And Who Shall Watch the Watchers?

June 19, 2015

THE careworn but anonymous-looking types slipping in and out of the riverside ziggurat which houses Britain’s intelligence headquarters have a bit more spring in their step these days, thanks to a popular new chief and a revived appreciation of the value of old-style espionage.

But the spy agencies are still suffering the effects of probably the biggest disaster in recent Western intelligence history: the theft of up to 1.7m secret documents by Edward Snowden, formerly a contractor for America’s National Security Agency (NSA), who then fled to Moscow via Hong Kong. His revelations about the capabilities of the NSA, and its code-cracking British ally, GCHQ, in hoovering up data from the internet and telephone network, outraged privacy campaigners (others thought the real outrage was his spilling of the secrets).

That two-year-old breach still echoes: on June 14th the Sunday Times ran a front-page story quoting anonymous officials as claiming Russia and China had cracked a trove of unpublished (and supposedly encrypted) documents taken by Mr Snowden. This, it said, meant MI6 had to move agents to safety because their identities were known.

The article was short on details, and the timing struck some as odd for two reasons. The Snowden leaks have indeed already exposed the names of some intelligence officers—and thus endangered anyone they may have had secret contacts with. Many more names are in the encrypted files (which Mr Snowden says he did not take to Russia). But intelligence agencies do not dally when security is at stake. That they would wait two years before moving people at risk seems unlikely.

The story did steal headlines from a more topical development: a big report on intelligence oversight by David Anderson QC, an independent lawyer. Last year the government gave him a top-level security clearance, and the job of explaining to the public the threats, capabilities, safeguards and implications of technological change in the spy world—and suggesting reforms to the rules. His 400-page report, issued on June 11th, is gripping reading, not least thanks to some previously unpublished case studies showing how the spy agencies use surveillance and bulk data collection to foil terrorists and criminals.

The report strongly counters the beliefs (fervently held by some of Mr Snowden’s supporters) that the mass collection of electronic information is unjustified, and that the spy agencies are political tools which blithely trample on the privacy of the innocent. Though Mr Anderson blasts the current legal regime as “obscure”, “incomprehensible” and “intolerable”, he does not support an American-style separation of intelligence and law enforcement. He says technology firms should be legally bound to retain users’ data, in case the agencies need the information. But he also argues that an independent judicial authority, not politicians, should be the ultimate arbiters of that need.

Mr Anderson’s report caustically noted the secrecy and lack of consultation surrounding a new draft law on communications data (called the “snoopers’ charter” by critics), which would give the authorities unprecedented powers to collect information on all forms of activity on the internet. That was blocked by the Liberal Democrats in the last parliament. The new government wants it passed.

A row is brewing. Mr Anderson’s critics say that ministers (unlike judges) are available instantly; moreover, politicians bear responsibility for intelligence blunders, so they should be the ultimate decision-makers. But judge-led systems do work abroad—and American firms say they will help British spies more readily if their oversight is visibly independent.