we've got to talk about rebalancing security and privacy

After the NSA leaks, we've got to talk about rebalancing security and privacy

Parliament must fix British legislation urgently and create a new body with independent members to oversee the security services

Julian Huppert

The 21st century is young; we may land a person on Mars, find the cure for cancer or make some discovery we cannot even begin to guess at now. Whatever happens, one definite feature is the interaction between the state and its citizens, which will change dramatically.

The revelations from Edward Snowden, casting a glimpse into a world where the powers of state surveillance have stepped far beyond anything we expected, have alerted us to the changes that are coming. While in the US this has led to public debate, ultimately prompting President Obama to call for a full review into the practices of its intelligence operations, in Britain there has been a far more muted response from the public and from politicians.

That must change. Today I will be leading a debate in parliament on this key question of oversight of intelligence and security services. British politicians must step up and discuss an issue that is crucial now and will only loom larger in the coming years, as more and more information becomes electronic, and the ability to collect it, store it and analyse it grows rapidly. We need to discuss publicly what we think the rules should be for state surveillance, how it should be controlled, and what the limits must be.

There is no doubt in my mind that we benefit from the intelligence and security agencies. Their work does help to keep us safe. However, we must ensure that as parliamentarians and lawmakers we give the agencies a clear framework to operate in and proper oversight, scrutiny and evaluation to keep them on track. They too should welcome this.

It is of course not possible to have total privacy and total security, and there is a balance to be struck. Tracking a specific individual of genuine concern is very different from sweeping everyone into a net. Critically, parliament must be given a say in how this balance is achieved. Our starting point should have the scales tipped in favour of liberty and privacy. This is what western democracy is based on, and if we reject this, those seeking to destroy the fabric of our society will have already won.

It is of course not just surveillance by Britain or the US we need to be concerned about – other less friendly countries and criminal groups, too, want access to our information. When Britain and the US work to weaken encryption, putting backdoors into systems designed to be secure, that puts us all the more at risk from others.

Why does the government encourage people to invest in improving cybersecurity and then try to break that protection itself? We have minimal oversight of what is being done in our name. Parliament passed extremely broad legislation, giving almost completely free rein for information to be collected. The intelligence and security committee, which is supposed to examine the policy and operations of the agencies, consists of a small number of parliamentarians, handpicked by the prime minister, and includes ex-ministers who effectively scrutinise their own past decisions. It is not clear to me they all understand the technical capabilities they are supposed to comment on.

We have to fix our legislation urgently. One central piece, Ripa, is known to be broken – it was used to allow council officials to find out whether families lived in school catchment areas. Others give the secretary of state sweeping and authoritarian powers, with the limits of that power kept secret. We should also create a new, beefed-up body including more independent people to scrutinise what is happening, based on Obama's privacy and civil liberties oversight board.

Life has changed from the days when surveillance involved many people following someone around. Today, most of us carry around GPS trackers in the shape of mobile phones – devices which can be activated and controlled remotely and which store some of our most personal information. Who can read this, and how do we want to protect this? We need to agree the rules now, before we completely lose control.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/30/nsa-britain-balance-security-privacy