External event held at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Abermarle St, London W1S 4BS.

Recent government proposals to allow increased police and intelligence agencies’ monitoring of email and social media communications have angered civil liberties campaigners who claim they are a breach civil liberties.

A new report by the think-tank Demos examines “the ethical, legal and operational challenges involved in using social media for intelligence and insight purposes”. Co-authored by former GCHQ director and ex-cabinet office security and intelligence chief Sir David Omand, it argues that police and intelligence agencies need to use social media as a form of intelligence but that laws need to ensure a balance is struck between security and intelligence work in this new environment.

Join us as we discuss to what extent security services should be able to monitor our cyber activity. Is this form of cyber surveillance a threat to the public’s civil liberties or necessary to keep them safe? Can a balance be struck?

The Demos report, entitled #intelligence can be downloaded here.

Chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent and author of the blog, dot.rory. Twitter:@BBCRoryCJ.

With:

Isabella Sankey, the Director of Policy at Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) which she joined in November 2007. She leads Liberty’s parliamentary lobbying and policy development, working in particular on the protection of human rights in the context of counter-terror policy. As such, she was heavily involved with Liberty’s successful Charge or Release campaign against holding terror suspects for 42 days without charge. She is a non-practising barrister and previously worked for the Legal & Constitutional Affairs Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations. In 2008 he resigned his seat and his position in the Shadow Cabinet to fight a by-election to highlight the Government’s undermining of civil liberties. After winning with a large majority, he returned to Parliament.

Jamie Bartlett, head of the violence and extremism programme at Demos. His primary research interests lie in terrorism, radicalisation and extremism, conspiracy theories and integration policy. He is the co-author of #Intelligence and in 2011 undertook the first ever survey of Facebook fans of far-right parties in Europe. Twitter: @JamieJBartlett.

Professor Anthony Glees MA MPhil DPhil, a professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS). He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence issues and has written and lectured on aspects of the history of British intelligence, on the Stasi, on Islamism, on terrorism and counter-terrorism, and on subversion in western democracies both today and in the past.

Additional panelists to be confirmed.

In association with:

This event will take place at the Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, W2 1JG.

Recent government proposals to allow increased police and intelligence agencies’ monitoring of email and social media communications have angered civil liberties campaigners who claim they are a breach civil liberties.

A new report by the think-tank Demos examines “the ethical, legal and operational challenges involved in using social media for intelligence and insight purposes”. Co-authored by former GCHQ director and ex-cabinet office security and intelligence chief Sir David Omand, it argues that police and intelligence agencies need to use social media as a form of intelligence but that laws need to ensure a balance is struck between security and intelligence work in this new environment.

Join us as we discuss to what extent security services should be able to monitor our cyber activity. Is this form of cyber surveillance a threat to the public’s civil liberties or necessary to keep them safe? Can a balance be struck?

The Demos report, entitled #intelligence can be downloaded here.

Chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent and author of the blog, dot.rory. Twitter:@BBCRoryCJ.

With:

Isabella Sankey, the Director of Policy at Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) which she joined in November 2007. She leads Liberty’s parliamentary lobbying and policy development, working in particular on the protection of human rights in the context of counter-terror policy. As such, she was heavily involved with Liberty’s successful Charge or Release campaign against holding terror suspects for 42 days without charge. She is a non-practising barrister and previously worked for the Legal & Constitutional Affairs Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations. In 2008 he resigned his seat and his position in the Shadow Cabinet to fight a by-election to highlight the Government’s undermining of civil liberties. After winning with a large majority, he returned to Parliament.

Jamie Bartlett, head of the violence and extremism programme at Demos. His primary research interests lie in terrorism, radicalisation and extremism, conspiracy theories and integration policy. He is the co-author of #Intelligence and in 2011 undertook the first ever survey of Facebook fans of far-right parties in Europe. Twitter: @JamieJBartlett.

Professor Anthony Glees MA MPhil DPhil, a professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS). He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence issues and has written and lectured on aspects of the history of British intelligence, on the Stasi, on Islamism, on terrorism and counter-terrorism, and on subversion in western democracies both today and in the past.

Additional panelists to be confirmed.

In association with:

The day after a public intervention from MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans, a panel as divided as it was well-informed, debated the merits of the government’s draft Communications Bill. The Frontline Club was packed and the feisty discussion began with each specialist setting out their pitch.

Professor Anthony Glees, billing himself as the “skunk at the picnic”, was unapologetic in his support for the proposals, which he said would merely extend powers that the security services already have to include newer forms of technology. Eschewing the arguments that have characterised the debate in the national press, he stated that:

 “A lack of trustfulness is the real problem here. The Bill, I’m entirely comfortable with it, I have no problem with it. In fact I’d want my money back if our security community did not attempt to extend on to the new media the things that already exist.”

Liberty’s Isabella Sankey offered a robust response. Denouncing the Bill as “rotten to the core”, she argued that it would infringe on principles of privacy and that if it were to fall into malicious hands, communications data could be extremely damaging.

David Davis MP joined Sankey with a scathing attack on the Bill, claiming the government had “the wrong aim, it was moving in the wrong direction and was starting from the wrong place.” Whilst supportive of the security agencies, Davis specified that the databases that will be created:

“[…] would be a honey pot. Not just of interest to the agencies but to every divorce lawyer in the country, paparazzi who might want to Ping where you are so they can come and photograph you. This is facilitating a breach of everybody’s privacy to almost no beneficial effect.”

Jamie Bartlett from think-tank Demos countered Davis’ argument, suggesting that British society regulates some forms of snooping and that privacy is not an absolute right – on some occasions being breached in the interests of national security. Bartlett was less troubled by security services increasing their powers than he was by the unregulated internet, controversially proposing that the Bill in some respects doesn’t go far enough:

“A police officer, a civil servant, anybody else can spend five minutes online and probably learn much more about you than he or she ever would do under the powers of this Bill. There are loads of serious questions here that I don’t think the Bill begins to address.”

The Q&A session was filled with poignant questions, including some on the effectiveness of the proposals when smart hackers are already able to use proxies and the “deep web” to hide their identity. The prospect of a generation of coders is sure to raise new dilemmas for future governments.

As for the here and now, the panellists left the stage having accepted that the public don’t currently foster much trust in the police, MPs or the security services and that this is something that needs to change if there’s to be a sensible, engaging debate on the proposals.

Watch the full event here: