The British on intelligence: a collection (SIS, MI5, GCHQ & more)

[davidbfpo]

Bill,

Not unexpectedly the speech got extensive publicity and yesterday morning two "wise, old men" were on BBC radio commenting. One, Nigel Inkster, ex-No.2 at SIS:

I sense that those most interested in the activities of the NSA and GCHQ have not been told very much they didn't know already or could have inferred.

Within a commentary:http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...y-intelligence

The Security Service's Director-General has used RUSI as a venue before, but rightly others ask, as would I, when he remarks about the unnamed Snowden revelations - where is the GCHQ Director? See:http://www.spyblog.org.uk/

Then the Security Service's ex-legal adviser stated:

Secrecy in this country is over-protected and under-regulated....The UK has signally failed to prepare itself for openness when dealing with politically sensitive issues such as terrorism or the involvement of their secret agencies in the gathering of information by secret means. We see only a fleeting and ephemeral face of the intelligence agencies chiefs; ministers glide over the threats, never explain their relationship with those agencies and are content to retain an obviously inadequate system for their supervision.

(Bickford said public scepticism was) ..made worse by the Communications Data Bill's proposal that the agencies themselves control their mining of communications data. Unless government takes this debate seriously, secrecy will be pierced by the needs of society and terrorism and organised crime will plunder our sovereignty.

Within a report on a speech by Hilary Clinton, in London:http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...clinton-spying

Issues of accountability, damage and necessity pale in significance when it is alleged politicians had not authorised the GCHQ-NSA collaboration to conduct such extensive surveillance of the innocent. Then bizarrely, in the UK, ministers from the coalition and Labour had promoted legislation to undertake such surveillance.

[davidbfpo]

The MI5 Director-General's speech has hardly calmed opinions and here are three different viewpoints.

First an extended comment by Nigel Inkster, ex-SIS, now IISS, entitled Surveillance and Counter-Terrorism:http://www.iiss.org/en/politics%20an...d-counter-c6f9

Then an article in The Guardian, by Ken McDonald, a top lawyer and formerly a Director of Public Prosecutions, who is usually worth reading:http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...ing-technology

Incidentally an ex-GCHQ legal adviser is speaking next week @ Oxford University, at a cyber event and hopefully a transcript will appear. It is very rare for such luminaries, let alone anyone from GCHQ, to speak in public.

The third article is by a retired Conservative MP, known for being robust as a minister and backbencher. If he is being critical then the political assumptions on surveillance are changing:http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...nce?CMP=twt_gu