ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So should we be keeping a closer eye on our intelligence agencies? I am joined now by the Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti and by the Conservative MP who sits on the Intelligence and Security Committee as well, Mark Field. A very good morning to you, Shami, your response to that, are you reassured by anything you heard from Sir Malcolm?

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: Not yet I’m afraid. I like Sir Malcolm very much and respect him but there are structural problems with his committee which historically has been a watchdog that makes a friends and doesn’t always bark in the night. This is a committee that is accountable to the Prime Minister and not to Parliament, this is a committee that did not expose extraordinary rendition, kidnap and torture at the height of the War on Terror, this is a committee that did not expose this blanket snooping that seems to have emerged from the Snowden revelations. My question, and let’s be clear the committee will be scrutinised by the public gaze as much as the chief spooks this week, my question for the chief spooks is what was the point in the draft communications data bill, the thing that we called the snoopers charter, that was dropped from the legislative agenda – what was the point of that if you were doing this blanket snooping anyway? How on earth do you justify what you have been doing in legal terms? Forget moral terms, forget the terrorist threat, we know about all of that, there is always a debate about privacy versus security, I understand that but it is a debate that has to happen and it needs to be a law for it.

DM: So Mark Field, that is the killer question, why are we having discussions about legislation and MPs were discussing it when it was already happening and we weren’t being told about it?

MARK FIELD: Because part of what that communications data bill, the so-called snoopers charter, was designed to do was to recognise that the world had moved on in the last 12, 13 years since we had the various legislative protections and part of that bill was also to codify the individual protection as well.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: But you are passing the bill to legalise what was happening unlawfully already.

DM: I remember having debates about it and saying if this is to happen, it had been going on for years.

MARK FIELD: No, it was to codify a whole lot of protections for the individual as well because things are moving and one of the other issues that will no doubt be discussed this Thursday will be the whole issue of cyber warfare, aggressive and indeed defensive cyber, we are living in a very different world. May I go back to one thing that Shami did say which I am afraid is inaccurate what she said about the whole issue of oversight and I do accept that what has happened with Snowden will have a big impact on the discussion …

DM: But in all honesty, without Snowden this would not be happening. This debate would not be happening.

MARK FIELD: No, that is absolutely not the case, no. We have had in the course of the last year new legislation, the Justice and Security Act, which actually gives our committee far more teeth, far more power to demand from the security services as opposed to simply being the recipients of what the heads of the security services wish to pass on. However I do accept that what will happen, I suspect there will be a very aggressive debate in America because culturally there are great differences and as a result of that I’m sure we will look at revising our …

DM: Shami, let me take you down to that basic level and I know you have dealt with this question many times before, but there are people listening going la-la-la-la, if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: Nothing to hide, nothing to fear – tell that to Doreen Lawrence who was the victim of the most heinous murder and found that she and her family and friends were the subjects of undercover surveillance and police …

MARK FIELD: That has got nothing to do with the security services whatsoever.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: But the principle is power, unchecked power. Of course there has to be a balance between security and privacy in a democracy, of course I care about keeping people safe as far as you can but we can’t have a situation where there is no scrutiny for the authorities and no privacy for us.

DM: What is the ideal situation in your book then, Shami? We have got this committee as we’ve been discussing, that is a step forward in the sense that we are seeing all these spy bosses together for the first time at least.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: Yes but I’d like to see the committee answerable to parliament and not appointed by the Prime Minister. I would like to see this week the committee ask these tough questions about legality and how long this has been going on and why parliament didn’t know about it. I would like the head of MI5, Andrew Parker, to be asked why it was appropriate to accuse democratic journalists of essentially aiding the enemy when they published the Snowden revelations. I think this is what people want to see, some tough questioning and not a PR exercise which some of us will fear.

DM: The exact quote is they gift to evade and strike at will, that was the quote from Andrew Parker, the Director General of MI5, that is what the Snowden revelations have done.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: I’d like the debate to national newspapers in a democracy.

MARK FIELD: Hang on a minute, we are talking about some stolen documentation and I think the irresponsibility of the Guardian – and I’m someone who stands up very regularly for Liberty as well …

DM: But when you say stolen you make it sound like it wasn’t in the public interest.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: That’s the debate.

MARK FIELD: No, the issue to do with the Snowden thing is that intelligence is a little bit like a jigsaw and you don’t know what the people who will do you harm, whether that’s foreign states or indeed terrorist groups, what information they have to hand. Part of the issue in revealing and publishing so much of that data is that bits of that jigsaw will now be used by our enemies, bits that they were unaware existed and that will help them in the action that will potentially do some harm to us all.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: They didn’t publish everything they had, they even allowed the authorities to come in to their offices at one stage and destroy their databases. What is an ethical journalist to do in a democracy if they find that this kind of grand surveillance is going on, on an industrial scale, up there with phone hacking that people were so upset about – this was the authorities spying on entire populations without ….

DM: Individual emails have been read, phone calls have been listened to, isn’t this meta mining, looking for trends and key words?

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: No, it isn’t …

MARK FIELD: One of the interesting things is the difference between the approach taken in America and indeed Germany who were under the Stasi only 25 years ago, I think actually people in this country are a little bit more mature about this. There hasn’t been this big outrage that …

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: There has actually.

MARK FIELD: No, there hasn’t, amongst the public at large, because I think they recognise there is an importance for the security services holding secrets …

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: There were two of you and one of me so perhaps I can just say this small thing. To say there nothing to hide, nothing to fear, to say we’ll just collect it – if I may – to collect it all and we’ll look at later if you come to suspicion is the equivalent of saying bad things happen in people’s houses so why don’t we just plant a camera and a microphone in everyone’s living room and bedroom and we’ll just record it all but we won’t look, we’ll just keep it just in case. I don’t think people would feel very happy about that.

DM: Now we know about it, Shami Chakrabarti, what is to be done about it?

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: Well the first thing is that this needs proper lawful authority. You have the debate in order to … You have the law first and the snooping second which is not what you just described to me. The second thing is, we need to use our ingenuity, both constitutional, legal and technological, to target suspects and not to turn a whole nation into one of suspects.

DM: If I can turn to Mark Field briefly, you’ve got some work to do to prove to people like Shami and many, many others that you’re on their side.

MARK FIELD: There is a huge amount of law that we already have in place, we have a legal framework and as I say, because of technological change that was one of the ideas behind having the communications data bill, it wasn’t just simply to give more and more powers to the authorities, it was actually to codify some of those individuals protections. There is going to be this on-going debate between security and civil liberties for many years to come.

DM: But it can’t go on here because we’re run out of time. Thank you very much indeed Shami Chakrabarti and Mark Field.