A Lot To Fear

John Prescott writes:

When it was revealed the News of the World hired a private investigator to hack into the Dowlers’ mobile phone messages, there was public outrage.

It set off a chain of events that led to the paper closing, former editors being charged and the Met Police reprimanded for not doing their job.

The Leveson proposals, if backed by the papers, will go some way to make sure we get a fair and free Press that doesn’t abuse people’s rights. Because I passionately believe in a free press.

Whether it was the Mirror’s striking front page picture of those poor children who died in a gas attack in Syria or the exposure of law-breaking MPs abusing parliamentary expenses, it’s important that our media can speak the truth.

But our security services, especially GCHQ, have become a glorified private investigator, paid by a client – the US National Security Agency – to hack into everyone’s emails, texts and other personal data.

When it was exposed, did our Government and the US set up an urgent Leveson-style inquiry to get to the bottom of this massive violation of human rights and privacy? 

No – they persecuted whistle-blower Edward Snowden for leaking the information to the Guardian and then stopped and searched David Miranda, partner of the journalist who wrote the story.

This Government and the US were notified he was going to be targeted and did nothing to stop it, even though it’s been argued his detention was potentially ­illegal.

GCHQ spooks also went to the Guardian’s offices and forced its journalists to smash the computer hard drives containing Snowden’s leaked information, saying: “You’ve had your fun.”

As Deputy Prime Minister I was asked by GCHQ to sign phone tap orders in order to trace the terrorists behind Omagh. I later discovered GCHQ had been tracking these individuals for weeks and my ­signature simply legitimised this State-backed phone hacking.

In Government I questioned the £100million overspend on GCHQ’s accounts which the public auditor had ­rightly refused to sign off.

Now we discover from Snowden’s leaked documents that GCHQ was paid £100million by the US to access Britain’s intelligence gathering programmes.

So why are we doing America’s dirty work? As GCHQ has allegedly boasted, the UK has a “light oversight regime compared to the US”.

They couldn’t do it because they have “constitutional rights”. So they outsource it to us!

We need a close look at the accountability of GCHQ.

A parliamentary committee doesn’t have the resources, powers or inclination to oversee these complex activities.

Our Parliamentary committee system needs to be given the powers of subpoena to make them much more effective in holding these organisations to account.

We need a Royal Commission to recommend a proper and definable balance between our human rights and the need to protect the public.

It’s no good William Hague saying “the innocent have nothing to fear” when the very spooks violating our human rights and freedoms are hiding the truth.

We’ve all got a lot to fear.