Reblogged from Michael Meacher MP:
After all the Guardian’s efforts over the last several months (entirely
properly in my view) to get the issue of mass surveillance on to the national
agenda and to get it properly regulated to prevent systematic abuse, the paper’s
sense of triumph in finally obtaining a parliamentary inquiry is in my view
entirely misconceived. All that has been agreed is to extend the scope of
ongoing enquiries already being undertaken by the Intelligence and Security
Committee (ISC). Just about everything is wrong with that. It is being
undertaken by the very same committee which has proved such a pussycat in the
hands of the spooks – just what it was intended to be of course by the
establishment – and it is a foregone conclusion that the result will be
unqualified approval for present arrangements, give or take some minor
re-jigging to show how responsive the government and the security services are
to popular disquiet. Worse, it is being led by the current ISC chairman, Sir
Malcolm Rifkind, the classic Tory establishment figure who wholly lacks
independence because of his historical baggage – he was previously himself a
foreign secretary responsible for MI6. A more stitched up committee it would
be difficult to find.
The central question will be: where is the balance to be struck between
ensuring the nation’s security is fully preserved and safeguarding citizens’
right to privacy and protection against arbitrary abuse of power? As if he
wasn’t already badly compromised, Rifkind has recently vouchsafed to us his
opinion that all the proper legal safeguards are in place, so there’s really
nothing to worry about. There’s nothing like having a committee and chair
who’ve made up their mind before the inquiry starts. This is the same
committee which never uncovered the massive illegal activities being undertaken
under their noses by MI5/6 and GCHQ in their Tempora programme, which went along
with the Home Office Communications Bill designed to legitimise GCHQ’s
previously illegal activities, and which even when Tempora was exposed made no
attempt to raise the alarm – quite the reverse, they sought to bury it.
As the Guardian has comprehensively set out, the catch-all phrase ‘national
security’ has repeatedly over the last 40 years been used, not to protect the
nation, but to cover up the government’s embarrassment – over the uncovering of
GCHQ in 1976, Zircon and the BBC, communications intercepts, Spycatcher, Matrix
Churchill, a SAS whistleblower, disclosure of White House minutes about bombing
Iraq, Wikileaks, Guantanamo, and a plan to close half the rail network.
Unsurprisingly it is being used again by the enemies of freedom, those who will
stop at nothing to prevent the dirty secrets of the State from being exposed.
But to investigate all this we need a genuinely independent inquiry, not a
trumped-up cabal.
