[Mrs Linda Riordan in the Chair] — Backbench business — Intelligence and Security Services

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 3:29 pm on 31 October 2013.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Malcolm Rifkind Malcolm Rifkind Chair, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Chair, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Chair, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Chair, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Chair, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Chair, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Chair, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament 3:29, 31 October 2013

The right hon. Gentleman does not have the faintest idea whether the Committee was aware of programmes of any kind. We are given classified information, and the whole point of an independent Committee having access to top secret information, whatever that is, is that we do not announce what such information is. If he can devise a system whereby secret information can be made available to all law-abiding British citizens, without its being simultaneously made available to the rest of the world, I am interested in hearing about it, but I do not think that he is likely to meet that requirement.

In the short time available, I want to deal with the fundamental challenge mentioned by Dr Huppert, who secured the debate, as well as by those who have supported him. Like others, they have said that we are living in a society in which, to use their term, there is “mass surveillance”. If that means anything, it is an accusation: the implication is that all our e-mails are or will be examined by GCHQ—as it chooses and by its own methods—as though something like that was now available. They seem totally to misunderstand or not to refer to the reality of what happens with modern technology, so in the brief time available, I will share with them what they ought to know. It is not secret, but is in the public domain.

Modern computers, which can indeed digest vast amounts of e-mails or communications data, are programmed to run using certain selectors, such as an e-mail address that might belong to a terrorist or some other information relating to terrorism. They are programmed to go through millions and millions of communications and to discard, without their having been looked at—no human eye looks at any of the e-mails—all those to which selectors are not attached.

Of the totality processed by computers, perhaps 0.01% will have selectors that the computer has been programmed to look for. The communications of the other 99.99%— covering virtually every citizen of this country, bar a very small number—are never even looked at by the computer, other than in relation to a selector, such as an e-mail address. Even for the tiny minority identified by the computers as potentially relevant to terrorism, if GCHQ, MI5 or MI6 want to read the content of any of the e-mails, they have to go to the Secretary of State for permission. Under the law, only if they are given permission can the content be read.

To say that we are living in a mass surveillance society is to make a wonderful allegation that sounds vaguely sinister, but the reality is that the e-mails of pretty well everyone in the Chamber are not being intercepted or read.