Sorry Nick; your comments on The Guardian don’t convince me

Dear Nick,

Along with many others, I didn’t find at all convincing your comments supporting  criticisms of the The Guardian for publishing leaked information about surveillance techniques. You claimed that some of the details published will help terrorists (though thank you at least for not adding “paedophiles” to the list).

Why not?

Simple: my own direct experience of asking the Home Office for information about costs of implementing the current rules for intercepting communications. The Home Office’s initial responses were so wide-ranging in their claims about what would endanger national security, assist terrorists and make life easier for criminals that on the same basis the contents of speeches from both Theresa May and yourself have done exactly the same.

When the Home Office’s approach to secrecy is so absurdly over the top that it tries to argue that even the information which both you are the Home Secretary have given in public is actually too secret for it to reveal, there is something very wrong.

Against that backdrop, what grounds are there for me treating as credible the latest claims about what must be kept secret to protect us?

Yours etc.