WHEN former US spook Edward Snowden leaked masses of classified National Security Agency (NSA) data two years ago, he did something heroic.

This is not because leaking classified intelligence is inherently virtuous or even because of the huge personal sacrifices Snowden made — giving up his well-paid job and his relationship and being forced to live in exile.

It is because he was committing a public service in revealing for the first time the astonishing scale of state surveillance that has become the norm in the West.

These revelations were met with horror.

The idea that every detail of your personal life, the contents of every message you send and the words of every phone call made could be listened to was shocking — indeed, it used to be a stock accusation the “liberal” West threw at socialist countries, particularly East Germany.

But what Snowden revealed, the vast and indiscriminate hoovering up of personal data by security agencies, was closer to the Big Brother is Watching You dystopia George Orwell dreaded than anything the Stasi could have managed.

These startling discoveries were compounded in February when the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ spy base had been unlawfully sharing data intercepted in bulk for over seven years.

None of this prompted any embarrassment, let alone any apology, from the British state for its abuse of citizens’ trust. Nobody from the security services was punished for breaking the law and ministers did not vow to rectify the situation — except in the sorry sense of Theresa May’s draft Bill, unveiled in the Commons yesterday.

If the measures you’re using to spy on your own people break the law, don’t change tactics — change the law.

The draft Bill suggests private web and phone companies will be required by law to retain the details of every website visited by everyone for 12 months, in case the police or the spooks decide they want a look.

A new legal obligation also forces companies to help the security services hack into computers and phones, to overcome any encryption technology citizens may try to hide behind.

And it explicitly endorses the bulk collection of data.

Supposedly there are safeguards. The Prime Minister will have to agree if the spies want to target an MP.

Given David Cameron’s hysterical rants about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn being a threat to our national security, the Star remains unconvinced that the Tory leader will take a sober and cautious approach to such cases.

If police want warrants to intercept communications new judicial commissioners will have the right to veto the Home Secretary’s approval.

But as Tory MP David Davis and Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti note, this retrospective rubber-stamping exercise does not amount to proper judicial oversight.

Despite a welcome intervention by shadow home secretary Andy Burnham seeking assurances over blacklisting, Labour appear to be ready to accept this further erosion of our civil liberties.

Of course terrorist groups exist. Isis and other extremist groups do seek to convince young British people to take up arms and travel to warzones to torture and kill. There are groups who want to massacre ordinary citizens.

Marxists can point to the economic, political and social causes of what to most of us is inexplicable behaviour, but these do not counteract the need to defeat such groups and prevent atrocities.

Unfortunately, repeated revelations of state snooping on perfectly legitimate protest, state complicity in blacklisting and state persecution of trade unionists, environmental activists, feminists, communists and many other activists show that the British state is not a benevolent watchdog acting in the public interest.

It is the tool of our rulers which can and often is used against us. It cannot be trusted with the blanket powers the Conservative Party seeks to give it.