John Humphrys asks: in the wake of the revelations of the US snooping, how worried should we be about the state eaves-dropping?
Edward Snowden, the American whistle-blower who last week leaked US government documents revealing the extent of its secret surveillance of the internet and telephone networks, has caused a political storm on both sides of the Atlantic. President Obama has had to defend American intelligence services as striking a necessary balance between protecting security and protecting privacy and civil rights. Here, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said our own state intelligence organisations abides by the law and are under the firm control of elected politicians. So how worried should we be about state eaves-dropping?
No one had heard of Edward Snowden until he decided to leak highly classified government documents to the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper. Until recently he was an IT administrator working through a defence contractor for the National Security Agency in Hawaii. What this 29-year-old encountered in his work alarmed him. He saw an intelligence-gathering machine that had become democratically unaccountable and whose technological potential threatened to put it permanently beyond control. He came to the conclusion he needed to spill the beans.
“I can’t allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties. My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,” he told journalists in Hong Kong where he had gone in order to avoid what would otherwise be immediate arrest.
Snowden’s chief revelation is the extent of the NSA’s use of the so-called Prism system, which was set up in 2007. This secretly collects phone data on millions of Americans and through opaque relationships with American internet service providers keeps close tabs on the email traffic and internet use of potentially anyone in the world who uses them. That means most of us.
President Obama was forced to make clear to American citizens that no one was sitting around listening in to their private phone calls. Instead elaborate computer programmes monitor the pattern of billions of electronic communications by phone and internet. But Snowden said those working in the field had an unaccountable power to do pretty much as they liked. He said: “I certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone: you, your accountant, a federal judge, even the president if I had a personal email.”
Daniel Ellsberg, who became famous in the 1970s for leaking the Pentagon Papers that revealed what was really going on in the conduct of the Vietnam War, said: “In my estimation there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of National Security Agency material.” He went on: “Since 9/11 there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revolution of the bill of rights for which the US fought 200 years ago. In particular the fourth and fifth amendments of the constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.” He added that the US now had “the electronic and legislative infrastructure of a police state” even if it wasn’t yet one in reality.
In Britain the focus of concern following Snowden’s revelations has been whether GCHQ, the communications arm of the intelligence services, has used Prism to bypass its own legal constraint. British law, including the relatively new Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, requires prior ministerial approval for any interception of either phone or internet-based communication where the internet is accessed through a UK-based server. The suspicion was that by asking the NSA to make its intercepts for it (especially where US-based servers are involved), GCHQ could get round the law.
The Foreign Secretary dismissed as “baseless” and “nonsense” any idea that this was happening. He said: “The idea that in GCHQ people are sitting working out how to circumvent a UK law with another agency in another country is fanciful…. If you are a law-abiding citizen of this country going about your business and your personal life, you have nothing to fear about the British state or intelligence agencies listening to the contents of your phone call or anything like that.”
But this has failed to satisfy many on two grounds. First, they say that claiming law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear misses the point. The unwarranted intrusion by the state into individuals’ privacy is deplorable whether they are law-abiding or not. And secondly, they suspect that the agencies like GCHQ may in effect get around the law not so much by explicitly making requests to friendly foreign agencies like the NSA but having the sort of chummy relationship in which information is exchanged without any need for requests to be made.
But those concerned primarily with our security say the closeness of such a relationship is something we ought to value rather than suspect. Major-General Jonathan Shaw, a former assistant chief of the defence staff, said: “We should recognise that this link between GCHQ and the NSA is absolutely essential to both our countries’ security and we should, instead of being surprised and shocked by this, be delighted it’s happening, because it’s to the major security advantage of both our countries.”
The issue at the heart of all this, as President Obama observed, is the balance between security on one hand and privacy and civil liberty on the other. Seasoned observers point out that the judgement depends on what story propels the issue into the headlines. When it is a whistle-blowing story, the talk is of privacy infringed and our liberties being stolen; when the triggering story is a terrorist outrage, the complaint is about why the security forces failed to gather the intelligence that might have prevented it from happening.
Edward Snowden is clear where he stands on this. It is not simply that he is for privacy and freedom and against security measures. It’s that he thinks it’s for the public rather than anonymous and unaccountable government functionaries to decide how the balance should be struck.
Personally he may pay a big price for blowing the whistle. It’s not yet clear whether or not the American government will seek his extradition from Hong Kong in order to prosecute him or whether he will first try to reach another country where an extradition request would have less chance of success. What is clear is that if he were prosecuted and convicted he’d be likely to lose his own liberty for the rest of his life.
What’s your view?
- So is he a public hero, willing to sacrifice himself for the public good, or someone who has knowingly broken the rules of his own employment and should pay the price?
- Should we be worried by what he has revealed of the extent of state-snooping?
- Or should we be glad that our security services are going to these lengths to try to keep us safe?
- Where do you think the balance should be struck?
