British security laws keep us safe without intruding on citizens' freedoms
Edward Snowden in Moscow. 'It is not surprising that there has been more debate about Snowden and Prism in the United States than in the UK.' Photograph: Itar-Tass
I usually am impressed by Simon Jenkins, but his polemic in today's Guardian on the Edward Snowden affair was well below par and full of howlers. If his emails are like that he can relax. No intelligence agency will waste its time trying to read them.
He repeats the original accusation that GCHQ used the Americans'Prism programme to "circumvent" British law. If he had done his homework he would be aware that the intelligence and security committee, which I chair, has investigated that very claim, seen GCHQ's secret files, and been able to report to parliament that GCHQ had legal warrants from the secretary of state in every case.
He praises the Americans for having laws that protect privacy unless there is "due process", and then suggests that Britain has no such requirement. Absolute rubbish. Our intelligence agencies have to go through a similar lengthy legal procedure before they can examine any British citizen's email or phone conversations – and only get permission if it is deemed necessary to stop terrorism or prevent serious crime. Such warrants are also subject to retrospective inspection by the intelligence commissioners, who are independent judges.
He accuses the US of "aping the totalitarian regimes it professed to guard against" in its collection of intelligence data. Does he believe that there are Russian and Chinese judges and parliamentary committees that are independent of those countries' governments and empowered to examine the secret files of their intelligence agencies, as we have in both the US and the UK?
His finest diatribe is to accuse "parliament, the courts and most of the media", as well as "Britons generally", of being indifferent to privacy and liberty because they refuse to treat GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 as public enemies. The whole nation, it appears, has got it wrong. Only Simon Jenkins and the Guardian care about these things.
And then Sir Simon (as he is actually called) says it is all the fault of "the British establishment", which will not "get excited" on these matters. Sir Simon, you are part of the British establishment, as I am reminded every time I read your excellent contributions to Country Life.
There are real issues that do arise out of the Snowden affair, in Britain as elsewhere. Even if the intelligence agencies always act within the law, it must be right for that law to be reviewed from time to time to see whether the safeguards are adequate. Sometimes they are not. The intelligence and security committee criticised the government's original proposals for closed proceedings in civil actions as being wider than was necessary. We have criticised some of the provisions in the proposedcommunications data bill.
There has also been a crucial need for greater powers for the committee. That has now been conceded by the government. As of this autumn, the intelligence agencies can no longer refuse it any information it seeks. We now have the statutory power to investigate MI6, MI5 andGCHQ operations, which we did not have in the past. Our budget is being almost doubled to £1.3m and our staff are being greatly strengthened.
It is not surprising that there has been more debate about Snowden andPrism in the United States than in the UK. Snowden is an American who worked with the National Security Agency. Prism is a US intelligence capability, not a British one.
On Tempora, it has been well known that the fibre optic cables that carry a significant proportion of the world's communications pass close to the British coastline and could provide intelligence opportunities. The reality is that the British public are well aware that its intelligence agencies have neither the time nor the remotest interest in the emails or telephone conversations of well over 99% of the population who are neither potential terrorists nor serious criminals. Modern computer technologies do permit the separation of those that are of interest from the vast majority that are not.
Our system is not perfect. There are occasions when the intelligence obtained may be of such little value as not to justify the diminution in privacy associated with obtaining it.
But I have yet to hear of any other country, either democratic or authoritarian, that has both significant intelligence agencies and a more effective and extensive system of independent oversight than the UK and the US. If you know any, Sir Simon, tell us who they are.
Edward Snowden has started a global debate. So why the silence in Britain?
We're subject to huge unwarranted surveillance – but Westminster's useful idiots are more likely to sanction than criticise it
By Simon Jenkins
Perhaps this trust in the authority of the state ‘is embedded in the class system, aided by the vague glamour of James Bond'. Photograph: Cine Text/Allstar/Sportsphoto
The Brazilian president cancels a state visit to Washington. The German justice minister talks of "a Hollywood nightmare". His chancellor, Angela Merkel, ponders offering Edward Snowden asylum. The EU may even end the "safe harbour" directive which would force US-based computer servers to relocate to European regulation. Russians and Chinese, so often accused of cyber-espionage, hop with glee.
In response, an embarrassed Barack Obama pleads for debate and a review of the Patriot Acts. Al Gore refers to the Snowden revelations as "obscenely outrageous". The rightwing John McCain declares a review "entirely appropriate". The Senate holds public hearings and summons security chiefs, who squirm like mafia bosses on the run. America's once dominant internet giants, with 80% of the globe under their sway, now face "Balkanised" regulation round the world as nation states seek to repatriate digital sovereignty.
And in Britain? Nothing. From parliament, the courts, and most of the media, nothing. Snowden, the most significant whistleblower of modern times, briefly amused London when he turned scarlet pimpernel in the summer; then the capital was intrigued when David Miranda was seized by Heathrow police on bogus "terrorism" charges. But the British establishment cannot get excited. It hates whistleblowers, regarding them as not proper chaps.
Nothing better illustrates the gulf that sometimes opens between British and American concepts of democracy. Congress is no puppet of the executive. The US may be brutal in its treatment of leakers such as Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, but the fourth amendment lurks deep in its culture, protecting privacy from the state without due process and "probable cause". Britain has no such amendment.
What moved Americans about Snowden was not just the scale of NSA hoovering of data – though polls indicate strong aversion – but the lying to Congress. Snowden, a Republican former soldier, was simply shocked at the clear collapse of congressional and judicial oversight. The US had lurched into aping precisely the totalitarian regimes it professed to guard against.
Any reading of the Snowden material suggests that US and British agents were up to the same tricks. They were sharing data throughPrism, plainly circumventing each country's domestic oversight regimes. Britain's Tempora programme, involving the mass tapping of fibre-optic cables belonging to BT, Verizon, Vodafone and others, meant that GCHQ was possibly a bigger intelligence gatherer even than the NSA, a key player in what Snowden called "the largest programme of suspicion-less surveillance in human history". Its value to the US is evidenced by the £100m the country pays for its surveillance services.
An estimated 850,000 American officials and contractors are thought to have access to this material. Though every activity is said to require the warrant of a US court and a "senior minister" in Britain, this is palpably absurd. There are millions of dips each year, a vast trawl of data. While the NSA is supposedly overseen by a foreign intelligence surveillance court – now exposed as ineffective through being secret – GCHQ professes "a light oversight regime compared with the US". Its overseers are patsies.
Yet none of this seems to turn a hair in London. While Washington has been tearing itself apart, dismissive remarks by William Hague in the Commons and Lady Warsi in the Lords could have passed muster in Andropov's supreme soviet. Hague said merely that everything was "authorised, necessary, proportionate and targeted". National security was not for discussion. British oversight was "probably the strongest … anywhere in the world". This remark – contradicted by GCHQ itself – went unchallenged.
Meanwhile Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP, head of the intelligence and security committee and supposed champion of citizens against state intrusion, positively grovelled towards GCHQ. He said we should all defer to "those involved in intelligence work". He even cancelled a public hearing with the security chiefs for fear of embarrassing them.
For Labour, Yvette Cooper claimed obscurely she "long believed in stronger oversight" but she was drowned by a dad's army of former defence and home secretaries, such as Lord Reid, Lord King and Jack Straw. All rallied to the securocrats' banner in shrill unison. I sometimes think these people would bring back the rack, the whip and the gallows if "vital for national security".
The reality is that Britons generally have little trouble with the authority of the state. The historian of espionage, Ben McIntyre, has suggested that this trust is embedded in the class system, aided by the vague glamour of James Bond and George Smiley. GCHQ, he says, is seen as "a club of amiable gentlemen in shabby tweed jackets," probably still fighting the Nazis. Like all toffs, this officer class may behave badly, but its heart is in the right place. It keeps the evil foreigner at bay. Besides, as Hague says, "the law-abiding citizen has nothing to be worried about".
A few people still hold to the futurist ideology that all things digital are benign. Since I see the digital revolution as one of means not ends, I am less convinced. A huge industry has shrunk the globe and vastly increased transparency, but it is poised to corrupt the very freedoms it professes to advance. The market is no guard against it, only democratic oversight. If that fails, as it has, everything is at risk.
The UK reaction to Snowden may in part be an awareness of cant and hypocrisy. All governments have played fast and loose with privacy. Besides, half the world is still intoxicated by the novelty of social media. If the NSA bugs Brazilian oil companies during licence talks, so what? Everyone does it. Perhaps we should just calm down.
This might pass muster if we were merely letting sleeping dogs lie. These lying dogs are not sleeping. The need for the state to acquire and guard some secrets is not in question. But such a claim has been blown out of all proportion. We have created a monster that has overwhelmed the defences put in place to regulate it. I suspect neither Hague nor Rifkind had any clue of the Prism and Tempora programmes. They are the useful idiots of the security classes. But if they thought it best to believe everything the security services told them, they should now be the wiser. They should know, as do their American counterparts, that they were duped.
Britons are not only subject to massive unwarranted surveillance, surveillance that is insecure and unaccountable. They are also at the mercy of intrusive institutions which, for the time being, their politicians will not and cannot control. When push comes to shove, Americans do this better.
