Vodafone has issued its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report. This has revealed that government agencies are in a position to listen to live conversations on its entire global network through secret pipelines.

In the past year, Vodafone in Malta received almost 4,000 metadata requests from the police (that is, information about the telephone’s location in connection with lost or stolen phones) as well as direct wire-tapping requests related to serious criminal investigations. The number of the latter (officially, “a minority”) was not specified because Maltese legislation prohibits the disclosure of Malta Security Service’s spying capabilities.

It appears that the writ of the Malta Security Service spreads wide. This has naturally reignited the debate about the checks and balances exercised over it, with particular reference to day-to-day oversight, which appears to be vested solely in the hands of the Minister for Home Affairs and National Security.

Any debate on the issue must begin from the premise that it is the job and duty of intelligence agencies to try to find things out about certain people. To express shock at this is to be naïve.

Rapid technological advances mean that the amount of snooping is growing at a faster rate than laws and regulations have been able to keep up.

All other factors being equal, the case for surveillance on security grounds is unanswerable. But in a democracy all factors are not equal. There has to be a trade-off between privacy and security.

Although the right to privacy is not absolute, it is a fundamental human right. Spying in a democracy depends for its legitimacy on informed consent, not simply on blind trust. Any invasion of privacy must be justified and proportional.

Most democratic countries, including Malta, give wide powers to secret services. In Malta’s case, as in other democracies, the key question to ask is: is the level of public scrutiny by the Security Committee, Parliament and the courts adequate and are there sufficient rights of redress against the Security Service?

The short answer is not really. The only significant oversight comes from the Security Committee (the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition, the Minister for Home Affairs and the head of the Security Service). The committee looks at the aggregate data but does not appear to examine – or question – individual cases.

Although the agency may well be judicious in the use of wiretapping – and, no doubt, the minister is equally diligent in his oversight – the fact is that the only other scrutiny comes from its overseeing commissioner (a retired judge) who is entitled to ask for any information to deal with complaints and to make recommendations to the Prime Minister accordingly. But the person being wiretapped is unlikely to know this and unlikely therefore to lodge a complaint. The situation is Kafkaesque – as well as dangerous.

At the very least, it is for consideration that the lack of public accountability of the Security Service should be rectified and the power vested in the minister should be made subject to the issuing of judicial warrants and proper parliamentary oversight through the establishment of a Select Committee on Security.

Security services need secrecy but not on everything or always. The costs and intrusion on civil rights must be proportionate to the threat. Some operational efficiency is surely worth sacrificing because public scrutiny should be a condition for popular backing. There is always a balance to be struck between liberty and security. There will always be a trade-off between privacy and security.