Railways 'dead zones' for mobiles

16 October 2014 Last updated at 13:03 By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

A comprehensive test of the state of mobile connectivity on Britain's busiest commuter routes has revealed much of the rail network is a blackspot for coverage.

The research, by Global Wireless Solutions (GWS), found one in three mobile internet tasks failed, as did one in seven voice calls.

Engineers tested the 10 most popular routes in and out of London.

GWS described many of the trains it had tested as "mobile dead zones".

Engineers travelled along 10 routes:

• Charing Cross to Sevenoaks
• Charing Cross to Dartford
• Euston to Watford Junction
• Fenchurch Street to Ockendon
• Liverpool Street to Broxbourne
• Liverpool Street to Manor Park
• St Pancras to St Albans
• St Pancras to Elstree and Boreham Wood
• Victoria to Oxted
• Waterloo to Epsom

Continue reading the main story

TIME TO UPLOAD 4MB picture

• Three - 33 seconds
• EE - 36.2 seconds
• O2 - 45.4 seconds
• Vodafone - 48.4 seconds

They used Samsung Galaxy S4s to gather data, using SIMs from each of the four major UK operators.

An interactive map detailed operator failures at each part of the journey.

• Three proved to have the best network for voice calls
• Vodafone's subscribers got the best 3G data service
• EE won best 4G service

But the research also found EE, O2 and Vodafone all heavily relied on their older 2G networks to cover commuters.

And commuters having to use 2G networks to route their calls were most likely to experience poor call quality.

Three's director of network strategy, Phil Sheppard, said: "2G simply can't deliver decent data speeds or the same quality of voice experience an advanced network provides.

"We will build on this to further improve our customers' experience by adding more mast sites and adding low-frequency spectrum to reach even more people on the move."

EE said it was "proud to be the best 4G network" and "would take on board the 3G findings".

"We are investing in improving voice and data quality for the UK's busiest road and rail routes to ensure all our customers get the best experience, and that will continue on into 2015."

Worst station

Continue reading the main story

3G RELIABILITY

• Three - 77.4% of time
• EE - 69.8%
• O2 - 78%
• Vodafone - 82%

Paul Carter, chief executive of GWS, said: "Pressure from commuters makes it inevitable that trains won't keep their status as mobile dead zones for much longer.

"It'd be great to see networks, rail operators and station-masters taking the lead on improving connectivity for commuters - rather than having to be dragged into the 21st Century kicking and screaming."

One in four data-task failures occurred while trains were in stations, and one in five on open track.

Voice calls were more likely to fail on open track than in a station, and the most failures occurred when a train was travelling above 50mph (80km/h).

St Pancras was the worst-connected station, with engineers experiencing an average of 99 voice and data failures across all four operators while testing at the station.

"It's hard to believe we're in 2014 and in a situation whereby a trained wizard would have a tough time getting a signal on the Hogwarts Express while it's sitting in St Pancras," said Mr Carter.

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Google unveils three Nexus gadgets

15 October 2014 Last updated at 17:41 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

Google has announced three new Android-powered, Nexus-branded devices, comprising a set-top box for TVs, a tablet and a smartphone.

The machines are all designed to showcase the forthcoming update to its operating system, codenamed Android Lollipop.

The Nexus Player marks the introduction of Android TV, Google's latest bid to get a foothold in the living room.

Experts noted that the firm had tried and failed with set-top boxes before.

However, Hiroshi Lockheimer, vice-president of Android engineering, suggested the company had learned from its past mistakes.

"On Google TV you could get a lot of apps, but a lot of the versions were just big tablet versions on a 50in screen that just didn't feel right," he explained.

"[Now] we're much more opinionated about what an app should look like on a TV set, so we've been working very closely with app developers in the TV and content space over the past months on optimising their applications.

"You'll see a much more focused set of applications that are higher quality."

Apps have to comply with a new set of guidelines - such as supporting a remote control - before they will be added to Android TV's version of the Google Play store, he said.

The Nexus Player is a set-top box built by Asus and featuring an Intel chip. It will cost $99 (£62) when it launches in the US and Canada in early November.

It is bundled with a remote control with a built-in microphone, and owners can buy an add-on controller if they want to play video games.

In addition, Google has announced that Sony, Sharp and Philips will be building Android TV into forthcoming TV sets, and that more manufacturers will be unveiled at a later date.

However, neither of the two biggest television makers - Samsung and LG - have agreed to support the platform at this point, although Mr Lockheimer said that Samsung was at least "studying" it.

Although the previous Google TV platform was scrapped, the search giant has had limited success with its Chromecast TV dongle - it says it has sold millions but could not provide a specific number. Chromecast supports a smaller set of apps than Android TV since it was not designed for games.

Even so, one market watcher has doubts about the new platform's chances.

"Google is going to keep trying with this, but that doesn't mean it's going to succeed," said Ian Maude from the consultancy Enders Analysis.

"This doesn't look very different from Amazon's Fire TV or other devices out there - there's nothing that jumps out at you.

"And Google has an additional hurdle, which is that some broadcasters and TV manufacturers are particularly nervous about getting into bed with it because they fear being disintermediated - in other words undermined - because Google would now be controlling the interface."

Metal cases

The other new devices are:

• The Nexus 6 - a 6in (15.2cm) smartphone made by Motorola with two front-facing speakers and a 3220 mAh battery that can be part-charged for 15 minutes to give about six hours of life
• The Nexus 9 - an 8.9in (22.6cm) tablet made by HTC. It has a 4:3 aspect ratio that is designed to be better suited to productivity apps than earlier Android tablets, which were more oblong-shaped. It will be sold alongside new covers that feature built-in keyboards, similar to those sold for Microsoft's Surface tablets.

Mr Lockheimer drew attention to the fact both smart devices featured metal exterior parts, which he said gave them a more "premium" feel than the all-plastic shells used by earlier Nexus hardware.

The Nexus 6 will be made available in 26 countries, including the UK, in November and has been priced $649 (£407) for the contract-free 32 gigabyte edition.

The Nexus 9 will go on sale at the end of this week in 30 countries and costs $399 (£250) for the 16GB version.

One analyst was surprised by the prices.

"They're definitely not cheap, which is interesting because that seems to be a bit of a change in strategy," commented Carolina Milanesi from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

"Google has obviously gone for more expensive materials, which might signal it is going after the enterprise space.

"Businesses are less sensitive to price and look closely at the durability of devices, plus we know that the next version of Android has incorporated enterprise-friendly features.

"The other thing is that a 6in phone is a form factor that IT departments might view as a good two-in-one option, to avoid having to give staff both a tablet and a phone."

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Netflix shares plunge on slow growth

16 October 2014 Last updated at 01:56

US shares of Netflix, the world's largest video streaming service, plunged on Wednesday after it reported fewer subscribers than forecast.

Netflix signed up 3.02m customers globally in the third quarter, compared to the 3.69m it had expected in July.

News of the slow growth, mainly in its US market, sent its shares plummeting as much as 27% on the Nasdaq index.

The company blamed a $1(£0.62) price rise to $8.99 for its monthly service fee for fewer new subscribers.

Its stock lost more than $117 to $331 in after-hours trading from its close of $448.59.

Netflix operates in nearly 50 countries, but the US is its biggest market. Its growth in customers there fell 24% in the third quarter from a year ago to 980,000.

The company's slowing growth figures came on the same day as rival Time Warner's HBO announced that it will launch an online streaming service in the US starting next year.

Netflix shrugged off concerns of competition intensifying from HBO saying that there is enough room in the market for customers to use both services.

"It is likely we both prosper as consumers move to Internet TV," Netflix said in a statement.

The online streaming giant has invested in several new original shows and more recently original movies like the sequel to Oscar-winning martial-arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in an effort to maintain its position.

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Games talk pulled after death threat

15 October 2014 Last updated at 13:13 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

A feminist video-games critic has cancelled a speech after receiving the latest in a series of death threats.

Anita Sarkeesian had been invited to an event organised by the Center for Women and Gender at Utah State University.

But on Tuesday, the director of the centre and others received an email threatening a "massacre style attack" if the talk proceeded.

Several threats of violence have been made against feminists working in the games industry over recent weeks.

Ms Sarkeesian tweeted that she had not cancelled her lecture because of the email itself, but rather because she had not felt that the security measures would be adequate.

"Requested pat downs or metal detectors after mass shooting threat - but because of Utah's open-carry laws, police wouldn't do firearm searches," she wrote.

A copy of the threatening email published by a local newspaper, the Standard Examiner, attacked feminism in general, rather than specifically its role in critiquing and creating video games.

However, Ms Sarkeesian has linked the intimidation attempt with a wider controversy dubbed GamerGate.

"Multiple specific threats made stating intent to kill me and feminists at USU. For the record, one threat did claim affiliation with #gamergate," she tweeted.

"At this point supporting #gamergate is implicitly supporting the harassment of women in the gaming industry."

Users of the GamerGate hashtag have denied that their campaign is "about harassment or misogyny", insisting it is instead "a consumer boycott and a call for ethics reform in game industry media" after allegations about potentially compromising relationships between developers and journalists.

The users have also criticised news sites for spreading negative stereotypes about gamers and highlighting suggestions of sexism in their reviews and other coverage.

However, some people who identify with the term have also posted abuse and violent threats against women who have spoken out about the topic. This has been criticised by others.

Almost four in 10 console gamers are female, and a higher proportion of mobile gamers are, according to market research firm GlobalWebIndex.

Guns and bombs

Ms Sarkeesian runs the Feminist Frequency website, and has created a series of videos highlighting examples of what she says is the sexist depiction of women in video games.

Last month she reported that she had felt compelled to leave her home after receiving numerous threats after releasing a fresh episode.

Later more than 2,000 others involved in the industry signed an open letter calling for a public stand against such harassment and threats.

Despite the latest email - purportedly from a USU student - containing claims that the author had several guns and pipe bombs, the university denied anyone had been put at risk.

"USU police, in conjunction with several teams of state and federal law enforcement experts, determined that there was no threat to students, staff or the speaker, so no alert was issued," it said in a statement.

"The speaker, Anita Sarkeesian, cancelled the presentation. She was concerned about the fact that state law prevented the university from keeping people with a legal concealed firearm permit from entering the event.

"University police were prepared and had a plan in place to provide extra security measures at the presentation."

Twitter row

The talk's cancellation came four days after feminist video-games developer Brianna Wu fled her home after graphic sexual threats were made against her.

She later shared screenshots of tweets from one user who had threatened to murder her and her family, and had posted her home address to prove they knew where she lived.

Ms Wu subsequently contacted Adam Baldwin, the actor who had coined the term GamerGate, suggesting they meet to discuss changing the "tone" of the debate.

Mr Baldwin initially agreed in principle but called on her to apologise for "implicating" the GamerGate campaign in the threats that had been made against her and suggested she should have kept "silent" about the incident in line with law enforcement guidelines.

The conversation between the two later deteriorated, ultimately resulting in Ms Wu attacking Mr Baldwin's behaviour and him insulting her in turn and telling her to "cease all communication" with him.

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Google readies Android Lollipop

15 October 2014 Last updated at 17:01 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

Google is to begin rolling out version 5.0 of its Android operating system, codenamed Lollipop, on Friday.

The company describes the update as a "quantum leap forward", thanks to its revamped design and new features.

Android already has an 84.7% share of global smartphone shipments, according to research company IDC.

But engineering chief, Hiroshi Lockheimer, told the BBC that among his team's goals was making Android more appealing to the business sector.

"We've made a concerted effort around focusing on the enterprise-use case," he said.

"If you think about it most people only carry one device.

"The one device that they carry [should] work for various scenarios in their life -obviously for personal use, but also if they want to use it for corporate purposes.

"We wanted to make sure that Lollipop is designed in such way that corporations are happy to endorse it."

One example of this, he said, was the ability for a user to have both a personal and work "personality" on a single device - and the ability to switch "seamlessly" between them.

The two personalities would let apps access different sets of stored data, allowing the user's employer to monitor the contents of one partition but not the other.

Blackberry 10 and Samsung's Knox add-on for Android had previously pioneered this idea.

Mr Lockheimer added that making encryption of stored data the default setting would increase security.

And a new facility allowing Android to be put in "do not disturb" mode for a pre-determined period of time should minimise the risk of missing important calls or notifications after a meeting was over because the user forgot to switch off the setting.

"Given the decrease in market share of Blackberry, there is a big opportunity to gain enterprise customers," said Jack Kent, from the IHS consultancy.

"Apple has also been making a big play for that with the iPhone and iPad.

"Samsung had previously taken the lead with Android with its Knox security product, but it makes sense for Google to try to take the lead itself with what it's doing with Android Lollipop."

Material design

For most users, the stand-out change in Android Lollipop will be its new look.

Google calls its new paradigm "material design", and it places fresh emphasis on graphical animations and colour changes in response to the device owner's actions.

"The animations and ripples and things like that are eye candy, but at the same time there's a purpose to them. They give feedback to the customer that you've tapped here, and the software got it, and is doing something about it," said Mr Lockheimer.

"And when one thing moves from one side of the screen to the other it gives you a sense of place and that you're moving forwards in the screens, or up or down.

"These are very interesting visual cues to help the user understand what is happening in the software."

The card-based interface, introduced in the anticipatory search app Google Now, now plays a greater role.

Notifications adopt a card-like appearance on the lock screen, and the design is also used to deliver Google Search results and to switch from one app to another when multitasking.

Another change with notifications is that device owners can customise which types should rise to the top of the list presented to the user or conversely be prevented from appearing on the lock screen, to help device owners prevent information overload.

Furthermore, new notifications now appear at the top of a device's screen rather than covering its centre to avoid the interruption of other activities such as playing a video game.

Android Lollipop also introduces a new feature called "smart lock".

This allows users to set a location - such as their home, car or office desk - or Bluetooth device - such as a smart watch or work keyboard - as a trigger to disable the need to type in a password

State of 'Art'

Behind the scenes, Android Lollipop uses a different process to execute and compile code than before.

The switch, from Dalvik runtime to Art runtime, should mean that apps work slightly quicker and use less battery power if they are optimised for the new code.

It also means Android becomes capable of taking advantage of 64-bit processors, which have the potential of supporting more RAM memory than before.

Mr Lockheimer added that users should notice fewer glitches as a result of the move.

"There's this notion of what we call garbage collection - the system is managing the memory for you and once in a while it has to collect unused memory and free it up for applications," he explained.

"In the past, with Dalvik, garbage collection could actually take longer than it should have - I'm talking milliseconds, but in terms of a CPU [central processing unit] that's a long time.

"What that would result in were temporary glitches, like an animation jumping and not being quite as fluid as it needed to be.

"In Art we've optimised the runtime to make garbage collection very quick and the glitches much less common than before."

Google will release the software development kit and system images for Nexus 5 phones and Nexus 7 tablets on Friday via the Android developers site- allowing app creators to test their software.

On 3 November, Android Lollipop will become available to the public when the Nexus 9 and Nexus Player go on sale.

Other manufacturers and networks will have to test the software before they release it alongside updates of their own software for their machines.

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BBC lets public search old programmes

16 October 2014 Last updated at 12:22

The BBC has launched a test version of an online searchable catalogue of its TV and radio programme broadcasts.

The Genome Project is based on scans of Radio Times magazine listings published between 1923 and 2009. Searches bring up a synopsis, a cast list and an edit button.

It is designed to help the BBC identify programmes missing from its recorded archive and try to find copies of them.

A total of 4,423,654 programmes are included, from 4,469 issues.

The scheme was given its name because the corporation likens each of it programmes to "tiny pieces of BBC DNA" that will form a "data spine" once reassembled.

Most of the BBC's early output was not recorded, and later many shows were destroyed or wiped over.

The hope is that the project will lead to programmes being recovered if the public realises they have audio or video recordings of their own.

Specific shows can be searched for, alternatively visitors can browse the issue archive by year, providing a way to see old Radio Times covers.

The archivists said they expected searches for old Doctor Who episodes to prove particularly popular.

"Genome is the closest we currently have to a comprehensive broadcast history of the BBC," said Hilary Bishop, editor of archive development at the BBC.

"It is highly likely that somewhere out there, in lofts, sheds and basements across the world, many of these 'missing' programmes will have been recorded and kept by generations of TV and radio fans.

"So, we're hoping to use Genome as a way of bringing copies of those lost programmes back in to the BBC archives too."

The next step is to cross reference the Genome Project with the corporation's other records.

At this point, however, there are no details on the search results about whether a programme is missing.

Catalogue errors

Ultimately, the intention is that Genome will also provide photos, scripts and other materials held by the BBC.

For now, it allows the BBC's own staff to download a PDF of the relevant Radio Times magazine, however this facility is not currently available to others.

However, the archivists involved acknowledge that the project does not currently take account of changes to the scheduled broadcast - including coverage of the assassination, in 1963, of President John F Kennedy - and recognise other limitations with the current database.

"We know the data contains errors and we're asking for your help to find and fix them," said Andy Armstrong, an engineer involved in the project.

"We know, for example, that some programmes are currently showing up on the wrong days due to OCR [optical character recognition] errors on the dates.

"We also have work to do to make the site even more accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies.

"And smartphone users may notice certain challenges with the current version of the site - it's better in landscape than in portrait. Sorry. It's on the list. We're working on it."

The team added it also planned to add regional shows not yet included.

The BBC has not said how much the project has cost, although a spokesman said that "any decisions were made with value for money for audiences at its core".

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UK coders triumph in Europe contest

16 October 2014 Last updated at 13:20 By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

Three young coding enthusiasts from the UK have beaten off European competition to win a gaming contest organised by Microsoft.

The Kodu Kup challenges children to create their own game using Kodu, Microsoft's visual programming language.

The winning game was a futuristic one in which players compete to defeat an evil robot.

The competition is part of a huge push to get children doing more coding.

Dragons' Den

Alfie Finch-Critchley, aged 14, and 12-year-old team mates Joseph Banerjee and Jonathan Haley are from Uppingham Community College in the East Midlands.

Their futuristic game, Confined - which was inspired by Valve's title Portal - won the 12-16 age category.

They competed against teams from Portugal, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Greece, Lithuania and Estonia in the final, in which they had to complete a Dragons'-Den style pitch to a jury of MEPs, education and gaming experts.

"Computational thinking helps our young people to understand and play an active role in the world that surrounds them," commented Simon Peyton-Jones, chair of the Computing at School campaign

"The Kodu Kup provides an opportunity for children to creatively engage with computing, whilst also teaching them the coding skills which will help them to secure the jobs of the future."

Team work

Speaking about the process, Alfie said: "Apart from the event itself, the best part of participating in the Kodu Kup for me was the teamwork. We worked together and we were able to take our individual talents and combine them to get the best result possible.

"Kids don't always need to be told what to do to understand things, through computational thinking and perseverance you can find out for yourself, and if you can get a grasp of computers and computer science you can understand the world around us."

Judge Kelly Smith, head of television and games at BAFTA, said that the standard of the competition "blew me away".

The winners were chosen for their presentation, the details they had put into their game and the way they had worked as a team.

"They had really thought about the design, usability and where their product would be placed in the market, which is remarkable for a group of 12- to 14-year-olds," she said.

The competition is part of EU Code Week, an initiative aimed at getting more children interested in coding.

Microsoft, together with Facebook, Rovio, SAP and Liberty Global, have formed a coalition to launch a pan-European online platform to drive participation in coding.

In September, coding in UK schools was made mandatory for all children aged five to 16.

The BBC is a partner in a UK-based coding initiative dubbed Year of Code, which aims, among other things, to crowdsource funding to help parents, pupils and educational organisations get involved in coding.

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Smart meters open to hack attack

16 October 2014 Last updated at 13:18 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Smart meters widely used in Spain can be hacked to under-report energy use, security researchers have found.

Poorly protected credentials inside the devices could let attackers take control over the gadgets, warn the researchers.

The utility that deployed the meters is now improving the devices' security to help protect its network.

The discovery comes as one security expert warns some terror groups may attack critical infrastructure systems.

Many utility companies are installing smart meters to help customers monitor and manage their power use and help them be more energy efficient.

"We took them apart to see how they work," said independent researcher Javier Vidal who, with Alberto Illera, found the flaws in the smart meters.

"We suspected there could be some issues with them and we wanted to check.

"We feared the security would be easy to break and we confirmed that," he told the BBC.

Network nodes

Buried inside the onboard software, or firmware, the pair found encryption keys used to scramble all the information that the smart meter shares with "nodes" sitting higher in the power distribution system.

Using the keys and the unique identifier associated with each meter it became possible for the researchers to spoof messages being sent from the power-watching device to a utility company.

"We can fool the nodes and send them false data," said Mr Vidal.

Attackers could use what Mr Vidal and Mr Illera found to under-report energy use or to get someone else to pay their bill by using their ID in messages sent back to the nodes that log usage. With more work it might be possible to find a way to seek out meters and cut off the power they are supplying, they said.

The Spanish utility firm deploying the meters, which the researchers declined to name, had been told about the work and was working to close loopholes, said Mr Vidal. Millions of the smart meters are set to be installed in Spain before 2018, he added.

Security investigator Greg Jones who carried out similar work on smart meters being rolled out in the UK, said he was "not surprised" about the Spanish researchers' findings.

Mr Jones's work uncovered shared IDs, poor protection against tampering and data formats that would be easy to fake.

"I'm pretty sure that anyone who picked up one of these units would find similar problems," he said.

Although many different researchers had found the security on smart meters wanting, so far, he said, this work had not prompted a big improvement in the way the gadgets worked.

Some meters were being installed in their millions across nations, he said, despite security holes having been found in them.

A lot of the equipment being rolled out was securable, he added, though its limited computational capacities made it a tricky job to get right.

Added to this was the problem that the devices sat in peoples' homes and were not under the control of power firms.

"If you physically own a piece of hardware you can compromise it," he said.

'Brutal' entities

Ashar Aziz, founder and head of security firm FireEye, said it was easy to explain why power networks and other critical infrastructure systems had not yet been attacked despite widespread reporting of their security shortcomings.

"The balance is maintained right now because the people that have the skill set and capability to infect these kinds of networks do not have the motivation," he said, "and those that have the motivation do not have the skill set."

Cybercrime gangs who had programming skills on tap were much more interested in making money than knocking out power grids, he said. By contrast, terror groups currently did not have the depth of computational skill required to tackle such a big target.

The research, analysis and development required to carry out such an attack was "non-trivial", said Mr Aziz and would probably take many months.

"The threshold to acquire this sophisticated cyber-weapon is much bigger than you need to make credit-card stealing malware," he said.

The Spanish researchers took about six months to reverse engineer the smart meter and work out how the power network handled communication.

Despite this hurdle, Mr Aziz said that an attack on critical infrastructure was bound to happen.

"We have a lot of brutal, non-state entities popping up all around the world and they are getting more organised on a daily basis," he said. "That capability is getting to be within the reach of them."

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We need vast data 'haystack' - May

16 October 2014 Last updated at 13:41 By Brian Wheeler Political reporter

Home Secretary Theresa May has defended the collection of vast amounts of phone and internet data - as exposed by US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"If you are searching for the needle in the haystack, you have to have a haystack in the first place," she said.

She told a Parliamentary committee citizens did not give their explicit consent to have their data harvested by the security services.

But there was an "unwritten agreement" that it was needed to "keep us safe".

Mrs May argued that collecting and storing phone and internet records was not the same as "mass surveillance" because "most of the data will not be looked at at all, will not be touched".

'Safe and secure'

But she added that there was "a necessity in having the material in order to be able to search it in a very targeted way" and it was "hugely important" to have "large amounts" of it.

"The ability to interrogate that bulk data - to look for that needle in the haystack - is an important part of the processes that people go through in order to keep us safe," she told the intelligence and security committee.

This puts the home secretary directly at odds with civil liberties groups, who have told the committee that bulk collection of data is a gross invasion of privacy which should be banned.

"I don't the very collection of bulk data itself is an invasion of privacy," she said, adding that she believed privacy considerations only should only kick in "at the point at which the communication is opened".

'Terms and conditions'

She said commercial companies also collected large quantities of data to target advertising at consumers.

Labour MP George Howarth pointed out that internet users normally consented to this, even if they did not always read the "terms and conditions".

Mrs May replied: "I think there is - not a contract entered into - but an unwritten agreement between the individual and the state that the state is going to do everything they can to keep them safe and secure."

She said there was a clear difference between examining data - the time and location of phone calls, for example - and snooping on the contents of calls and emails.

And she revealed that the task which took up more of her time than any other at the Home Office was considering applications from the police and security services to bug the phones of suspected terrorists and organised criminals, or mount surveillance operations.

The number of warrants she refused to sign was "very, very small," she told the committee, but added "any warrant that reaches my desk has been through a very thorough process".

She said there was a need to educate the public about why bulk data collection was needed - but she ruled out publishing statistics comparing the effectiveness of that technique at foiling terrorist attacks with targeted surveillance techniques such as phone taps.

She also categorically ruled out scrapping the convention dictating that ministers never comment on security matters.

The committee of seven MPs and two peers is investigating whether surveillance laws need to be updated in light of Snowden's leaks suggesting wholesale interception by GCHQ of internet traffic passing through the UK.

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Madeley warns trolls over rape threats

16 October 2014 Last updated at 16:22

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TV presenter Richard Madeley has warned Twitter trolls

TV presenter Richard Madeley has said people who sent "sick rape threats" to his daughter are in "deep trouble".

Chloe Madeley received threats on Twitter after defending her mother, Judy Finnigan, who caused controversy when she described a rape committed by footballer Ched Evans as "non-violent".

Mr Madeley tweeted "prosecution awaits" for the culprits but refused to comment on whether he had contacted police.

The Met Police said they were not aware of any complaint about the matter.

However, a spokesman added it could have been reported to any police force.

In an email to BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat Miss Madeley said she wanted to stand up to "vicious attention seekers."

She added: "I always ignore the disgusting troll tweets I get because I honestly do not want to give them any attention, but the tweet in question took it to another level."

Evans was jailed for five years in 2012 for raping a 19-year-old woman, but has served half of his sentence and is expected to be released on Friday.

'Horrendous crime'

Speaking on Monday about the possibility that Evans could return to professional football, Ms Finnigan said the 25-year-old had "served his time".

On ITV's Loose Women, she said: "The rape - and I am not, please, by any means minimising any kind of rape - but the rape was not violent, he didn't cause any bodily harm to the person."

"It was unpleasant, in a hotel room I believe, and she [the victim] had far too much to drink."

Following criticism of her comments on Twitter, Ms Finnigan said: "I apologise unreservedly for any offence that I may have caused as a result of the wording I used."

In a statement, she said she was discussing what should happen to prisoners after their release.

"I absolutely wasn't suggesting that rape was anything other than an horrendous crime," she added.

Reacting to the situation with her own Twitter post, Miss Madeley wrote: "To believe my mother is pro 'non violent rape' is ridiculous and I am shocked that so many people have jumped to this conclusion.

"To the trolls wishing rape on me, stop, you are utterly pathetic."

Football return?

One of those who criticised Ms Finnigan was Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Vera Baird, who said: "No bodily injury has little relevance; it doesn't have to do physical damage to be rape and it is the essence of violence to force himself upon her."

Evans was not sacked by his club, Sheffield United, when he was sent to prison - but the club allowed his contract to expire in June 2012.

Current manager Nigel Clough has confirmed he has spoken to club officials about the possibility of Evans returning after his release.

"We've had one or two discussions and the owners will make a decision on it," Clough told BBC Radio Sheffield.

"It is above a football level. If he comes back then we [the coaching staff] will decide whether to play him or not."

More than 140,000 people have signed an online petition calling on Sheffield United not to let Evans return.

Evans, who was refused leave to appeal against his conviction in 2012, began a fresh attempt in July, asking the Criminal Cases Review Commission to review his case which could lead to a new appeal.

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