On the beat |Total surveillance
Blog |
19 June 2012
The extension of police powers to indiscriminantly ‘snoop’ on communications data is an infringement of human rights
The general rule is that you never mix
politics and policing. The government makes the laws and the police
enforce them. The separation of the two powers is crucial in an open and
democratic society that adheres to the rule of law. So it was
surprising to read the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, writing
in The Times last week (14 June 2012), lobbying on behalf of the
coalition government to legislate for new surveillance powers which will
give the police, intelligence agencies and HM Revenue and Customs
access to all our communications data. He states that: “It allows police
to prove or disprove alibis, eliminate innocent people from an
investigation and establish links between conspirators,” and that “in a
significant number of cases, access to communications data is a matter
of life or death”.
Current
proposals are a direct challenge to the established presumption of
innocent until proven guilty and an infringement of our basic human
right, the right to a private lifeThe draft Communications Data
Bill will force service providers to record and retain all activities of
their customers for 12 months and hand over details of who they
contacted, when, where and how, on request. At present, 25 per cent of
data is not logged by service providers and the government is proposing
to hand over £200m every year of our public funds to these providers in
order to close that gap. The home secretary has justified such moves as
“a vital tool” which is “a crucial part of day-to-day policing and the
fingerprinting of the modern age”. Critics have labelled the draft bill a
‘snoopers’ charter’ and if the aim of the government is to introduce a
digital fingerprint programme under the guise of fighting crime then I
would have to agree. The Current
proposals are a direct challenge to the established presumption of
innocent until proven guilty and an infringement of our basic human
right, the right to a private life
This
“total war on crime” is nothing less than total surveillance and a
creeping criminalisation of society. The reluctance of the government
and the commissioner to seek independent oversight over such powers is
not just concerning but demonstrates that they are willing to set up a
totalitarian-style of policing. Under the proposals there will be no
requirement to apply for a court warrant and instead the approval will
be carried out in-house with a report being prepared for the
interception of communications surveillance commissioner after the
event. This will mean that there will be no strict controls over this
new capability and the power will be susceptible to abuse.
Unjustified intrusion
It
has already been reported that at least 500,000 requests for data
access are made every year by public authorities. More than half of the
requests are made by the police and intelligence services and, of those,
between 2010 and 2011 only 124 requests were connected to a criminal
case. The argument put forward by the commissioner that “put simply, the
police need access to this information to keep up with the criminals
who bring so much harm to victims and our society” does not correlate
with these statistics and paints a different picture under closer
examination.
The commissioner also said he
believes that: “In the UK we police by consent.” However, the
insatiable hunger for greater power could risk turning policing into a
monster, uncontrollable and without any due process to the public, where
consent would neither be sought for or wanted.
The
odd suggestion by Nick Herbert, the police minister, last week that
undercover police officers are allowed to have sexual relationships with
activists under their surveillance, “if it is consentutory conduct
falling within the Act that the source is authorised to undertake”, is a
clear example of how the current laws under RIPA 2000 are being abused.
The police minister has failed to recognise that the eight women who
are pursuing civil claims against the Metropolitan Police for breach of
their right to form relationships without unjustified interference by
the state did not consent to having sexual relationships with policemen.
It
is alleged that one of the officers named by the women include Mark
Kennedy, whose actions led to the collapse of the trial of the six
environmental protestors who were accused of conspiring to shut down
Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in January 2011 (blog post January 23
2011 ‘But officer!’ (www.solicitorsjournal.com/blog/beat)).
Kennedy then became the central focus of the review led by Bernard
Hogan-Howe in his role at Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary
(HMIC), which found that “there was serious intrusion into the lives of
others”, and “there is not the same accountability to the courts as for
evidence-gathering deployments”.
In light
of such findings, I would have thought that the commissioner would have
wanted there to be judicial oversight over new powers and, if he was to
lobby the government, then he would have lobbied for greater
accountability. The chilling words used by the home secretary that “the
only people who have anything to fear from this are the criminals” is
wrong as the government wants the power to spy on anyone for any reason
and that is something that we must all fear.
