17/01/2014 Newsnight

Today even as President Obama ordered new limits to US

surveillance practice, he was still defending the National Security

Agency. It may seem sometimes that America is being held to a different

standard. And I will admit the readiness of some to assume the

worst motives by our Government can be frustrating. Is it now time to

give an amnesty to the man who triggered all of this, Edward

Snowden. We will hear from Noam Chomsky, a former head of the Civil

Service, and a key person who monitors our terror laws. The riots,

why did the Police Complaints Authority falsely claim a victim had

shot a policeman, and why did it take so long to detract it. The fact

they knew and let the story run for days, should have led to serious

resignations. Just how far will people go to get fit in January. Our

man, Nimrod Khamer, goes the distance. Good evening. President

Obama today made it official, Edward Snowden's revelations about the

actions about the National Security Agency have changed US Government

policy on surveillance. The President announced changes to the

way phone records are collected and also promised that if he wanted to

know what world leaders and close friends and allies were thinking he

would lift the phone rather than monitor their calls. Has this

exposed a deficiency in oversight and surveillance in Britain?

President Obama's spying programme has caused shock at home and outrage

abroad. He has been under pressure to act ever since Edward Snowden

started revealing just how sweeping US surveillance powers have become.

Americans are alarmed that the Government's been hoarding

information about their phone calls. Allies like Germany's Angela Merkel

are infuriated that America has been tapping their calls. But the

President is also under pressure from Anne tell begins community

warning him not to limit their power. So, which President Obama was

at work today? The former constitutional scholar or the

Commander-in-Chief? He criticised Edward Snowden for aiding America's

adversaries, but said he didn't want to dwell on Snowden's actions.

Regardless of how we got here though, the task before us now is

greater than simply repairing the damage done to our operations or

preventing more disclosures from taking place in the future. Instead

we have to make some important decisions about how to protect

ourselves and sustain our leadership in the world while upholding the

civil liberties and privacy protections that our ideals and

constitution require. The President stopped short to demanding an end to

the bulk collection of American phone data. What he did promise was

to stop the National Security Agency from holding phone records. But

where they will be stored is up for consultation. It means the agencies

will have to get permission from a secret intelligence court to access

the data. And there's to be a public advocate to represent privacy

concerns in those courts. He's also restricting America's ability to spy

on foreign leaders. I thought it was a remarkably good speech and well

balanced. Of course it won't please people, the most vehement critics on

either side, but you never can. I think he has displayed an enormous

growth of understanding of what intelligence agencies do and why

they are important in the time he has been in office. You know when

you actually are responsible for protecting people you behave

differently than when all you have to do is talk about T he's

responsible now. Today there were yet more leaks from Edward Snowden.

This time concerning an NSA programme called Dishfire, documents

seen by the Guardian and Channel four News reveal that the NHS has

collected 200 million text messages a day from around the world.

Apparently enabling the agency to track people's where abouts,

contacts and bank details. According to the reports, GCHQ is also able to

access the database and to access information they wouldn't normally

be legally entitled to see. So do these revelations mean it is time

that the Government here followed President Obama's lead and

introduced new checks on the country's spies. Ministers refuse to

comment on the details. The Foreign Secretary said he had seen no

evidence of breaches of individuals' privacy, but there are calls for a

review of the law. GCHQ contends and indeed the Foreign Secretary has

confirmed it already today that it has always acting within a proper,

legal framework. That being so, the question for us now is whether that

legal framework is adequate to take account of the enormous

technological change which has taken place since the present legislation

of put in place. My God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

President Obama was determined not to give Edward Snowden any credit

today. But would the President even have made this speech if it hadn't

been for Snowden's revelations. Many say not. They think it is time this

exiled spy was given amnesty. I spoke to MIT professor, Noam

Chomsky, earlier this evening, who is a supporter of Edward Snowden. I

asked him whether he thought the whistleblower's actions have had an

influence on foreign policy? Not foreign policy except indirectly,

they have had a major impact on public awareness and opinion. They

have led to the exposure of many, actually literally falsehoods about

the nature of the policy and what it is alleged to have achieved. You

have called for an amnesty for Edward Snowden, but President Obama

made it pretty clear in his speech today that he thinks that the

actions of Edward Snowden will have some far reaching consequences in

relation to your adversaries, that may not be known for many years. I

have gone along with the amnesty proposals but I don't think I agree

with them. I think he should be honoured for what he did. We might

ask for amnesty for the various people engaged in major war crimes,

could easily name some, but you don't give amnesty to someone who

has done the right thing. You praise him for it. Will we know in several

years that there are negative consequences? President Obama

doesn't know any more about that than I do. Realistically there is

absolutely, I would have thought, no chance of Edward Snowden being

honoured. But on the other side, do you think there is a chance that he

will have to live out his days in Russia? Well, his coming To the end

of his Russian visa soon, we don't know what will happen then. There

might be other countries that might be willing to accept him, maybe

Brazil. It is pretty clear that most of the world is pretty frightened of

the United States. That became very obvious in the scandalous case of

the Ava Morales presidential plane travelling back to from Russia,

where European countries wouldn't allow the plane to enter their

airspace, no doubt out of fear of the United States. Which is a

vindictive power. It has made it clear at the highest level that they

are going to do anything they can to get hold of him. Noam Chomsky. Well

Lord Butler butt, the former Cabinet Secretary, chaired an inquiry into

the use of intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq War, and now sits on

the Intelligence and Security Committee. David Anderson QC is the

independent reviewer of terrorism legislation and they are with me

now. Edward Snowden has done the world a service, President Obama, as

good as admitted it in the fact that they are changing the law? If all he

had done was to draw attention to the capabilities of the intelligence

agencies and started a debate, yes, I think that is a service. It could

have happened before because actually these things had been

debated in parliament. What he has done is drawn attention to it. What

he did was to download many thousands of actual intelligence

reports and go off to Russia and China with them. We don't know that

anything adverse has happened as a result of that to US citizen,

British citizens or anybody, we don't know anything? We don't know,

but I don't think you will find the Russians and the Chinese haven't

studied these carefully or terrorists haven't studied these

carefully. Noam Chomsky said that you he would like to see him

honoured, that won't happen I don't think. What about an amnesty? I

think it is very important that in any organisation for people who come

across genuine criminality they should have the opportunity to blow

the whistle. I believe actually there are procedures in our

intelligence agencies that allow that to happen. What we can't end up

with, it seems to me, is a situation in which the likes of Mr Snowden or

indeed the editor of the Guardian, are the people who are ultimately

determining what it is the public can see and what is too secret for

them to see because of the damage caused to national security. You

think he should be charged? That is for the Americans, I don't want to

get in to what should happen to Mr Snowden. President Obama is making

clear that in a time of rapidly changing technology then privacy and

civil liberties have to be protected. Let's look at your

Intelligence Security Committee, when MI5, MI6 and GCHQ came in front

of your committee for the first time, they knew what the questions

were, why should the public have faith in that? It was the first time

they had come in front of us in public. They knew the general

subjects, but actually I thought some interesting things came out of

that. They knew the territory, they knew the questions? It hadn't been

rehearsed. No. One of the interesting things that came out was

that they said they got actual evidence of the way in which

terrorists on the basis of what Edward Snowden had revealed were

changing their habits. They say that, but why should the public have

any faith, if you are going to say you are putting the MI5 and MI6 and

GCHQ in front of a committee on accountability and you tell them

what they will be asked, where is the faith in that? It was good they

came before the committee. Part of this is the intelligence agencies

themselves showing a bit more transparency. Should they? I think

they should. So far as the Intelligence and Security Committee

is concerned, it is facing a real test. It has produced two reports in

recent years that I think people have perceived as underwhelming. One

on rendition, where I don't think they got to the bottom of t and one

on 7/7, where the inquest showed there were some things they missed.

They have an extraordinary triple now, they have got the investigation

of Woolich, that is a detailed one. They have got the whole

investigation of surveillance and the balance between liberty and

security, to top that off they have also now got the againson Inquiry

into possible complicity in torture. Those are all huge jobs. The members

of the Intelligence and Security Committee have other things do,

constituencies and parliamentary activities. I hope they are

resourced to do that. Interesting, you have been underwhelming? I can't

speak for previous committees. Have you got too much on your plate? We

have a great deal on our plate. Is it too much? Time will tell. We are

just finishing the Woolich inquiry, we have asked for evidence on the

Snowden relations and the balance between liberty and security. We're

taking on the staff that were serving the againson committee, we

will have extra staff -- Gibson committee.

The allegations about Dishfire, we know that it is incredibly complex,

the allegation is that GCHQ have circumvented UK laws by taking these

200 million texts daily, stored in the US. Our spies have accessed this

stuff which is essentially against British law. Do they have access to

Dishfire? I can't comment on that. Are you concerned about that? We

will look at it, we look at all these things. But what I can remind

you of is that during the summer it was said that GCHQ had evaded the

law by using Prism. We did look into that, and every case in which the

GCHQ had asked for information from NSA through Prism, there was a

proper warrant for it. We confirmed that. So they had always acted

within the law. Now these allegations today, I don't know, but

we will look into it. As a matter of urgency? Well yeah, of course. But

the problem with that is we actually don't know. If GCHQ is acting, as it

were, outside the law, we don't know. Are you concerned about that?

I think everybody should be concerned. I think equally they will

be wrong to think that we're dealing here with organisations that are out

of control. We don't just rely on the Intelligence and Security

Committee. We also have two intelligence commissioners who are

formidable former Court of Appeal judges who have quite respective

low-sized staffs and who spend quite a lot of their time looking into the

activities of GCHQ and other agencies, and coming to their own

conclusion that is they publish, and very few people read. Thank you very

much. Today the family of Mark Duggan,

shot dead by police in north London in 2011 received an apology from the

Independent Police Complaints Commisssion. The police watchdog

said it had wrongly told the media that he had fired at the police

before he was shot. In a damning admission, the IPCC said it knew

that the Duggan family's confidence in the commission and investigation

was damaged by mistakes made at an early stage. Where did the IPCC put

out than I correct information and why didn't it correct the record as

soon as it realised it was wrong. Here is Jim Reid.

His death sparked the worst riots in a generation. Last week a court

found police acted within the law when they shot and killed Mark

Duggan. But serious questions remain about the way the authorities

handled this case. Today the police watchdog, the IPCC, apologised to

the Duggan family for putting out misleading information in the

aftermath of the shooting. That information continuity out not just

-- turned Knott -- turned out not just to be false but inflammatory.

To look at the significance you have to look at the way events unfolded.

Mark Duggan was shot dead at six. 15pm on August fourth. A police

officer was taken to hospital after a bullet was found stuck in his

radio. Almost immediately the police watchdog was called to investigate.

The press started to call about the story. A late night spokesman at the

IPCC told the reporter that they didn't know the order in which the

shots were fired. We understand the officer was shot first before the

male was shot. A clear impression was given that gunfire had been

exchanged that evening. That a shoot out of some kind had taken place on

the streets of Tottenham. One of the reporters given that information was

from the Press Association, the news agency whose material is then sent

on to every broadcaster and newspaper in the country. The same

news was flashed up on 24-hour TV channel, that worried IPCC

investigator Colin Sparrow, at the firearms unit HQ in Whitechapel East

London. He told The next day the ballistics came

out. The bullet in the radio was a police bullet, not from the gun of

Mark Duggan, there was no dramatic firefight. But nothing was done to

correct the false impression there was a shoot out that night. Some

newspapers continued to say there had been. That afternoon Mark

Duggan's family and supporters walked to Tottenham Police Station

to protest peacefully. To put out all this misinformation, to put out

this idea that there was a shoot out when there absolutely wasn't a shoot

out and they knew. To refusing to to the family home to inform them.

These are the only reasons and sole reasons we went to Tottenham Police

Station, had they done the things they were supposed to have done we

wouldn't have gone there. Tottenham, there wouldn't have been a riot

there, and I would imagine there wouldn't have been riots in all

those other areas of London where there were riots. As riots took hold

across England the IPCC decided not to correct the full story of a shoot

out. It took another three days until the watchdog released the

results of those ballistic tests. The fact that they knew and let the

story persist should have led to resignations, seems to me. There are

two roles for IPCC in statute, one is police scrutiny and the other is

public guardianship, on both counts they failed. So, if the police

watchdog knew something was wrong, knew that false and inflammatory

information was still being reported, why didn't it do something

about it? Well, on Sunday August seventh after the first night of

rioting, it did issue a statement, warning people to ignore rumours

that Mark Duggan had been executed by police. But it didn't even

mention those false reports of a firefight. The IPCC has told

Newsnight it didn't want the results of those ballistics tests to be made

public until its own investigators could take evidence from the

firearms officers involved. That same afternoon 11 members of the

Met's elite CO-19 team sat together in a room for eight hours before

giving written statements, something allowed under the current

guidelines. The officers involved have always denied they broke any

rules or colluded inappropriately. It is a concern that has been raised

before. Most notably after the shooting of Jean Charles DeMenezes.

I think we need a team of investigative lawyers leading

investigations. We need an Independent Police Complaints

Commisssion that is more like the Crown Prosecution Service, only that

can get confidence back. Today the IPCC said armed police should be

separated after a shooting and banned from conferring. Officers

involved in the Duggan case, will also be told to answer the

watchdog's questions at an interview, something they have so

far refused to do. We asked the IPCC to come on to Newsnight tonight, but

they said they cannot be interviewed by the shooting of Mark Duggan,

until their own investigation is complete. Jeremy Clarkson is a

notorious and prodigious tweeter, more than two million people follow

him on-line. Many will see the photo of him seemingly asleep on the

plane, surrounded by Top Gear colleagues, next to a piece of paper

with a message scrawled on it, which some would find offensive. "Sadly I

fell asleep on the plane" when the image was shared on-line. He later

deleted the tweet and wanted to apologise to anyone who was upset by

the tweet. Joining me is the rugby player turned Strictly star and

anti-bullying campaigner. You have seen the picture, what do you think

of it? Initially I was shocked at the word "gay" used in an offensive

manner. The horrible swear word offensive to women any way. It was

disappointing to see that. Again you know, we know that Clarkson is very

close to the bone in the stuff he Does. And the power of social media

and why we are here talking about it. He has to be a role model and

can't be seen to be doing the wrong thing. Personally I think we need to

educate the next beginlation to understand what gay means, and not

in a casual homophobic way with him sleeping on a plane alongside

offensive wear words. Again, he's in the public eye, on one of the

biggest TV shows in England with Top Gear. You know, it is a shame that

you know it has come to this point of him being smeared across the

papers. But I think that personally he has afollow -- apologised, and

how can we draw the positives out in some respects and use what he has

done to educate people about it and say he has done wrong and apologised

and taken it off Twitter. Now we need to use that and say that's not

acceptable in a social media environment. It wasn't exactly a

fulsome apology. What I wonder is you are very acutely aware of

bullying, I wondered if you were the son of a father who was a big Top

Gear fan and you saw that, and you were a son that was gay and perhaps

hadn't come out. What impact a tweet like that would have. Clarkson's

followers are also kids? Yeah, absolutely. You know not only in

this country, you know Top Gear is global. Ultimately you know the word

"gay" at the moment, especially in playgrounds is used in casual way,

casual homophobia in playgrounds is rife, it can be "faggot", "homo" or

"gay". If you are the father of a child in the closet or mother, one

you probably might not know, for that reason, when that child might

not want to come out and think actually if I come out what will I

be subjected to. If it all right to see star on TV doing that, he's

portraying that is OK and perreceiving that is OK. It is the

knock-on effects it has. Bearing in mind we have come a long way. 20

years ago it was racism and it has taken that next generation to drive

a cultural change. Homophobia is where racism was 20 years ago. There

is a lot of work to be done. And it does start by educating the next

generation of youngsters. That is how I perceive it. Do you think he

should do a bit of penance? I can't hear you. Do you think he should do

penance? I can't hear you, sorry, good night.

We wanted to talk to Jeremy Clarkson tonight but we were unable to

contact him. January is traditionally the month

when people sometimes make rash decisions to go dry, go low-carb,

get fit fast. The Sunday supplements are full of fitness programmes

promising to change your life and the clothes and gears to go with it.

The new fad is Extreme Fittness, we sent Nimrod Khamer out to look at

four of the latest crazes. Hydrospining, which combines cycling

and swimming is huge in France, and only just now arrived in the UK. I

went to check it out. The resistance is 12-times higher than with air,

because you are inside the water. So you burn much more calories, now you

are inside the water, I want you to go much quicker. Go on. She gave me

a challenge to hit the record speed of 60 kms per hour. I'm not sure you

have the perfect position. It was a little bit tougher than I thought.

40. 50 if you want to challenge. You want to maybe film the numbers!

After all that exercise, I needed something less strenuous and more

relaxing, like yoga with your dog. Doga! So the dog was chosen because

he is the most comfortable? He's man's best friend and they like to

be touched and they are very complimentry to the owner. This is

the breed that I -- breathing that I use. You have to lift your eyes and

go "hah", "hah". Lift him up. : I'm not going to lie it was weird and it

got even weirder. Row, row, row the boat

# Gently down the stream... . What are you doing with your feet

Breathe into your waistline. Use that breath. Just stay still, let's

do it again, I'm going to give you a little squash and we're going to

breathe together. Breathe, push your hips up. Inhale! Lift up, lift up,

lift up. There, push into your arms, straighten t arms. I had a good

time, but my sternest test was still to come.

I went to a session called Vikings and Valkaries, designed to separate

the men from the boys. Take it up with momentum push. Down, down,

down. Try the technique. Just pretend I'm wrecking it. You have to

grab both hands. We have some big kit and see great results for people

who come not being able to lift the tyre within an inch, and within a

few weeks they are flipping it five or six times up and down the track.

Heave, heave. Heave. I had held my own against some seriously big guy,

but wanted to try something more cardiovascular. The new tip after

work activity all Overgrown town, is exercise and raving, Raveosise. She

showed us the move and we had to copy her. There is no alcohol, it is

healthy and it is a fun thing to do after work and it gets you fit

really. I had loads of fun, but after a long day of extreme exercise

I felt raved out. But I guess that's the point. Nimrod Khamer, clearly

loved Doga the best. Tomorrow morning's front

25 leading charities urge David Cameron to open Britain's doors to

its share of the most vulnerable refugees. And finally on the

That's it for tonight. Jeremy back on Monday. We leave you the work of

the University of Queensland's Global University Institute, they

spent years filming coral and then speeding the images

Good evening, today's heavy showers have cleared away,