Google is bigger privacy worry than Britain’s anti-terror spy teams

AMBER Rudd knows less about digital technology than I do – which is really saying something.

The Home Secretary got the pixel taken out of her for not knowing her bot from her ethernet elbow.

What little I do know is that mobile phones will soon take over all aspects of our lives, from cash transactions to medical matters.

In fact, phones may soon become old hat – to be replaced by wristbands, talking specs, or even body implants made possible by nanotechnology.

Dilemma

But whatever the gadget, it must first be secure and accessible only to the owner.

That doesn’t square with intelligence agencies monitoring our mobiles to tackle terrorism. For if spies have a backdoor into encryption, then cyber crooks will also come knocking.

The dilemma, then, is between personal security and public safety.

Decrypting the mysterious message that Commons killer Khalid Masood sent on WhatsApp is not enough.

That is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted across Westminster Bridge.

Clearer to me is the necessity for our spies to have access to bulk data. They can then compare such things as flight manifests with visa applications.

Say four men apply for British visas in Pakistan. When the analysts run a programme they can see the visa numbers are in sequence, showing they were collected together.

But on the plane to Heathrow the passenger list reveals that they sat apart. Would that not warrant a closer look?

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron says data collection is an assault on privacy. So is Facebook but people willingly post their most personal information on it.

Each time you visit a website, at least 140 other organisations know about it. They can see our digital exhaust, and cookies will track our movements.

Buy a dog lead online and you’ll be bombarded with enough pet accessories to equip Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. I don’t have a dog, so God knows what they’d try to flog me.

I’m more concerned by what they know about me at Google, frankly, than at British Intelligence.

The Westminster atrocity was the third terror attack I’ve been caught in.

If spooks having access to my data can prevent a fourth, that’s fine by me.