International Law

Surveillance: Citizens and the State - HoL Constitution Committee report

House of Lords Constitution Committee 2008-2009 session - Second Report: Surveillance: Citizens and the State

This report is important, bur we fear that the usual Labour Government combination of technological fantasist ignorance, together with their "nanny police state knows best" political arrogance and media spin, will try to cherry pick it, and will ignore its most important recommendations.

There is a good summary of this report published by the Open Rights Group:

Lords Constitution Committee report on surveillance and privacy

The Constitution Committee recommends

* Encryption of personal data should be mandatory in some circumstances
* Fines on data controllers for deliberately or recklessly breaching the data protection principles
* Remove people who are not convicted from the National DNA Database
* Tidy up the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act
* Oversight for surveillance carried out by public authorities
* Changes in organisational cultures, leadership, accountability, transparency, training and awareness
* Appropriate use of encryption throughout the public and private sectors
* An independent review of the proclaimed but largely unproven benefits of CCTV

The two areas missing from the report are comments on the government's current plans for a new national database containing the electronic communications data of the entire population and the powers for unrestrained information sharing granted in Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, currently being debated in Commons Committee.

What happens next? The Government will provide a written response to the report within the next two months. After that, a debate will be scheduled in the House. The more pressure we can bring to bear on Government, the better. The subject of the report is enormously important. Privacy is essential to a free society. Without it, the state is all-powerful.

The NO2ID Campaign press release One piece missing from Lords surveillance report sums up our reaction:

Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator said:

`The report screams - Stop! Stop unwarranted surveillance. Stop abusing, misusing and losing citizens' information. Stop building the database state.

`But the government has just stamped on the accelerator. It is not listening.'

CHAPTER 9: Recommendations:

Full post as published by Spy Blog on February 07, 2009 (boomark / email).