you're watching bbc news. i'm babita sharma. our top story: more than a million people are forced to leave their homes as a storm batters japan. it is the strongest typhoon to hit the country and over 25 years, with winds of up to 200 miles an hour. the veteran journalist bob woodward has made explosive revelations about president trump's white house, claiming that even the president's closest a ides claiming that even the president's closest aides see him as a danger to national security. in this story is trending on the bbc website. the ru by trending on the bbc website. the ruby slippers from the wizard of oz have been found 13 years after they we re have been found 13 years after they were stolen. the shoes, said to be the most valuable props in the movie industry, were taken from a museum in the middle of the night in minnesota. now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur.

most of us have embedded the internet and smart technology in our lives. we might like to believe we're autonomous digital citizens. but what if our behaviours are now being monitored and modified by private and state actors over which we have no control? how alarmed should we be? well, my guest is michael chertoff, director of homeland security in the bush administration, and now a leading thinker on cyber security. has the internet left every one of us dangerously exposed? michael chertoff, welcome to hardtalk.

good to be on. i'm tempted to begin by checking to see if you are the same michael chertoff who, a decade or more ago, was an arch—advocate of enhanced electronic surveillance of citizens, in pursuit of national security. are you that same guy? well, i was the secretary of homeland security, but it wasn't really surveillance in the sense that we're thinking about it now. it was about taking data that was readily available, and a fairly modest amount of data, and beginning to analyse it so we could find connections between travellers, for example, coming from overseas and known terrorists in the middle east and elsewhere. it was a lot of data, because it was telecommunications, but also it was the internet, because we were then talking about the patriot act, of which you were one of the key architects.

it was a period when the us government was preoccupied with electronic counterterror measures, and you personally seemed to be a great supporter of expanding the role of state surveillance. actually, it was a fairly modest amount of data, surprisingly modest. for example, what we looked to collect on international travellers were things like the credit card used to pay for the ticket, the contacting address and contact telephone number, something about their itinerary, and a couple of other fairly modest data points. and what we found was, if you collected that in bulk, you would be able to determine whether someone travelling, for example, had been financed by an al qaeda financier, which actually happened on 9/11 with some of the hijackers. so it was comparatively little data, but... but it was the beginning of something. absolutely. and here's what many people will see as a damascene conversion, where you have spent time over the last years,

since you left government, left homeland security, obviously thinking a great deal and very hard about the relationship between the citizen and both the state and private tech giants that now dominate our lives. and it seems you have become increasingly concerned about surveillance. i think that's correct. and one of the interesting things, stephen, is, and one of the moments that caused me to write the book, was to see criticism of government surveillance after the snowden episode, coming from people in the tech community, when i knew they were collecting far more information than, in its wildest dreams, the us government imagined it would collect. and they weren't collecting it and order to protect people from being blown up, they were collecting it to sell you things, or as we've seen more recently with cambridge analytica, to try to induce you, politically, to go in a certain direction. and while i'm not saying the government doesn't have things to be corrected and adjusted, and i do think that the government

needed to make some adjustments, it was remarkable to me that we spent a lot of time agonising over the government and very little over the private sector, which was collecting 20 times as much data. are you saying to me that you think we, as citizens, should be more concerned about the power vested in the huge tech corporations? and we can name perhaps the biggest of all as being facebook, google, amazon, apple, microsoft — i think some call them the big five. are you saying we should be more concerned about their power than state power? i wouldn't say more concerned. what i would say is we have spent a lot of time over the last 20 or 30 years trying to adjust the way the government supervises government surveillance, the way the courts supervise it. so that actually now, what the government does, at least in the us, and i think probably here in britain as well, is really operate under a very strict set of rules, that thejudges supervise and enforce. what we have not done is anything remotely comparable to that in the private sector.

and i'm not saying that we ought to eliminate the private sector's ability to collect and use data, because there are beneficial things, but what i'm saying is we've left it largely unsupervised until relatively recently. we had on this show not long ago a tech guru, a guy called jaron lanier, who for years worked in silicon valley with start—ups, made quite a lot of money, and now writes a great deal about the tech sector. he's just written a book about why we should all delete our social media accounts. he thinks they are fundamentally dangerous. do you? well, i don't actually have social media. you don't? no twitter, no facebook, nothing? correct. why, why? partly because i'm not sure i want to put the data in these platforms, partly because i do know what happens with that data, and partly because i have alternative ways of communicating with the people i want to talk to. but you want to reduce your digital footprint? exactly, and i'm not off the grid,

i'm not a, you know, a luddite who wants to go back to the 19th century, but i do try to think carefully when i engage in the internet, is it valuable to me? what is the risk, what is the downside risk? and then i balance those in what i call a mindful engagement with the internet. and i understand some people with far—flung families like to be able to use these platforms, but you need to understand what you're giving and what you're getting. and do you think most people do? i mean, there's a fascinating quote from the sort of anthropologist yuval noah harari, who wrote a book about sort of human evolution, but now is focused on tech, and he says, "we have given away our personal data in exchange for free e—mail and funny cat videos. it's a bit like african and native american tribes who unwittingly sold entire countries to the european imperialists in exchange for beads and trinkets." do you think we so undervalue the value of our own data?

i think there are two problems. one is i do agree that we've often undervalued the significance of our data, which some people describe as the new gold. but there's another factor. we don't understand that in addition to the data that we knowingly put out there, there's an awful lot of data about us that others put out there. you go to the grocery store, you get a discount card, and you buy things. they're recording what you buy. you wear a kind of sports watch or something that records your exercise, that's being recorded and uploaded. that may be sold to somebody. the way you drive may be recorded on a device that's implanted in your car, and that may be sold as well. and then someone may collect all of the data, and now get a quite accurate picture of what you eat, how you sleep, what your exercise is, where you go, what you read, as well as who your friends are. now, in china, they are taking all of this data and they're talking about a social credit score, where the government will decide

whether you are a, quote, "good citizen". and if you are, you'll get benefits, and if you're a bad citizen, you won't. and frankly, they're going to have access to more data than big brother in 1984 could ever have imagined. and could that come to western democracies too? i think we're beginning to see that. you start to see, for example, insurance companies talking about, well, maybe we will adjust your premium rates depending on whether you're driving in a safe way or not, or using healthy things or not. and i could see us moving to the point, and i talk about it in the book, where pretty much everything you do is scripted, one way or another, by that monitoring. but in a way, yours is a counsel of despair, because in this book of yours, which is subtitled reclaiming our cyber security in the digital age, you actually say privacy — that wonderful and important concept that has been with us forever — we have to jettison it. it's too late. privacy, in the traditional sense, we no longer have. that seems to me to be

a counsel of despair. i'm actually saying we need to move on from protection, from thinking about privacy as keeping things hidden and confidential, into a larger question, which is giving us the right to control our data, even when it's been collected by somebody else. in other words, we're moving away from trying to hide things to saying, ok, you may be able to collect my data, it may be unavoidable, but i have a right to say what you do with it and what you use it for. but that's fantasy. that is neither true of the way our data is used by the state, nor is it true of the way our data is used by the private sector. actually, though, the europeans now have passed the general data protection regulation. and what that does is, and there are some things about it which i disagree with, but in the main what it does is say to anybody who has your data, if you want to use it, you must ask for permission to do it. and i've been getting e—mails now from various providers asking me if it's ok if they use my data to sell me things. and sometimes i say yes, most often i say no.

of course, as you say, the data protection laws are enhanced in europe, not in the united states. is it time — and you're a former government man — is it time for the us government to take on the biggest tech companies, perhaps to regard them as monopolies that need to be undone, certainly to regulate them in a way that they've never been regulated before? i think that's coming. if you look in california, for example, the state of california passed a law on managing data that's very similar to the european rule. and, of course, california is where many of these companies are located. and i think even now you see the companies, in the wake of cambridge analytica and the russian information operations, beginning to realise they have a much greater responsibility to manage the data than they used to think they did. yeah, the problem is that one of the many things that came as a revelation out of the facebook cambridge analytica farrago was the stunning lack

of knowledge from many senior politicians of the way the tech sector works. there was that extraordinary moment in the interrogation of mark zuckerberg by politicians on capitol hill where it became plain that several of them had no idea how facebook, which is free to use, actually made any money. and zuckerberg had, with a straight face, a po—face, had to say senator, we run ads. right. if there is that level of ignorance, how can lawmakers even begin to think they can construct the right kind of legalframework to protect citizens from these tech giants? well, the good news is that people have now woken up that they better learn about this, and i have to say there are members of congress that are well educated and informed about what goes on here. also interesting is to watch the courts. over the last several years, the us supreme court has begun to look at some of the issues involving data, and actually has begun to evolve some of the rules about requiring search warrants

and similar kinds of permission, in a recognition that the volume of data that's being collected by the government is transformative, and therefore we have to have a measure of supervision greater than we used to have. should companies like google and facebook, which are very close to old—fashioned monopolies in this sort of information world of ours, should they be broken up? it's hard to break them up, because there's something called a network effect. a network effect basically says at some point the value of the network is directly equivalent to what its scale is. if you break it up, you reduce the actual value to people. but there are things you can do. think about a utility, or a common carrier like a train. you can put some regulation in place. so i argue in the book, for example, that if you want to use facebook, but you don't want to give them a right to use your data willy—nilly, they should be able to charge you a fee, but they shouldn't be able to make you sacrifice your privacy as a condition of participation.

you have talked about different solutions to what you see as the looming, you know, potential threat of the pervasiveness of the internet and the explosion in big data, and you talk about the need for international treaties, so that across national borders, governments can come together with a collective sort of agreed view on what the relationship between the citizen and the state should be. in the context of donald trump's america, putin's russia, xijinping's china, there is no way on earth that the biggest powers in the world are going to come together on an international treaty to control the relationship between the citizen and the state, in terms of big data. stephen, i agree with you that the idea of some master mega—agreement is not realistic. i think there are some areas that we can do some things internationally. for example, on the issue of what do you do when the data about the citizen is held in another country, what court has

the authority to order the data to be turned over? what you wind up with now is often a conflict among the countries. but now we have, for example, a law passed in the us, and a treaty or agreement we've reached with the uk that's going to streamline this. so things like that, i think, we can make progress in. but we can't be naive enough to think that we're going to solve everything. with respect, i am quoting you directly now. quote, "the creation of enforceable treaties, international agreements that protect the right of the data subject." i do think that sounds frankly, fantastical. what it is really designed to say is this. if you an american citizen, this is a real case, we had data in ireland. the question is what laws apply? we have now reached an agreement in the uk where, depending on where the citizenship is, that depends on what law applies. will that work with russia? no. could we reach a set of agreements with europe and countries in south asia and south america? yes. that will be progress.

we are also talking about what would be off—limits in conflict. we cannot do it with bombs, a violation of international law, should we do that, you cannot use cyber weapons to destroy hospitals or to knock civilian airliners out of the sky? i think we might be able to reach some agreements on that. as long as you have reasonable expectations, there is an opportunity for progress. the received wisdom in washington right now is that the states with the most effective cyber security operations within their, sort of, national—security programmes are china, russia, north korea, iran. i don't see of those countries, even on the basis you have described, of coming up with a mutually agreeable form of words, i did see any of them countries being interested in beginning a dialogue. china i would put in a slightly different category, there are some things, for example the global

financial system, where china has a vested interest to keep that functioning with integrity and availability, they might see it in their interest to look at an area of not doing anything destructive. we are talking about the context of a ongoing, long winded scandal in washington, all about the degree of russian meddling and interference, much of it cyber—based, in the last 2016 elections. let's get real. i am not under the illusions that i think russia would lay off our elections. we should continue to insist it is wrong to meddle. but even there, the financial sector, i have spoken to russian officials who said look, maybe the financial system ought to be off—limits. i have modest expectations, i don't think we will solve all the problems, but we could start to create some dialogue that might solve some problems. when we start talking russia, into election meddling and everything that has gone around the whole mueller investigation, i cannot help asking you about the climate in washington,

dc today, in particular, your view of what donald trump is doing to the us presidency. other members of your national security community, if i could put it like that, in washington, dc, have described him as being "corrosive, fundamentally damaging to an america's long—term national security interest." do you feel that way? i think some things he does, for example the administration and congress have imposed tough sanctions on the russians and will do more. they did respond to chemical weapons used in syria. those things are good. i obviously do not agree with the attacks on the press... before the election, you signed that collective letter, if i can put it this way, from the national—security elite, warning america about what you saw as the dangers of trump. we now havejohn brennan saying

this, "i take no delight in seeing the steady collapse of us presidency. all i can do is take comfort in knowing that the rule of law and our great government institutions are prevailing." do you see the trump presidency as in a state of collapse? i don't see it in a state of collapse. i think the rule of law and our institutions continue to work. as i said, i don't think attacking the press or attacking the rule of law is an appropriate thing to do. i have a lot of faith, with people who work in the government, including judges, members of congress, members of the executive branch. are you treading a little carefully, because whenjohn brennan said things like ijust quoted, he saw his security clearances completely removed and he no longer got the confidential information that he had had before. what about you ? i am not treading carefully. currently are you still on that list of former national security people who get the clearance?

let me explain. clearances are given not to give you things, but when the government wants you to help you can come in and help. give them advice based on real information? correct. i don't discuss clearances but what i will tell you... the former director of homeland security, you are on that list. one of the things i will say is that i do think whatever your views on policies are, as a former official in security or military domain, you cannot be personal. i don't like it when former generals get up and as it happened on both sides of the 2016 campaign, start to argue political things. but this isn't personal, he simply cares about the national security of the united states of america and he thinks donald trump is threatening it. others, including a former navy admiral, william mcraven, if you take away from brennan, take it away from me too. i think it was wrong

to take the clearance away, to pay somebody back because you don't like what they said. i think i also have to say that i thinkjohn brennan, describing someone he didn't like as "treasonous", was over the top. i would like to see both sides calm the temperature down. there are legitimate areas of serious disagreement. we ought to talk about those areas. when we encourage what we called the "food fight", hurling names at each other, are not doing anybody a favour. america is very polarised right now. at the heart of it seems to be a notion that donald trump seems to have, there is a deep state, the elite, including

the national—security establishment, gentlemen such as yourself, who are determined to bring him down. he is telling america these people don't want me to succeed because i am your guy, i'm working for the little guy and they want to stop me. how worried are you? perhaps it was symbolised by thejohn mccain funeral where all of the people were talking about honour, service, dignity, duty — the message was clear — these are values donald trump does not have. do you worry about that polarisation? i do worry about polarisation. i see it not only in the us, i have been travelling around europe, i have watched what is going on in germany, in sweden where there is a right wing party they say may do well at the polls, i see it here in great britain. i think we have a serious social problem now in the fact that we cannot seem to have a legitimate disagreement about policy without immediately turning it into a very personal and angry fight.

it is almost like we are football fans and we want our team to win, no matter what. i take your point. there are nationalist, populist movements in many different parts of the world, but donald trump is doing special. he's questioning people like yourself, people in the national security establishment, saying you are part of the elite who works against the interests of ordinary americans. how dangerous is that? it is dangerous if people ultimately buy it, and if we get so polarised that a significant number of people accept that. i don't think we are there yet. i understand there are people who do buy it. you can find people who buy extreme views in any country in the world. i still think, by and large, most americans may view it as hyperbolic, they may feel sympathy, but i don't think they are not quite there yet. but i will agree with you that it is a very bad thing to have leaders talking about those with whom he or she disagree as bad people, as enemies of the state. that is a classic thing you hear from somebody who is an authoritarian. but i think notjust in the us, around the western world, we have got to take a serious look at why we have reached a point that we have this level of social fracture. even bearing in mind the russians are doing their level best to pour fuel onto the fire. you are a national security guy,

have you ever been more worried about the state of america's national security? that is a really interesting question. i guess i would say to you this, in my adult life i have never been more worried about our national security. if i go back to when i was a child, which was the height of the cold war, and i was alive although as a little kid during the cuban missile crisis, that was pretty worrisome too. i would have to say in the last 50 years, certainly since the fall of the soviet union, i have not seen this much sense of foreboding and i think this will be with us for a while. but i do think people have to get engaged. it's not enough to complain. you've got to vote, you've got to get out there and be heard on issues that matter to you. but you also to be tolerant and friendly to people who you disagree with.

we have to end it there. michael chertoff, i thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello again. well, if you are heading outside over the next few hours in england and wales, chances are it is going to be pretty cloudy and that cloud will be thick enough for some rain for this weak weather front we have across the far east. weatherwise, a few showers into western scotland from time to time over the next few hours, that rain is mostly focused was the eastern coast of norfolk and suffolk. that is where it

will be the heaviest. a lot of cloud for inland and wales, but it is keeping temperatures up. for the early rises, double figure temperatures, not too cold a start to the day. for northern ireland, chilly air but not as cold as it was last night. nevertheless, a cool start. should see some early morning sunshine for scotland and northern ireland before the cloud thickens up and we we start of the outbreak of rain around to the afternoon, that turning progressively heavier particularly across western scotland, turning wet for northern ireland. england and wales for the most part is a dry kind of day, cloud with us for most of the day, but there will be some sunny spells coming through every now and then. temperatures high teens to low 20s. however, towards the end of the week it will get more unsettled, cool and breezier, with rain at times too. here is the chance for thursday. low pressure starts to form around about scotland and that area of low pressure is going to be bringing extensive outbreaks of rain across scotland, moving

into northern england, and we will see a weather front sliding in across wales, probably bringing some wet weather through thursday afternoon across parts of the midlands and maybe southern counties of england as well. in between these areas, for the lucky few, we might stay dry. those temperatures will be edging down, it will feel noticeably cooler, noticeably so across the north of the uk. towards the end of the week, the jet stream pattern amplifies. if we were underneath this ridge we would have fine and dry weather, but we are not. we are underneath this trough. we get an area of low pressure spinning around like a washing machine right over the top of the uk, that's through friday into the weekend as well. as you can imagine, it will be quite an unsettled weather picture. for friday, we will seek pretty extensive rain across the northern half of the uk, there could be a few showers even in the south. an unsettled kind of day. quite breezy and cool with temperatures coming down, looking at highs between 1a, maybe 19 degrees if we see brighter weather in the south.

it looks like it will continue to be a settled into the weekend, heavy showers across the north of the uk for england and wales, a belt of heavy rain working in across saturday, turning a bit drier and brighter by sunday. that is your weather. hello, everyone. welcome. i'm rice hizon in singapore. the headlines: a million people are forced to leave their homes as 200 kilometres an hour winds batter japan, in the worst storms to hit the islands in 25 years. explosive revelations about president trump's white house. veteran journalist bob woodward says even trump's closest aides saw him as a danger to national security. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: we'll have the latest on a bridge collapse in kolkata, where many are feared to be trapped under the rubble. and they're crazy, rich, and asian. it had box office success in america.