Westminster is hoping Snowden revelations go away.
Britain's political class has been closing its eyes and hoping the revelations from Edward Snowden go away rather than tackle important issues over mass surveillance that have provoked such heated debate in America, the editor in chief of the Guardian has said.
Alan Rusbridger accused Westminster of "complacency" about the revelations from Snowden, which have been published in the Guardian over the past six months.
Speaking to the BBC hours before the US president, Barack Obama, was due to give details about reforms to the US spy headquarters, the National Security Agency (NSA), Rusbridger said: "I think one of the problems is that both of the main political parties feel compromised about this. Labour is not keen to get involved because a lot of this stuff was done on their watch."
He added: "I think there is a degree of complacency here. There has been barely a whisper from Westminster. I think they are closing their eyes and hoping that it goes away. But it won't go away because it's impossible to reform the NSA without having a deep knock-on effect on what our own intelligence services do."
Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Rusbridger said the oversight mechanisms that were supposed to review the work of Britain's intelligence agencies had proved to be "laughable". He said the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, even with the extra money it had received recently, was not up to the job. "I just don't think they have the technical expertise or the resources," he said.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/17/alan-rusbridger-nsa-snowden-revelations
