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Good morning. The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament is due to present its annual report today and this year there’s more interest than usual in what it might be saying. It’s not only that the former chair of the committee, the vastly experienced Sir Malcolm Rifkind, has recently resigned, having been embroiled in a journalistic sting operation, but more significantly the claims from Edward Snowden about the extent of the surveillance of the U.S. intelligence services into the lives of virtually every citizen has raised the old question “Who watches the watchers? “ In Britain that’s precisely the task of the Intelligence and Security Committee but in recent years critics have asked how effective the committee really is. When I was a student one of my land ladies had a framed notice on her living room wall. It read “God is the head of this house, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener at every conversation.” In past generations that was the generally perceived belief, and it held a hint of both comfort and menace depending upon one’s picture of God. If this was of a generally benevolent God then it was a comfort to know that whatever life might throw at the believer there was a God who loved us so much that he couldn’t take his eyes off us. On the other hand if the belief was of a more sternly righteous God, then it was more likely that, “guilty” might well be the verdict when the recording angel opens the books at the end of time, or at the end of my time. There was an ambivalence then towards the divine silent listener at every conversation, an ambivalence between protection and judgement, and I feel the same ambivalence towards the electronic silent listener of all our conversations. On the one hand, in a dangerous world, we need our intelligence services to be vigilant in listening in to the communications of potential terrorists, but the problem is that, as we’ve recently seen, the potential terrorist , or terrorist sympathiser, might well be the boy or girl next door showing no sign of menace, and if that neighbour’s communications are to be scrutinized then I can hardly complain if my communications come under the same scrutiny, the electronic silent listener at every conversation has no favourites. We’ll have to get used to the idea that our private lives are by no means private, for every time we use a telephone, send an e-mail or use a loyalty card, potentially somebody somewhere is picking up information about us. It’s a return to the days when it was generally believed that the unseen eye of God, in benevolence or judgement, was watching over our every move, We’ll see what the report of the Intelligence and Security Committee has to say. First broadcast 12 March 2015