The signatories of this declaration call upon nation states to take action. Intelligence agencies must be subjected to transparency and accountability. People must be free from blanket mass surveillance conducted by intelligence agencies from their own or foreign countries. States must effectively protect everyone’s fundamental rights and freedoms, and particularly everyone’s privacy.”

One academic signatory, Cambridge University Head of Cryptography Ross Anderson, in a Forbes interview called for the abolition of the UK Security Service, also known as MI5, according to sources.

Famous Authors United

Meanwhile, in December, nearly 600 of the world’s best-known authors, including five Nobel Prize winners, joined together in a coalition called Writers Against Mass Surveillance. The authors, from 81 countries, called for a charter curbing spy agencies, which have been shown to be conducting widespread surveillance, according to a report in The Guardian newspaper.

Among other demands, it calls on the United Nations to “acknowledge the central importance of protecting civil rights in the digital age, and to create an International Bill of Digital Rights,” and for governments to sign such a convention.

The five Nobel Prize winners are: Orhan Pamuk, J.M. Coetzee, Elfriede Jelinek, Günter Grass and Tomas Tranströmer. Other signatories include: Umberto Eco, Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Daniel Kehlmann, Nawal El Saadawi, Arundhati Roy, Henning Mankell, Richard Ford, Tom Stoppard, Javier Marias, Björk, David Grossman, Arnon Grünberg, Angeles Mastretta, Juan Goytisolo, Nuruddin Farah, João Ribeiro, Victor Erofeyev, Liao Yiwu and David Malouf.

Bestselling author McEwan told the Guardian: “Where Leviathan can, it will. The state, by its nature, always prefers security to liberty. Lately, technology has offered it means it can’t resist, means of mass surveillance that Orwell would