Spooks and Spies (10/10/13)
Here are two contrasting opinion pieces - from John Kampfner in the Guardian and David Aaronovitch in the Time - about the threat or otherwise posed by intelligence gathering operations of the security services in the UK and USA.
John Kampfner seems to think he can advance the argument by labelling his opponents 'rightwing' - and I'm not sure whether he believes that David Aaronovitch and/or the Times falls into that category.
But for me David Aaronovitch has a much more convincing case - for the following reasons:
1 I have yet to here of any example of wrongdoing being brought to light by Edward Snowden.
2 Just because the security services are capable of doing something - such as dropping a cruise missile on my house - doesn't mean they are actively planning to do so.
3 To find the intelligence 'needle' hiding inside the haystack the security services must first gather in all the hay, but what they are searching for is the needle - not the hay.
MI5 chief Andrew Parker is right to enter the Prism debate. But why the cheerleading from the rightwing press?
Parker believes any revelation about our secret services is helping terrorists. But parts of Fleet Street are more interested in payback for Leveson
By John Kampfner
MI5 chief Andrew Parker's speech about Edward Snowden and Prism was more thoughtful than some of the press coverage implied. Photograph: PA
On Tuesday I was in Boston debating privacy and surveillance. The audience was engaged and highly informed about the latest twists and turns in the Prism story and the saga of Edward Snowden. In Britain the vital debate about security, civil liberties and the right to know has been characterised by torpor.
That is why Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, is to be praised for raising the stakes by putting the spy agencies' point of view. Before discussing the merits of his case, it is worth noting that the actual words he made in his speech are more thoughtful and sober than the spin accompanying it that was regurgitated by several newspapers yesterday.
Parker's central argument – which David Cameron unsurprisingly fully endorsed – boils down to this: anyone who reveals anything about the activities of GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 is, by definition, helping terrorists. "The detail of the capabilities we use against them … represent our margin of advantage," he says. The word in question here is "detail". It is one thing to reveal operational detail; it is quite another to put into the public domain the broad strategy – the remarkable revelation of the extent of the snooping that has taken place unbeknown not just to the public but to many of the politicians who are supposed to oversee the agencies.
As Chris Huhne pointed out earlier this week, he had no idea about the NSA's Prism programme or GCHQ's related Tempora project – and he was a member of the UK National Security Council.
Members of US Congress have expressed similar consternation about being kept in the dark; this has led to a vigorous debate and forced Barack Obama to initiate a review. By contrast, when William Hague went before parliament to respond to the Guardian's first stories in June, his message was: don't concern yourselves, the excellent chaps at the agencies are doing everything they can to keep us safe.
And concern themselves they didn't. Indeed, the number of MPs and peers with a serious understanding of internet technology can be counted on the fingers of one hand. With a credulous parliament and with judges and ministers giving approval in secrecy, the "highly accountable service" that Parker proclaims is a chimera.
Most statements about terrorism – on both sides of the debate – are based on supposition. When the spooks call for more powers, arguing as they have done over the communications data bill that without new measures they cannot keep the streets safe, their claim can be neither proven nor disproven.
Trust is a necessary component, something we in Britain seem to have in abundance. Far more useful are transparency and accountability. At the moment, parliament's intelligence and security committee publishes only the most basic data on surveillance. What would happen if it disclosed the number of intercepts, the breakdown between email, direct messaging, phone calls and texts, and the proportion that relates to terrorism, organised crime and other serious issues? Would any of the operations be imperilled? Excessive secrecy is about more than national security; it is designed to protect organisations and individuals from embarrassment and from being properly accountable for their actions.
As for our media, it picks and chooses when to get upset about erosions of liberty. The Daily Mail appeared genuinely exercised by torture allegations under the last Labour government; it sprang to the defence of the computer hacker who was fighting off extradition to the US. Several Tory-leaning papers led the way on stopping ID cards. On the Prism issue, however, they have been cheerleaders to the authorities. In August, the German magazine Der Spiegel posited one theory: remember the Olympics opening ceremony, James Bond and Her Maj and the helicopter? We love our agents.
There is another possible explanation for the silence and sneers that have greeted the Guardian's coverage of the Snowden story: Leveson. Most rivals on Fleet Street think this paper has also been selective in its embrace of freedom of expression, siding as it did with advocates of greater regulation of the British press. This is payback time.
With so much at stake, one might reasonably (or naively) assume that, whatever their political hue, the media might work collaboratively in challenging the powerful. For as long as the press fails in its core function and for as long as our parliamentarians remain quiescent, the security services can act as they please, accumulating information on all of us they could never have dreamed of.
At one point in his speech, Parker asserts: "I too believe strongly that the public is owed an explanation of the threats the country faces and what we are doing about them." How right he is.
Beware: a dangerous new generation of leakers
They lost it to someone, in Snowden, who may be representative of the politics of the male, techie generation from which the employees and contractors of Western security agencies will increasingly be drawn. In other words, new technology has rendered the secret state (our secret state) horribly vulnerable. A day of downloading, a few memory sticks, and there is the agency on a plate for whoever the Snowdens of this world want to hand it to. Someone in China, perhaps, who talks the righteous talk. Or a kindly Persian. Or just a spotty boy in Durban. Who knows?
To state the problem is not to solve it. But it is time to recognise that it exists. We can theoretically create structures that make oversight of our security services more trustworthy. Cutting the Snowdens and Greenwalds out of the loop is much harder.
John Kampfner seems to think he can advance the argument by labelling his opponents 'rightwing' - and I'm not sure whether he believes that David Aaronovitch and/or the Times falls into that category.
But for me David Aaronovitch has a much more convincing case - for the following reasons:
1 I have yet to here of any example of wrongdoing being brought to light by Edward Snowden.
2 Just because the security services are capable of doing something - such as dropping a cruise missile on my house - doesn't mean they are actively planning to do so.
3 To find the intelligence 'needle' hiding inside the haystack the security services must first gather in all the hay, but what they are searching for is the needle - not the hay.
MI5 chief Andrew Parker is right to enter the Prism debate. But why the cheerleading from the rightwing press?
Parker believes any revelation about our secret services is helping terrorists. But parts of Fleet Street are more interested in payback for Leveson
By John Kampfner
MI5 chief Andrew Parker's speech about Edward Snowden and Prism was more thoughtful than some of the press coverage implied. Photograph: PA
On Tuesday I was in Boston debating privacy and surveillance. The audience was engaged and highly informed about the latest twists and turns in the Prism story and the saga of Edward Snowden. In Britain the vital debate about security, civil liberties and the right to know has been characterised by torpor.
That is why Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, is to be praised for raising the stakes by putting the spy agencies' point of view. Before discussing the merits of his case, it is worth noting that the actual words he made in his speech are more thoughtful and sober than the spin accompanying it that was regurgitated by several newspapers yesterday.
Parker's central argument – which David Cameron unsurprisingly fully endorsed – boils down to this: anyone who reveals anything about the activities of GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 is, by definition, helping terrorists. "The detail of the capabilities we use against them … represent our margin of advantage," he says. The word in question here is "detail". It is one thing to reveal operational detail; it is quite another to put into the public domain the broad strategy – the remarkable revelation of the extent of the snooping that has taken place unbeknown not just to the public but to many of the politicians who are supposed to oversee the agencies.
As Chris Huhne pointed out earlier this week, he had no idea about the NSA's Prism programme or GCHQ's related Tempora project – and he was a member of the UK National Security Council.
Members of US Congress have expressed similar consternation about being kept in the dark; this has led to a vigorous debate and forced Barack Obama to initiate a review. By contrast, when William Hague went before parliament to respond to the Guardian's first stories in June, his message was: don't concern yourselves, the excellent chaps at the agencies are doing everything they can to keep us safe.
And concern themselves they didn't. Indeed, the number of MPs and peers with a serious understanding of internet technology can be counted on the fingers of one hand. With a credulous parliament and with judges and ministers giving approval in secrecy, the "highly accountable service" that Parker proclaims is a chimera.
Most statements about terrorism – on both sides of the debate – are based on supposition. When the spooks call for more powers, arguing as they have done over the communications data bill that without new measures they cannot keep the streets safe, their claim can be neither proven nor disproven.
Trust is a necessary component, something we in Britain seem to have in abundance. Far more useful are transparency and accountability. At the moment, parliament's intelligence and security committee publishes only the most basic data on surveillance. What would happen if it disclosed the number of intercepts, the breakdown between email, direct messaging, phone calls and texts, and the proportion that relates to terrorism, organised crime and other serious issues? Would any of the operations be imperilled? Excessive secrecy is about more than national security; it is designed to protect organisations and individuals from embarrassment and from being properly accountable for their actions.
As for our media, it picks and chooses when to get upset about erosions of liberty. The Daily Mail appeared genuinely exercised by torture allegations under the last Labour government; it sprang to the defence of the computer hacker who was fighting off extradition to the US. Several Tory-leaning papers led the way on stopping ID cards. On the Prism issue, however, they have been cheerleaders to the authorities. In August, the German magazine Der Spiegel posited one theory: remember the Olympics opening ceremony, James Bond and Her Maj and the helicopter? We love our agents.
There is another possible explanation for the silence and sneers that have greeted the Guardian's coverage of the Snowden story: Leveson. Most rivals on Fleet Street think this paper has also been selective in its embrace of freedom of expression, siding as it did with advocates of greater regulation of the British press. This is payback time.
With so much at stake, one might reasonably (or naively) assume that, whatever their political hue, the media might work collaboratively in challenging the powerful. For as long as the press fails in its core function and for as long as our parliamentarians remain quiescent, the security services can act as they please, accumulating information on all of us they could never have dreamed of.
At one point in his speech, Parker asserts: "I too believe strongly that the public is owed an explanation of the threats the country faces and what we are doing about them." How right he is.
Beware: a dangerous new generation of leakers
By David Aaronovitch
The threat to security services from tech-savvy young anti-government ‘libertarians’ looks to be serious
The new head of MI5 was never going to praise leakers. So Andrew Parker, in his first speech, talked of the “enormous damage” caused by making public the extent and limitations of the reach and techniques of GCHQ. But he didn’t specify what the damage was and so, once again, you either took it on trust or you didn’t take it at all.
As it happens Mr Parker’s piece came the day after the BBC broadcast an Analysis programme on Radio 4 (which I presented) concerning just this question of widespread publication of state secrets. The question we had set out to ask was what secrets the state in a democracy is entitled to keep, and who decides? In the end we found ourselves looking at a slightly different but just as urgent a problem.
What has become most controversial recently is access to what is called metadata — the simple fact of our having made an electronic transaction of some kind — by government agencies. Some argue that “harvesting” the metadata of everyone to be better able to spy on a few is disproportionate and “Orwellian”. Others respond that if it’s done within the law then it protects us a bit better from crime and terrorism without any loss of liberties.
I stand between these extremes. Of course — I am my own good guy. So I don’t feel that just because a machine somewhere records that my mobile rang a mobile belonging to a nubile lady living in a Belgravia flat, that means MI5 know that Fifi Lejeune and I are having a thing. Not unless they want to know about me for a specific reason and then they’ll have to get an order.
But as the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said to me in an interview for Analysis, this view is predicated on the idea of effective oversight to prevent abuse. He asked the question whether watchdoggy people such as Sir Malcolm Rifkind and (in the US) Diane Feinstein were sufficiently au courant with the latest geekery even to be able to ask the relevant questions. A fair point.
Yet there is a second and until yesterday relatively undiscussed problem: the danger to the security services themselves from massive unauthorised disclosure.
In the first place we should be clear that some of the information procured by first Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and that Edward Snowden passed on was indeed damaging to Western security. As Rusbridger told me: “Of the material we’ve seen, we haven’t published much of it, and there’s some stuff that in my judgment should remain secret.” When I asked why, he replied: “Because it would endanger individual people or it’s about operations that are rightfully properly secret.”
But even if you trust his security judgment, Rusbridger is not the only actor. On August 18 the Brazilian boyfriend of the Guardian-linked US journalist Glenn Greenwald was detained at Heathrow. This act was represented by Greenwald as an act of spite and intimidation. But the security services told a court that, on examination, Miranda’s computer was carrying 58,000 secret documents relating to GCHQ. Presumably he was taking them, via intermediaries, from Snowden in Moscow to Greenwald in Rio.
The link between Snowden and Greenwald is fascinating and reveals something important about the new politics of the internet era — starting with what the fugitive Snowden said at Moscow airport about his political views. He replied to a questioner that he was “a libertarian”. On investigation it turned out this was indeed true and that he had given money to the radical libertarian campaign for the presidency in 2012 of a man called Ron Paul.
Ron Paul is not someone you endorse by accident. His politics are way out there, even for the US. His basic conviction is that the State is bad. He believes that it has no business interfering in healthcare, welfare, civil rights, levying an income tax or running a proactive foreign policy. He wants out of Nato, the UN and the World Trade Organisation. He thinks global warming is a “hoax”. He opposes America’s involvement in military action abroad because he thinks war strengthens the State and the State is the enemy.
This “get out of my face” politics seems to have found a resonance among younger internet-era middle-class activists. For example, in 2008 Paul went to Google’s campus in Mountain View, California, and drew a very big audience. In 2012 his young supporters were noted for their verve and absolute certainty.
Traditionally a man such as Paul would have had few friends on the left. He is anti-abortion, anti-immigration and has a history of links with some fairly dodgy views on race. Yet in 2011 we find Greenwald recommending Paul to the readers of a left-wing online magazine. Paul was, he said, “the only major presidential candidate” to say the right things on the questions that really mattered. Whereas, continued Greenwald, Barack Obama “holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues”, viz “slaughtering Muslim children”, bailing out bankers, being “subservient” to Israel and strengthening the “National Security State”.
When Paul started up a TV show in the spring, Greenwald was his first guest, described as “the most important journalist in the world today”. Paul’s enemies are Greenwald’s enemies are Snowden’s enemies.
What I’m describing here is not a conspiracy but an affinity. And, I think, quite an extreme political affinity. And though Rusbridger may be a “proper” journalist (and he certainly is), someone like Greenwald is first and foremost an activist. He wants above all to change the world, not just to report it. So while we might trust Rusbridger, what reason do we have for trusting Greenwald with top secret GCHQ information? Or his Brazilian boyfriend who could have been going anywhere and given the stuff on his computer to anybody. What oversight do we have over them? What conceivable accountability?
The danger is obvious. As John Lanchester put it in a piece in The Guardian itself: “Our spooks lost at least 58,000 pages of classified documents to a US civilian sitting at a workstation in Hawaii, and did so without realising it had happened.”
The threat to security services from tech-savvy young anti-government ‘libertarians’ looks to be serious
The new head of MI5 was never going to praise leakers. So Andrew Parker, in his first speech, talked of the “enormous damage” caused by making public the extent and limitations of the reach and techniques of GCHQ. But he didn’t specify what the damage was and so, once again, you either took it on trust or you didn’t take it at all.
As it happens Mr Parker’s piece came the day after the BBC broadcast an Analysis programme on Radio 4 (which I presented) concerning just this question of widespread publication of state secrets. The question we had set out to ask was what secrets the state in a democracy is entitled to keep, and who decides? In the end we found ourselves looking at a slightly different but just as urgent a problem.
What has become most controversial recently is access to what is called metadata — the simple fact of our having made an electronic transaction of some kind — by government agencies. Some argue that “harvesting” the metadata of everyone to be better able to spy on a few is disproportionate and “Orwellian”. Others respond that if it’s done within the law then it protects us a bit better from crime and terrorism without any loss of liberties.
I stand between these extremes. Of course — I am my own good guy. So I don’t feel that just because a machine somewhere records that my mobile rang a mobile belonging to a nubile lady living in a Belgravia flat, that means MI5 know that Fifi Lejeune and I are having a thing. Not unless they want to know about me for a specific reason and then they’ll have to get an order.
But as the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said to me in an interview for Analysis, this view is predicated on the idea of effective oversight to prevent abuse. He asked the question whether watchdoggy people such as Sir Malcolm Rifkind and (in the US) Diane Feinstein were sufficiently au courant with the latest geekery even to be able to ask the relevant questions. A fair point.
Yet there is a second and until yesterday relatively undiscussed problem: the danger to the security services themselves from massive unauthorised disclosure.
In the first place we should be clear that some of the information procured by first Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and that Edward Snowden passed on was indeed damaging to Western security. As Rusbridger told me: “Of the material we’ve seen, we haven’t published much of it, and there’s some stuff that in my judgment should remain secret.” When I asked why, he replied: “Because it would endanger individual people or it’s about operations that are rightfully properly secret.”
But even if you trust his security judgment, Rusbridger is not the only actor. On August 18 the Brazilian boyfriend of the Guardian-linked US journalist Glenn Greenwald was detained at Heathrow. This act was represented by Greenwald as an act of spite and intimidation. But the security services told a court that, on examination, Miranda’s computer was carrying 58,000 secret documents relating to GCHQ. Presumably he was taking them, via intermediaries, from Snowden in Moscow to Greenwald in Rio.
The link between Snowden and Greenwald is fascinating and reveals something important about the new politics of the internet era — starting with what the fugitive Snowden said at Moscow airport about his political views. He replied to a questioner that he was “a libertarian”. On investigation it turned out this was indeed true and that he had given money to the radical libertarian campaign for the presidency in 2012 of a man called Ron Paul.
Ron Paul is not someone you endorse by accident. His politics are way out there, even for the US. His basic conviction is that the State is bad. He believes that it has no business interfering in healthcare, welfare, civil rights, levying an income tax or running a proactive foreign policy. He wants out of Nato, the UN and the World Trade Organisation. He thinks global warming is a “hoax”. He opposes America’s involvement in military action abroad because he thinks war strengthens the State and the State is the enemy.
This “get out of my face” politics seems to have found a resonance among younger internet-era middle-class activists. For example, in 2008 Paul went to Google’s campus in Mountain View, California, and drew a very big audience. In 2012 his young supporters were noted for their verve and absolute certainty.
Traditionally a man such as Paul would have had few friends on the left. He is anti-abortion, anti-immigration and has a history of links with some fairly dodgy views on race. Yet in 2011 we find Greenwald recommending Paul to the readers of a left-wing online magazine. Paul was, he said, “the only major presidential candidate” to say the right things on the questions that really mattered. Whereas, continued Greenwald, Barack Obama “holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues”, viz “slaughtering Muslim children”, bailing out bankers, being “subservient” to Israel and strengthening the “National Security State”.
When Paul started up a TV show in the spring, Greenwald was his first guest, described as “the most important journalist in the world today”. Paul’s enemies are Greenwald’s enemies are Snowden’s enemies.
What I’m describing here is not a conspiracy but an affinity. And, I think, quite an extreme political affinity. And though Rusbridger may be a “proper” journalist (and he certainly is), someone like Greenwald is first and foremost an activist. He wants above all to change the world, not just to report it. So while we might trust Rusbridger, what reason do we have for trusting Greenwald with top secret GCHQ information? Or his Brazilian boyfriend who could have been going anywhere and given the stuff on his computer to anybody. What oversight do we have over them? What conceivable accountability?
The danger is obvious. As John Lanchester put it in a piece in The Guardian itself: “Our spooks lost at least 58,000 pages of classified documents to a US civilian sitting at a workstation in Hawaii, and did so without realising it had happened.”
They lost it to someone, in Snowden, who may be representative of the politics of the male, techie generation from which the employees and contractors of Western security agencies will increasingly be drawn. In other words, new technology has rendered the secret state (our secret state) horribly vulnerable. A day of downloading, a few memory sticks, and there is the agency on a plate for whoever the Snowdens of this world want to hand it to. Someone in China, perhaps, who talks the righteous talk. Or a kindly Persian. Or just a spotty boy in Durban. Who knows?
To state the problem is not to solve it. But it is time to recognise that it exists. We can theoretically create structures that make oversight of our security services more trustworthy. Cutting the Snowdens and Greenwalds out of the loop is much harder.
