Stephen Fry attacks ‘squalid’ coalition for inaction on Snowden revelations.

Stephen Fry has denounced the government’s failure to act over the mass surveillance programme revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, labelling its behaviour as “squalid and rancid”.

Opening a day of debate to galvanise action against spying by the British and US intelligence agencies, Fry said that exploiting the fear of terrorism is a “duplicitous and deeply wrong means of excusing something as base as spying on the citizens of your own country”.