So said David Cameron MP of intrusive snooping powers back in June 2009. Just under a year later, he became Prime Minister and his Coalition vowed to end the hoarding of our communications data without good reason.
But now, rather than reverse problematic powers passed under the previous government which enable mass surveillance, the Government is doing the opposite. Ministers are going even further; reviving their predecessors’ plans for a Snoopers’ Charter. Also known as the Draft Communications Data Bill, this window to our souls will see records of the entire population’s e-mails, texts and phonecalls collected and stored together with the addresses of all the websites we visit.
Under these plans, for the first time private firms will be told to gather and retain billions of customers’ communications – for no other reason than the authorities’ future demands for access. Make no mistake – this amounts to mass, blanket monitoring of the whole country; paid for and overseen by the Government but outsourced to the private sector.
Collecting the communications data of everybody in the country “just in case” is incredibly difficult to square with the UK’s commitment to respect personal privacy and we believe that these proposals could well prove unlawful. Indeed constitutional courts across the continent – including in Germany, Romania and Bulgaria – have ruled that even the current EU regime for retaining some records contravenes basic rights and freedoms. So what might the Courts make of our Government’s attempts to deepen its ability to monitor electronic communications? It’s worth remembering that the Court of Human Rights ruled that the previous government’s policy of indefinite, blanket DNA retention – a scheme not so dissimilar to the Snoopers’ Charter – was unlawful and unacceptably detrimental to personal privacy.
Given the huge privacy implications for all UK residents it’s shocking that there has been no prior public consultation on these proposals, but thankfully a Joint Committee, comprising of MPs and Peers, has at least been set up to scrutinise the Government’s plans. Its members have asked for written evidence on the proposals, the deadline for which is today. Liberty has been fighting hard against the Draft Bill via our No Snoopers’ Charter campaign and today we’ve supplied our submission to the Committee – stating exactly why the proposals must be rejected – which you can read here.
