https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-trade-off-individual

Privacy of the individual, secrecy of the state and national security have been in sharp focus in past weeks due to the leak of material from the US’s National Security Agency (NSA).

It has been revealed that under the so-called Prism programme millions of phone calls have been gathered and Internet use has been monitored on a massive scale. In the UK there are suggestions that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has also accessed the material.

The chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Conservative MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme “in order to protect the public that does require, as President Obama said in Washington, some intrusion on privacy in certain circumstances”. The murder on 22 May of Drummer Lee Rigby reignited calls for the draft communications data bill to be re-examined.

As the debate about individual privacy, state secrecy and national security continues, we will be joined by a panel of experts to ask whether it is possible to strike a balance. Are we moving towards a surveillance state or is the idea of online privacy a myth?

Chaired by Mark Urban, diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Two’s Newsnight. He is the author of several books including Big Boys’ Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA, The Tank War and Task Force Black: The explosive true story of the SAS and the secret war in Iraq.

The panel:

Sir Malcolm Rifkind is MP for Kensington and chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. In 1990 he became Secretary of State for Transport and in 1992 Secretary of State for Defence. From 1995-97 he was Foreign Secretary. He was re-elected as a Member of Parliament in May 2005 for Kensington and Chelsea. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Kensington in May 2010. He served as the Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions and Welfare Reform until December 2005.

John Kampfner is adviser to Google on freedom of expression and culture. He is an author, broadcaster and commentator specialising in UK politics, international affairs, media and human rights issues. Previously he served as chief executive of Index on Censorship from Sept 2008 until March 2012 and was editor of the New Statesman from 2005-2008. He is the author of a number of books including, most recently, Freedom For Sale.

John Naughton is a senior research fellow at CRASSH, emeritus professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, vice-president of Wolfson College, Cambridge and an adjunct professor at University College Cork. He is director of the Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme and a well-known newspaper columnist, writing the Observer’s Networker column. He is author of a well-known history of the Internet A Brief History of the Future and most recently From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: what you really need to know about the Internet.

Helen Margetts is the director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a department of the University of Oxford investigating individual, collective and organisational behaviour online. Her research focuses on digital governance and politics, investigating the dynamics of online relationships between governments and citizens, and collective action on the Internet. She is the co-author of Paradoxes of Modernization: Unintended Consequences of Public Policy Reform; The Tools of Government in the Digital Age; and Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State and e-Government. She currently holds an ESRC professorial fellowship entitled The Internet, Political Science and Public Policy, is editor-in-chief of the journal Policy and Internet and sits on the Advisory Board of the Government Digital Service in the Cabinet Office.

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: