When:

26th June 2012, 07:00PM

Where:

Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ

Demos is delighted to announce a panel discussion that will look at to what extent security services should be able to monitor the cyber activity of the public. This event is being held in partnership with the Frontline Club

Chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC's technology correspondent and author of the blog, dot.rory. Twitter:@BBCRoryCJ.

Full details of the panel will be announced in due course but will include:

• Jamie Bartlett, head of the violence and extremism programme at Demos. His primary research interests lie in terrorism, radicalisation and extremism, conspiracy theories and integration policy. He is the co-author of #Intelligence and in 2011 undertook the first ever survey of Facebook fans of far-right parties in Europe. 

• Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations. In 2008 he resigned his seat and his position in the Shadow Cabinet to fight a by-election to highlight the Governments undermining of civil liberties. After winning with a large majority, he returned to Parliament.

• Professor Anthony Glees MA MPhil DPhil, a professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and directs its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS). He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence issues and has written and lectured on aspects of the history of British intelligence, on the Stasi, on Islamism, on terrorism and counter-terrorism, on subversion in western democracies both today and in the past. 

• Isabella Sankey, the Director of Policy at Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) which she joined in November 2007. She leads Liberty’s parliamentary lobbying and policy development, working in particular on the protection of human rights in the context of counter-terror policy. As such, she was heavily involved with Liberty’s successful Charge or Release campaign against holding terror suspects for 42 days without charge. She is a non-practising barrister and previously worked for the Legal & Constitutional Affairs Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The panel will discuss proposals to allow increased monitoring of email and social media communications by police and intelligence agencies. 

In April 2012 Demos published #Intelligence. Co-authored by former GCHQ Director and ex-Cabinet Office Security and Intelligence Chief Sir David Omand the paper argues that social media should become a permanent part of the intelligence framework but that it must be based on a publicly argued, legal footing, with clarity and transparency over use, storage, purpose, regulation and accountability. With this in mind the panel will discuss the extent that the security services should be able to monitor the public’s cyber activity, and whether the government proposals are a threat to civil liberties or a necessity to keep society safe.

The event will be held at 7:00pm on Tuesday 26^th June 2012 at the Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ. Tickets are available here.