UK Head spies on televised committee
The heads of the UK's spying agencies are to face an unprecedented televised grilling by MPs.
The three heads of the UK’s intelligence agencies will appear together in public for the first time today.
MI5 director general Andrew Parker, MI6 chief Sir John Sawers and GCHQ director Sir Iain Lobban will give evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee this afternoon at 2pm.
The committee- chaired by the former foreign sectary Sir Malcolm Rifkin will ask questions to see if current laws governing intelligence gathering are adequate in the digital era.
The agency heads are expected to face questioning on documents leaked by Edward Snowden and GCHQ’s Temora programme which is able to tap the emails and internet communications of millions of people.
Mr Snowden leaked documents to the Guardian newspaper earlier this year revealed domestic spying in both the US and UK on a large scale.
There is also evidence that GCHQ’s American counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA) had bugged the calls of several world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet, has widely criticised the security agencies as he argues the encryption cracking by spy agencies was damaging internet security.
He called it a betrayal of the technology industry.
Sir Tim has also been supportive of Edward Snowden and the Guardian in revealing information, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper he said: "Whistle-blowers, and responsible media outlets that work with them, play an important role in society,
"We need powerful agencies to combat criminal activity online - but any powerful agency needs checks and balances and, based on recent revelations, it seems the current system of checks and balances has failed,"
The session will be broadcast at 2pm on BBC news and is expected to last around an hour and a half.
The session will be broadcast with a slight time delay to prevent anything information that could damage national security from being broadcast.
The committee will look into details around Snowden and Internet security threats. However ongoing operations and individual intelligence gathering techniques will not be discussed.
