The first live radio interview with a head of MI5 – a person whose identity was once so secret they were known only as M – was certainly a broadcasting coup; but it was also the first public drumbeat of a carefully choreographed campaign by the government to revive its snooper’s charter legislation.



It was no accident that Andrew Parker’s warning of the scale of the terror threat and the need for new powers to meet it followed a rather less well-publicised Whitehall meeting on Tuesday after the home secretary, Theresa May, had invited the internet and phone companies in for discussions.

May told them that she was keen to secure their practical support for the investigatory powers bill that is expected to overhaul Britain’s surveillance laws in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures of the security services’ unwarranted bulk collection of personal communication data.

If, as expected, that legislation includes powers compelling the US and British internet and phone companies to store their customers’ data (which tracks their internet, phone and social media use), and give the security services access to it on request, then the home secretary needs the industry’s practical support to make it workable.

It is reported that she has only a “very narrow window” to secure that, as the government wants to publish a workable draft bill in October. The companies, including BT, Vodafone, Virgin Media and EE, are said to have raised concerns about cost, impact on customer trust, civil liberties and the need for strong judicial oversight.

In his unprecedented interview, Parker made clear that the current nature of the terror threat requires an overhaul of Britain’s surveillance laws and attempted to make the case for the voluntary cooperation of the internet companies, with new forms of mass surveillance based on an “ethical responsibility” to track terror suspects and paedophiles.

While insisting it was not his job to put forward detailed proposals, Parker made clear he was happy to see new legislation drawn up on the basis of reports by the intelligence and security committee (ISC) and by the official terror law watchdog, David Anderson QC.

The ISC, partly in response to Snowden, called for the existing patchwork of surveillance laws to be swept away, saying they were “incomprehensible to all but a tiny band of initiates”.

Anderson insisted that the security agencies made out “a detailed operational case” before there was any further extension of mass surveillance powers such as, for example, the bulk collection of everyone’s personal web browsing history and the use of data-mining programmes to throw up possible suspect alerts.

The terror watchdog did make out a strong case that the 2,000 or so ministerial warrants issued each year to intercept the content of suspects’ phone calls, to read their emails or texts, should be issued by a judge rather than a politician.

But, as Parker pointed out, Anderson did not call for the replacement of existing oversight powers, which allow the police and other public bodies to make 500,000 requests a year for their customers’ communications data without the need for individual ministerial or judicial approval.

There are those who will say that the increasing move to encrypted web services renders even these extra snooper’s charter powers out of date even before they reach the statute book. David Cameron has made clear his ambition to tackle the even more complicated question of encryption, but not until 2016 at the earliest.

Going back to that “ethical responsibility” the head of MI5 says the internet and phone companies owe the security services. These US companies already cooperate in individual cases when there is a risk to life such as a named terror suspect, an active paedophile or a kidnapped child. Facebook even has a dedicated team in Dublin handling such British police requests.

What is being asked now is something different. That the US companies themselves should proactively monitor their customers’ data to alert the British security services of a potential terror or crime suspect. To make the case Parker cited the failure of Facebook to report postings by the murderer of the soldier Lee Rigby as an example where the companies had failed.

But as the ISC report into the Woolwich terror attack showed, the security services regarded Michael Adebowale, one of the two men convicted for the murder, as a low-level threat and so “intrusive action would not have been justified”. It is hard to see how, if it was not justified for MI5 to take intrusive action to monitor Adebowale’s online activity so as to detect a threat to kill a British soldier, it could be justified for a US internet firm to do so. It also, by the way, documented nine separate failings by the police and intelligence services in the case.

The head of MI5 may now be known as Andrew Parker rather than simply “M”, but the familiar script of a fresh demand to build a bigger surveillance state never seems to change.