The new chief of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, had two options when taking his post. As a relative outsider, joining the organisation from the Foreign Office, he could choose to strike a new, conciliatory tack in the post-Snowden surveillance debate – or he could defend the agency’s practices.

Barely six days into the job, Hannigan has signalled he will go with the latter. In a Financial Times opinion piece, he went much further than his predecessor’s valedictory address in pushing the traditional spy agency pro-surveillance agenda.

US technology giants, he said, have become “the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals”. Privacy “has never been an absolute right”. Even principles of free speech are terror aids: Isis are “capitalising on western freedom of expression”, he stated.

By the usually moribund rhetorical standards of senior UK intelligence officials, this is fiery stuff. But the agenda behind it is very much business as usual. The UK’s intelligence agencies take the approach that they will get little credit for protecting civil liberties, but would be on the receiving end of huge opprobrium were they to fail prevent an attack. As a result, they lobby successive governments every year for ever-more powers, a small step at a time.

Hannigan’s address included a few asides that his agency “is happy to be part of a mature debate on privacy”. But such thoughts were not his general thrust. Technology companies responding to customers’ privacy concerns after the numerous revelations of bulk surveillance programmes are “in denial” about how their networks are used. Privacy-boosting software – much of which is funded by the US state department – is a gift to terrorists, he argued.

Hannigan’s view of the Snowden reporting by the Guardian, Washington Post and others, which netted both newspapers the Pulitzer public service medal, is clear: “There is no doubt that young foreign fighters have learnt and benefited from the leaks of the past two years,” he said.

Hannigan’s course of action is a familiar one to any observer of the intelligence agencies over the past few decades: technology companies must cooperate more closely with GCHQ, the UK’s eavesdropping agency, and its allied agencies. A new deal to tackle grave terror threats must be sealed – and suffice it to say, the subtext screams that such a deal must include more, not less, access to information for GCHQ spies.

By implication, social media sites should more heavily police their content, and possibly even narrow their range of permissible expression. And privacy enhancing services must be viewed with the gravest suspicion. A global debate on privacy is all very well, but the serious (and real) threats facing the country must take priority.

The message may prove a winner to many people who hear it, who share the view that further powers are needed to tackle the extremist threats faced by the UK at home and abroad. But to those who in the aftermath of the surveillance revelations of the past year hoped for serious engagement and debate, there seemed little to clutch to in this.

Hannigan may be thumping the table harder than his predecessors, but the content of his message remains almost entirely the same.