British lawmakers condemn oversight of spy agencies after Snowden revelations
All-party parliamentary group demands reforms to make British security services more accountable
Edward Snowden’s disclosures of the scale of mass surveillance are “an embarrassing indictment” of the weak nature of the oversight and legal accountability of Britain’s security and intelligence agencies, members of parliament have concluded.
A highly critical report by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee published on Friday calls for a radical reform of the current system of oversight of intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, arguing that the system is so ineffective it is undermining the credibility of parliament itself.
“It is designed to scrutinise the work of George Smiley, not the 21st-century reality of the security and intelligence services.”
The Members of Parliament (MPs) say the system was designed in a pre-internet age when a person’s word was accepted without question. “It is designed to scrutinise the work of George Smiley [hero of John Le Carre’s Cold War spy novels], not the 21st-century reality of the security and intelligence services,” said committee chairman, Keith Vaz. “The agencies are at the cutting edge of sophistication and are owed an equally refined system of democratic scrutiny. It is an embarrassing indictment of our system that some in the media felt compelled to publish leaked information to ensure that matters were heard in parliament.”
The cross-party report is the first official British acknowledgement that Snowden’s disclosures of the mass harvesting of personal phone and internet data need to lead to serious improvements in the oversight and accountability of the security services.
The MPs call for radical reform of the system of oversight including the election of the membership of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), including its chairman, and an end to their exclusive oversight role. Its chairman should also be a member of the largest opposition political party, the MPs say, in a direct criticism of its current head, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who is a former Conservative party foreign secretary.
