hello welcome to serve me and co i'm serving shevardnadze the internet has given intelligence agencies unprecedented capital to. anyone they wish but it has also empowered whistleblowers to shed light on what's really going on behind closed doors is wrongdoing 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. does cloak and dagger being the place to buy. your screen. real james bond. is the digital revolution giving secret services to butch. and our guests today michael smith former british military intelligence officer and author 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 song manning snowden do they deserve scorn or praise. are they there's a mix of the two really. the big one of course has been. i think that the in. the mission he provided was very important because we didn't

know the extent of government surveillance of our e-mail or saw or telephone course . we did in this country a couple of 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. peace threw them out the parliamentarians through that and said we don't want it please ministers ministers and the prime minister of going into parliament said 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 into 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 a national interest sense aren t. one intelligence service receives money from a foreign power. there's always been misleading since the second. 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 it needs 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 is for a veil surveillance on a level that is precedented is that scale of spying really necessary i mean especially considering something like the boston marathon bombings isn't even use for. what 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 militia very very heavily. it is arguable that the threat from al qaeda 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 in particular of course the key issue here an issue in america is that. sterns these. these surveillance operations appear to be illegal laws so why is the government the sure. why all ministers signing the bill were 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 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 think 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. 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 desh beagle i don't think they've had any damage 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 true 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 t.c.h. keep 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 do so that's the damage to national security for britain and america but over the years there's always been these national security scare knows that the security services lead to services recover you know every country has had its traitor but also you've used the word trade area of the security services had there are traitors to the snowden i trained here i'm not i'm not i know i don't see snowden as a traitor i see it was 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 beam spectacular i mean only recently they revealed others here is something like that fifty or sixty or expose a from this. no leaks that g.c. h.q. would handle handed over the data for 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 disgraceful 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 in to if you walk down the street cameras follow you there are your your core 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 algorithms. away from a society where bureaucrat could type a mind already one's name and get up a whole farm on us. and 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 citizen really wants to live in i don't think any citizen in the world really wants to live in not 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 what a former military intelligence officer and author michael smith well that about how the times are changing the work of secret services stay with us folks.

this is the media leave us so we leave the media. by the see bush is pure. play your part of the physical. issues that no one is asking with again they deserve answers from. politic only. go digital the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution

and. that's because a free and open process is critical to our democracy albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across silicon we've been hijacked why handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once all just my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem try rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. berland social science center just published a study suggesting that two thirds of the muslims in western europe hold their religious rules and follow the laws of the countries that believe that if you read

the bible if you get if you go into christianity you find the sentence that you should obey god more than caesar. means to religious schools more important and more convincing those of the students in the very same thing that is now referred to the muslims. such as one of the twenty fourth gene olympics was this boy's life line is so special as the russian resort prepares to logan the world power the games should be in the city's present and future ludlow so it's you. we knew this is a moment there we brought you from a very cold snowy windy mountain to stop to be on the olympics.

but. on our team. now 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 said genuine mistake complicity with the government's what did you conclude. what did i conclude there was. the problem with the british intelligence area was that it got too close to government in terms of what government wanted as the end result rather than the intelligence that providing me intelligence 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 ramped it up even further. by writing a big to the intelligence they published the intelligence in the dossier and they put the. introduction which which distorted the intelligence that was in the dossier then they brew found out the same guy. who was mr blair spin doctor briefed out to the new. papers an even more top version of of the intelligence so the intelligence started off reasonably world

only being kept within the proper narcisse if it been reported with the proper care of its it would not cause the damage it did but the but unfortunately it was distorted further up the line by the politicians by by alastair campbell the political spin spin spin master for paternity blair sasa two 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 there is some confusion over the detail there because the cia thought that my six got some stuff wrong. 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. did not have the orth oratory that they were given by m i six calling that. a bridge. 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 any easier. he will have subagents suit people he worked to him who also worked 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 on what the iraqis are doing was true so it's. a did it brought the intelligence services into disrepute in this country i don't think there's any doubt if i would just talk about secret services 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 unique you need parliamentary committees to look at them and you need sound.

careful 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'd been told what questions they were going to cost and they they are they used they grandstand 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 ted to start feeling of being part of the system a service being predictive of the intelligence and security services rather them

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 from stones and start times 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 up south my car 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 now you know the ability to do things the billet see to. find information is a balance. you have to remember we were dealing with so we were dealing with

terrorists on a routine basis. a time when there was a major campaign going on in this country we were dealing with broad you. with the foreign countries and we managed to produce an awful lot of intelligence the guys know of. 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. i think clearly 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. and one of the things that we always said was that russia are 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. i remember listening to german communications. an officer british army officer came with visitors and he said don't you don't you feel that you're snooping or beings people were that was listening to east germans not listening to brits so. you know that's the major difference here or your book

is called the real james bond is there a place for people like james plant in the modern intelligence or is it now at desk job creating e-mails i think it's overstated when people say oh this new role for the james bond that's not the case that will always be a front line role for intelligence officers. it's it's true that there are an awful lot of 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 battlefield between spies now has industrial espionage become more important than the military one i would ask you to answer shortly. i'll call you terrorism or remain in

the front line i think but there will always be intelligence rivalries that will always be. russia and america and britain will always see each other as. britain and america seeing russia and the other way around. similarly china russia china and america. will be talking to each other. obviously other countries get evolved but they use all the threats still. michael thank you so much for this very interesting insight on the intelligence services and how it operates 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.

we'll get to the. reasons he adds but there's already been plenty to celebrate this december on this month's show we call the future and so lazy sixteen stone cold to make movies with an instant messenger. kill its inmates likely to get a really. huge.

see street interesting. strategic vision. a longer cover team of journalists trying to release wiki leaks documents about how the united states is right. there. more. they encounter fear ignorance and pressure. the country blocks the way to information freedom. media stuff on our t.v. . social science center just published a study suggesting that two thirds of muslims in western europe hold their religious roles in the laws of the countries that believe that if you read the bible if you get if you go into christianity you find the sentence that you should obey god more than caesar. that means religious schools

more important and more convincing those of the students of the very same thing that is now referred to the muslims. the beginning of the old all to acknowledge mostly fades from island life. in sin the enough temptation. to douglas last for six months. as the people. and it's as 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 is could be right about. if you're in the market.

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going to be. at the first stage of syria's chemical disarmament is declared as a success as we recap on the diplomatic achievement that prevented a u.s. strike on the war torn country and look at how the civil conflict has transformed during the year. government tax lowering drive seems only to be stuffing the wallets of the highest earners leaving no reason for those on basic wage to celebrate plus. julian the summer unchosen till the big day recently world of online privacy protection and freedom of information and getting ready to give their talks here in humbug to the thirtieth chaos communications conference.