led to a. welcome to serve. shevardnadze the internet has given intelligence agencies unprecedented capital to. anyone they will but it has also empowered whistleblowers to shed light on what's really going on behind closed doors it's running justified if the government is trying to protect society and this is what we're going to talk about today. spying on phone calls e-mails shadowing people on their travels. the n.s.a.

has access to the most intimate details of billions of never before has a spy agency how the ability to track anyone a. cloak and dagger being replaced by. your screen. the real james bond. is the digital revolution giving secret service too much. and our guest today is michael smith former british military intelligence officer and author of michael it's really great to have you on our show today so as an intelligence insider what is your take on whistleblowers that have recently been in this spot like such as that sounds manning snowden do they deserve scorn or praise or are they there's a mix of the two really i think. the big one of course has been. i think that the information he provided was very important because we didn't know

the extent of government surveillance of. telephone calls. and he did in this country a couple years. ago the government tried to pass a bill through parliament called the data communications bill which would have allowed to force communications suppliers providers to provide details of the balance telephone calls and such like. peas threw them out the parliamentarians through that and said we don't want it please ministers this is a prime minister of gone into parliament so we need this bill when actually they had all the data already they were lying to parliament so that's some major issue there but more importantly of course there is this whole surveillance issue and how people feel about a government the prize in everything you do absolutely everything now but also we've seen in a document showing that the n.s.a.

has given money to g c h q isn't that a compromise of national interest sense aren t. one intelligence service receives money from a foreign power. there's always been this link since the second war war between it is saying g c h q and i don't see personally i don't see an issue with that because obviously britain america be very close our eyes. britain doesn't have the money obviously that america has to for these massive surveillance programs and interception of foreign communications i think there has to be a distinct difference between. a foreign in you for governments communication for military communication and of course for britain and america about. as long as certainly you annoy of being alive that's what you've

been watching the russians and you guys have been watching us so that's a normal part of international relations and i don't see that there's a major problem there i think people understand that goes on it's when the currying out surveillance of their own societies of course was something that went on extensively during the cold war and nice to block and we railed against now we find that we've been doing it ourselves. and when we talk about snowden's revelations as far as the british or american society go i mean that file it's reveal surveillance on a level that is precedented is that scale of spying really necessary i mean especially considering something like the boston marathon bombings is it even use for. well this is a big question isn't it i mean some of the stuff that the americans have been doing the main way for example which is a collection of domestic data. including telephone cause was going on before nine

eleven so. you have to question whether it's as effective as they claim. is you have to question whether it's as important as they claim it is of course all our country is for britain america russia. china every one of those countries has problems with al-qaeda terrorists and we have to deal with terrorists and we've all had terrorist attacks various times and that's the major threat and of course the government has a responsibility to keep a check on it but actually if you look at al qaida and its capabilities in recent years they have good militias very very heavily. it is arguable that the threat from al qaida terrorism is is much lower now than it ever was and it's highly questionable in my view whether you need such

a person phase of surveillance system. i'm not making a judgment i'm just saying that these are questions that have to be asked and particular of course the key issue here an issue in america is that. stearns these. these surveillance operations appear to be illegal under all laws so why is the government the sure. why oh minister is signing the bill worry saying it's ok because i've signed it. does of course make it legal if the president signs it off in america it's it's legal but. it's still highly questionable it's not be parsed by either congress or parliament in britain. i think that. the there are huge question mark sort of of this should be happening in a way it's happening i couldn't agree with the or i probably more because like it's

all passing under the blanket of the war against terror and i don't see how snowden's revelations have hurt counter-terrorism work in britain or in the usa right he has just said to the world that we're all being listened to you. yeah i mean i think to be candid i don't think there's the revelations as they've appeared in the guardian or the washington post or the new york times or beagle i don't think they've had any caused any damage to security and i think there were a few minor things about the use of sources which. we had some revel a tree value but frankly the damage was done not when when the guardian published its stories about edward snowden's leaks and n.s.a. and the c.h.p. surveillance the damage was done but edward snowden flew into hong kong international airport and the chinese got details of how they'd be doing what

they did so that's the damage to national security for britain and america but over the years there's always been these national security scandals and the security services the detergent services recover every country has had its traitor but also your views there were a trade area the security services had there traitors to the snowden i trained here i'm not i'm not right now i don't see snowden as a traitor actually i see him is rather naive young man who sprayed information all over the place where really what he needed to do was bring out the information that mattered we've seen large amounts of information slowly sleep out into the public consciousness and very slowly over here much quicker in

america. but some of the guardian's revelations of being really of the interesting boring some of the being spectacular i mean only recently they revealed. as yours something like the fifty or sixty or expose a from this. no leaks that g.c. h.q. would handle handed over the data every single british telephone call mobile phone id dead to email identity to the americans that sort of information is is really damaging that sort of information is is having an impact in britain initially the impact was was very light people sort of thought well the intelligence services should be looking for al-qaeda terrorists but that is over here the extent of the whole thing has come out and people are beginning to question it much much more than they had previously and i think you know that in

a situation where m.p.'s had actually rejected a bill that sought to provide this sort of information where jesus was already providing this information to ministers to the prime minister i think that's discreet so duplicity it's just the wrong way to treat the british people it's the wrong way to treat m.p.'s and parliament which you know we we rest here on this idea that we live in a democratic society if you abuse the instruments of democratic power then you actually you want living in a democratic power anymore you're living in what is increasingly becoming what we're sleepwalking towards a dystopian society here because you know it's not just these telephone calls these emails that being said if you walk down the street cameras follow you there or your your car or if you drive along main roads your car is registered because the

cameras pick up your registration plate. your sat nav can be traced your mobile phone can be traced your use of data cards can be traced all of this can be traced with just a few computer algorithm. away from a society where bureaucrat could type a good mind already one's name and get up a whole farm on those. aren't actually have to be told precisely where we are at a moment that's the sort of society the sort of society that george orwell wrote about a ninety day before the british really wants to live in i don't think any citizen in the world really wants to live in that sort of society well if you ask me why i call the big brother has become our reality now and we're going to take a short break and when we come back why the former military intelligence officer and author michael smith well talk about how the times are changing the work of

secret services stay with us folks. this is the media leave us so we leave maybe. by the same motions your. party is able. to is that no one is asking with again they deserve answers from. politic only. social science center just published a study suggesting that two thirds of muslims in western europe hold their religious roles and the laws of the countries that believe that if you read the

bible if you if you go into christianity you find the sentence that you should obey god more than caesar. means religious schools more important. more convincing those of the spirits of the very same thing that is now ready to the muslims. millions around the globe struggle with hunger each good. what if someone offers a lifetime food supply no charge. against g.m.o. and we think that's. the genetic anymore the right products are priest to tool there is no. evidence that there is any problem with

genetic engineering would you make a deal. or is free cheese always in the most truck i don't believe that. free. enterprise is profit. these golden rice are cheap. these are they could spend countless hours here braving the elements in order to stand up to us oil giants chevron. this comes after a massive hunger strike that returned the world's attention to the place that some have dubbed the gulag of our time. it's an undeclared global battlefield in which yemen is just one of the front lines

. and we're back with former military intelligence officer and historian michael smith great to have you back now you work with a story about the u.s. and u.k. intelligence community providing false information to justify the invasion of iraq in two thousand and three was it incompetence a genuine mistake complicity with the government's what did you conclude. what did i conclude i think there was. the problem with the british

intelligence area was that it got too close to government in terms of what government want to do it was the role of the intelligence that provided needed television that was required so it provided the government with the information it felt it needed to justify the war when actually that information was probably not as strong as. the government wanted it the government then ranted up even further. by writing could lead to action to the intelligence they published the intelligence in the dossier and they put it in introduction which. intelligence that was in the dossier then they briefed out the same guy. as the campbell who was mr blair's spin doctor briefed out to the newspapers an even more top

version of of the intelligence so the intelligence started off reasonably worl and if being kept within the proper narcisse if it been reported with the proper care of it it would not cause the damage it did but the but unfortunately it was distorted further up the line by the politicians by by mr campbell the political spin spin spin master for a paternity blair sensitive problems here first of all in light of fixing the intelligence about iraq how can people in the u.s. and u.k. trust their intelligence services at all and what about the government how do they know that they're not being misled by the secret services as well. well i think that in america the cia was bypassed really by the pentagon and that you have to

remember the pentagon was run at the time by wrong donald rumsfeld who was very very hardline very right wing. defense secretary determined. to use nine eleven to attack iraq from the very start so determined to prove that iraq was a major threat when actually it was a major threat and we do have this problem which didn't just occur with iraq of course it's occurred. with libya as world where countries which weren't major threats we've got involved in wars in which we didn't need to get involved in at all. the intelligence was fixed in america by the pentagon and by within the pentagon. and the cia reacted against that and tried to fight against it and there is some confusion over the detail there because the cia thought that my

six got some stuff from when actually they got some stuff right that stuff particular stuff right. m i six of course relied too heavily because of the political pressure from above on sources which could not take the responsibility could not take that. did not have the or torah to that they were given by m i six calling that thank you and a brit. well. it was where you start putting pressure on people for information then all sorts of things start happening you put stress on the system if you've got an agent who's paid money and you say look we need information urgently he then knows that he can get money for that information and so he comes up with any information he can it's not necessarily in his area of

expertise he will have subagents suit people he works for him who also work for money they will be under pressure to come up with information and you know the attraction of getting money for information means that the intelligence is not going to be of the same standard that you would normally get from simple collection some of the stuff. what the iraqis were doing was nonsense and some of the stuff of what the iraqis are doing was true so it's. a good broad the intelligence services into disrepute in this country i don't think there's any doubt if i would just talk about secret service in general they seem to exist in a very closed and and accountable world there is no space for transparency they're right it doesn't imply transparency so how can they be kept in check. what. it's a good question and before the snowden revelations. i would have said the

term you need you need parliamentary committees to look at them and you need sound . care for oversight from ministers. but the intelligence and security committee has made itself look like a lapdog here you know we recently had a big to do about the intelligence service chiefs appearing. before the intelligence and security committee and all they did was come up with our answers to predetermine questions so they've been told what questions they were going to cost they they are they used they grandstand do basically they use the opportunity to say all this information being published in the guardian is disgraceful and it's causing a major threat to national security over time these committees tend. they tend to

go native they tended to start feeling of being part of the system a service being predictive of the intelligence and security services rather than forever asking questions i mean i'm a journalist you're a journalist i read my belief is as a journalist the your job is to throw stones and sometimes you might be throwing stones at someone who's doing nothing wrong but you should be flowing stones all the time asking questions all the time. you should be saying yes this is one of one this is lovely and everything's fine because it isn't great and if you start doing that it will become even more michael you michael in a lot shell what would you say is the main difference between the way secret services operated in your gaze and now. i think they have much more capability. technologically the ports around you the ability to do

things the billet see to. find information is a balance. you have to remember we were dealing with so we're dealing with terrorists on a routine basis at a time when there was a major campaign going on in this country we were dealing with broader you. with foreign countries and we managed to produce an awful lot of intelligence the guys now have. amazing amount of ways of producing intelligence i don't think they need to go into quite extensive detail but they are on these current programs as exposed by a good snow but has time to lititz intelligence ethics in any way. has technology helped that happen was anything off limits before that isn't now and i

mean not technically but ethically. and ethically domestic surveillance was completely off limits it isn't now. forgive me if i'm sort of harping on about this but this this is to me is is a major problem. i remember. in my time you we were operating obviously against your god tree. one of the things that we always said was that russia or nice to block was a surveillance society were people just could go about their business without government finding out about what they were doing now we find we're stuck in. that's a major difference i think technologically you know there is much more capability obviously but i remember listening in to german communications. an officer the british army officer came with visitors and he said don't you don't

you feel that you're snooping orderings people well that was listening to east germans not listening to brits so. you know that's the major difference here now your book is called the real james bond is there a place for people like james plant in a modern intelligence or is it now a death job rating emails i think it's overstated when people say old is there a role for the james bond that's not the case there will always be a front line role for intelligence officers. it's it's true that there are an awful lot of off intelligence officers working in offices either in london for us or in foreign capitals but that was always the case actually. that's no different to what it was in the past but there were always the guys at the front line up where one minute left where is the main battle failed between spies now has

industrial espionage become more important than the military one i would ask you to answer shortly. the terrorism will remain the front line i think though but there will always be intelligence. every as there will always be. russia and america and britain will always see each other as. britain and america see russia. the other way around . similarly china russia china or america. will be talking to each other. obviously other countries good evolve but they use all the main threats still. michael thank you so much for this very interesting insight on intelligence services and how it operates so that's all we have for today we've been talking to michael smith a historian and former british military intelligence officer and i will see in the

next edition of said. it was a. very hard to take a. long. view that back with the earthquake there's no the.

the. this is st augustine the strategic region between china. and undercover team of journalists trying to release wiki leaks documents about to how the united states is trying. their. made period be a global media more pro-american they encounter fear ignorance and pressure. the country blocks the way to information freedom. media stop on our

t.v. . the beginning of the long politic night moxon the face is full mile and life. is in the enough temptation. to douglas last for six months. there are more than people. and it is easy to hire a rifle as a scooter. because the island is so in a special there are no indigenous people but there are all those who do choose this frozen life. this yr eyes could be right about if you are in the conductor. over. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the

constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across several we've been a hydrogen why a handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers one school class i'm job market and on this show we reveal. the big picture of what's actually going on in the world if we go beyond identifying the problem to try and rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing right now but we're still ready to join the movement and welcome the third.

syrian and international chemical weapons experts converge on the mosque out to discuss how damascus can get its toxic arsenal out of the country a condition that prevented an american strike on the war torn state that's among the stories that made big here twenty thirty. a car blast rips through central beirut killing a former finance minister and four other people or of people near the lebanese government had ordered the. british economy could edge past druggists germany over the next two decades according to new forecasts but for those who are not part of the off the elite there is little cause to celebrate. and mikhail kalashnikov inventor of the a k forty seven is seen off in style his funeral is held outside moscow with all.