MI5 and MI6 must convince public they are working for them and not against them I think that it may mean it is now the time to look again at the oversight. I have every confidence that the oversight is good and they're not trying anything of the things they're not supposed to. But it may be that we need something more complex to convince the nation our intelligence services are actually acting on their behalf and not acting against them. Assange and Snowden would be seen to be what I believe they are, which is self-seeking twerps. She added the service was now facing one of its most difficult periods ever, with "spreading extremism that is sucking in young people and providing them with some kind of ethic and ethos that is difficult for all of us to understand." Dame Stella, 78, also spoke of the difficulties of combining her former role with motherhood, disclosing she had feared for the safety of her daughters after her identity was revealed. Speaking of the nature of state surveillance, she added: "My own opinion on this is that intelligence, in an increasingly complex and sophisticated world, has to be able to go where the threat is," she said. In that the people who are seeking to harm us are increasingly sophisticated and are using more sophisticated ways of communicating in order to conceal their plans. Our intelligence services have to be given the tools to go there too in order to react.