Here are this morning's headlines:  • Google and Yahoo, two of the world's biggest tech companies, reacted angrily to a report on Wednesday that the National Security Agency has secretly intercepted the main communication links that carry their users' data around the world.  Citing documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials, the Washington Post claimed the agency could collect information "at will" from among hundreds of millions of user accounts.  The documents suggest that the NSA, in partnership with its British counterpart GCHQ, is copying large amounts of data as it flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the worldwide data centers of the Silicon Valley giants. The intelligence activities of the NSA outside the US are subject to fewer legal constraints than its domestic actions.  The story is likely to put further strain on the already difficult relations between the tech firms and Washington. The internet giants are furious about the damage done to their reputation in the wake of Snowden's revelations.  • The director of the National Security Agency conceded that it may need to scale back some of its surveillance operations on foreign leaders, in the wake of an international outcry.  Launching a public defence of the NSA for the second time in as many days, Keith Alexander acknowledged that limiting the programme may be necessary in order to maintain diplomatic relations. “I think in some cases the partnerships are more important," he told an audience in Washington.  Partnerships between Washington and several European nations, particularly Germany, have come under extreme strain since chancellor Angela Merkel confronted the US about the NSA intercepting her phone calls.  The White House, evidently chastened by the fallout in recent days, has begun suggesting that some restrictions on foreign-focused surveillance are forthcoming – something that US legislators have balked at, despite months of wide-ranging leaks from Snowden.  • The widespread surveillance of Spanish citizens by the US National Security Agency, which caused outrage when it was reported this week, was the product of a collaboration with Spain's intelligence services, according to one Spanish newspaper.  • Meanwhile Le Monde reported that the DGSE, France's external intelligence agency, may have established a “protocol” of exchanging data with the US at around the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012. The paper said part of this agreement involved exchanging data from under-sea cables which came from Africa and Afghanistan into France. The reports about France and Spain come a day after NSA director Alexander testified before the US house intelligence committee that suggestions the agency monitored millions of calls in Spain, France and Italy were "completely false" and that this data had been at least partially collected by the intelligence services of those countries and then passed on to the NSA.  • Key documents relating to the police detention of David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, have been handed over to his lawyers, the high court was told on Wednesday.  Judges turned down an application for more material to be released on the grounds that further disclosure was not necessary and would not be in the national interest. The decision was announced at the end of a preliminary hearing before next week's challenge of the lawfulness of the police decision to hold Miranda under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.  The Brazilian national was detained for nine hours as he passed through Heathrow airport on 18 August this year. He was in transit between Berlin, where he had met the film-maker Laura Poitras who has been involved breaking revelations based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and Rio de Janeiro.  Miranda's lawyers claim that the Metropolitan police misused schedule 7 and that his detention was a violation of his human rights. They sought information about why Miranda was stopped and why his laptop, phone and electronic equipment were seized.  • Boris Johnson put himself at odds with the prime minister by issuing a staunch defence of the Guardian's "salient and interesting" revelations about the activities of US and UK intelligence agencies. Speaking at the World Islamic Economic Forum the mayor of London said: "I think the public deserves to know. The world is better for government being kept under the beady-eyed scrutiny of the media and for salient and interesting facts about public espionage being brought into the public domain."  • Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert explains why he called this afternoon’s debate on oversight of the security services.  British politicians must step up and discuss an issue that is crucial now and will only loom larger in the coming years, as more and more information becomes electronic, and the ability to collect it, store it and analyse it grows rapidly. We need to discuss publicly what we think the rules should be for state surveillance, how it should be controlled, and what the limits must be.  There is no doubt in my mind that we benefit from the intelligence and security agencies. Their work does help to keep us safe. However, we must ensure that as parliamentarians and lawmakers we give the agencies a clear framework to operate in and proper oversight, scrutiny and evaluation to keep them on track. They too should welcome this.  It is of course not possible to have total privacy and total security, and there is a balance to be struck. Tracking a specific individual of genuine concern is very different from sweeping everyone into a net. Critically, parliament must be given a say in how this balance is achieved. Our starting point should have the scales tipped in favour of liberty and privacy. This is what western democracy is based on, and if we reject this, those seeking to destroy the fabric of our society will have already won.  He explains what he feels needs fixing:  The intelligence and security committee, which is supposed to examine the policy and operations of the agencies, consists of a small number of parliamentarians, handpicked by the prime minister, and includes ex-ministers who effectively scrutinise their own past decisions. It is not clear to me they all understand the technical capabilities they are supposed to comment on.  We have to fix our legislation urgently. One central piece, Ripa, is known to be broken – it was used to allow council officials to find out whether families lived in school catchment areas. Others give the secretary of state sweeping and authoritarian powers, with the limits of that power kept secret. We should also create a new, beefed-up body including more independent people to scrutinise what is happening, based on Obama's privacy and civil liberties oversight board.  You can catch up with all yesterday’s developments here.
Westminster Hall hosts three-hour debate on whether Britain’s security services are sufficiently well supervised in wake of Guardian Snowden revelations