Britain
warned
on ‘spy
state’ risk
to privacy

Opening a packed Westminster Hall debate on intelligence and the security services, Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert (Cambridge) said there were serious questions to be asked about the extent and scale of intelligence agencies’ activities.

And he said the issues of privacy and security would “come to define the 21st century”, in a debate co-sponsored by Tory Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) and Labour’s Tom Watson (West Bromwich East).

Mr Huppert said: “This has been a live discussion and understood in America and much of Europe – but MPs have so far been fairly muted and not had the chance to discuss it thoroughly.

“Acknowledging changes in the capacity of the state and companies to collect and analyse data grows massively, we are in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance of the scale which peacetime Britain has never seen before. It’s not planned, it’s not the actions of malevolent individuals, it’s merely the natural trend of what will happen if nothing is done to stop it.

“It can be argued the definitions of war and peace are no longer the same and our enemies are faceless, splintered, and would attack our way of life if we give them an inch. That’s an argument prime ministers and home secretaries have often put.

“But if we shape our laws solely in response to this fear, chipping away at our own liberty and our own privacy, then frankly they have already won.”

Mr Huppert said he was worried about the basic rights and liberties of citizens being eroded. “There is a change – individual surveillance is one thing but the mass hoovering-up of information which is enabled by new technologies changes the system completely.

Mr Huppert said he felt the Guardian had been “deeply responsible” in its handling of the leaks by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, liaising closely with officials to ensure national security was not breached.

And he said it had been vital to informing a public debate about what exactly the intelligence agencies were able to do.

Embassy spy claims: Page 15.