Letters - 31 October 2014
From secrecy to words
Secrecy, surveillance and sovereignty
I am certainly grateful (17 October) that the US and UK intelligence services work together to prevent repeats of events such as those of 7 July 2005. But the revelations of Edward Snowden show that US surveillance of other sovereign nations goes dramatically beyond the necessary, even giving Angela Merkel cause to reprimand Barack Obama for allowing the monitoring of her phone calls.
The price of liberty is still and, perhaps even more so in the digital age, eternal vigilance.
Alison Leonard
In my view, there has to be some secret intelligence gathering and surveillance as is done at Menwith Hill and GCHQ. However, the key point is that there must be credible oversight and accountability of any such activities.
We are told by successive UK governments that this is done by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). We in the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) have absolutely no faith in this committee. Indeed, neither does the Home Affairs Committee who reported this year on just this subject. They said that the ISC was ‘not fit for purpose’.
We have been aware for a long time about the ECHELON system (now referred to as ‘Five Eyes’), to which I think Phillip Gething is referring.
I am presuming that Phillip is aware of the courageous and honest work of the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed the massive extent of the illegal spying on, for example, various heads of government and citizens among others.
We would be very happy to discuss further with Phillip. We have been working on these issues and others concerning the presence of the US visiting forces since 1992. If Phillip reads Margaret Nunnerley’s excellent and informative book, I think and hope that he may possibly take a different view. Far from being grateful, we should be alarmed and concerned at the activities of NSA at Menwith Hill and other US bases here and worldwide.
Lindis Percy
Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases – CAAB coordinator
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