With power comes responsibility, warns Martin Moore of the Hacked Off campaign
Index on Censorship has submitted our concerns about the UK government’s proposed Communications Data Bill (widely known as the “snoopers charter”). We have several concerns about the government’s proposals, as surveillance and retention of data can undoubtedly have an effect on free expression. I’ll reproduce the introduction to our submission, which outlines our concerns, here, and you can read the full submission below.
The Communications Data Bill as currently drafted would directly undermine both the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression by making surveillance and storage of UK citizens’ communications data the norm. These rights are enshrined in Articles 8 and 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 and in the European Convention on Human Rights and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UNDR explicitly states that: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence”.
Collection and filtering of communications data across the whole British population would not only represent an unacceptable breach of privacy but would also undermine freedom of expression. Index on Censorship – as one of the world’s leading freedom of expression organisations – has monitored censorship and surveillance around the world for forty years. The goals of widespread monitoring, information-collection and storage, and surveillance of a whole population are aims that are normally found only in authoritarian and totalitarian states, such as Iran and China, not in democracies who are bound, through their accession to the human rights conventions mentioned above, and through their commitments to democracy and freedom, only to limit free expression where it is necessary on clear grounds of national security and public order and to impose any limits in a proportionate and limited manner.
Population-wide collection and filtering of communications data is neither necessary nor proportionate. Monitoring and surveillance of this kind impacts directly and in a chilling manner on freedom of expression, inhibiting and restricting individuals in how they receive, share and impart information and encouraging self-censorship. No other democracy has gone as far as the government proposes in this bill that the UK should go. As well as representing a major undermining of privacy and freedom of expression in the UK, this bill, if it became law, would be a direct encouragement and justification for authoritarian regimes to monitor in detail their entire populations online as well as off. It would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the UK to challenge these regimes on their censorship and surveillance of their populations. It is also remarkable that, in a memorandum attached to the draft bill on the compatibility of the bill with the European Convention on Human Rights, the government sees fit to focus only on the right to privacy and makes no mention of the potentially chilling and damaging impacts of the bill on freedom of expression.
The declared purpose of this bill is to tackle crime and to ensure national security. This type of in-depth monitoring of the entire population has at no point before been used or introduced as an appropriate crime-prevention or security-promoting tool in the UK. It would represent a reversal of the presumption of innocence and an unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of the British population.
Furthermore, the fact that new technology makes such population-wide data collection, filtering and monitoring possible is not a justification for using the technology in that manner. Such data collection would represent a major step-change in the amount of information available on individual citizens and is not, as has been claimed, simply a step to ensure information already available offline is also available from online sources. The distinction between ‘subscriber’, ‘use’ and ‘traffic’ data and data content is also a misleading one. The range of data that would be collected as ‘communications data’ would enable a detailed picture of individual’s habits, activities, interests, and opinions to be built up going well beyond any population-wide accumulation of data that has happened until now in the UK.
If you want to add your voice, you can sign 38 Degrees petition here;
Avaaz also has a petition here;
And Open Rights Group allows you to write directly to your MP here
Have you seen Prince Harry’s crown jewels!!??!! The royal family’s finest asset!
The jokes write themselves, don’t they? Feel free to add your own in the comments.
But the nude Las Vegas party adventures of the third in line to the British throne — or, more accurately, the pictures of the nude Las Vegas party adventures of the third in line to the British throne — throw up some serious questions.
No British newspaper has published the nude pictures taken inside a private hotel suite, though most published other pictures, taken outside, of the young prince (cue newspaper-speak) “cavorting” with other “revellers”, including Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte.
The Sun, bizarrely, got staff, including an intern, to pose in replica shots.
Newspapers were informed by the PCC that St James’s Palace had issued a semi-threatening legal letter from law firm Harbottle and Lewis, claiming that publication of the photographs would be in contravention of article 3 of the PCC code (which covers privacy), and that the palace “reserved its rights” should publication go ahead.
There’s been debate since about whether or not publication of the pictures would be in the public interest. On the one hand, Harry was on private time, and not in a public place, when the nude photos were taken. What has the world come to when young, healthy soldier on leave can’t get naked and play billiards without his pictures being published everywhere!
But then, Harry is, by very definition, through the weirdness of monarchy, a public figure. The pictures are certainly of interest to the public, if not in the public interest. And public knowledge of them doesn’t seem to have dented the prince’s ever-rising popularity. The general reaction has been along the lines of “of course he’s hanging out naked in a Vegas hotel suite! He’s Prince Harry and that’s what he does, the little scamp.”
Being honest, I’m not sure where I stand on this. But here’s what I find interesting. I have absolutely no doubt that in a pre-Leveson world, these pictures would have been published by the majority of newspapers. Are they now being sensible and respectful, or timid and fearful of the Lord Justice’s wrath?
What’s more, when the pictures are all over the web (the Daily Mail has helpfully produced a list of sites where you can view the royal birthday suit), how meaningful are Harbottle and Lewis’s letter, the PCC’s warning*notification, and the various editors’ decisions not to run the pictures?
One final thought: in a time when Facebook stores over 4 per cent of all photographs ever taken, does any 27-year-old actually expect privacy at a party?
Update: Jonathan Collett of the Press Complaints Commission has been in touch about the reference to “the PCC’s warning” in this post. He says:
It’s not the case that we have issued a warning. The Palace have themselves confirmed that they contacted the PCC and used our pre-publication services to pass on their concerns about the potential publication of the photographs to Editors. They used the same system that is available to members of the public, which the PCC has developed to allow people at the heart of a news story to make editors aware of their concerns before publication. The decision on whether to proceed with publication rests with Editors, who clearly will be mindful of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The PCC has not received a formal complaint about the photographs and the Commission has not made any ruling on the issue.
It certainly wasn’t my intention to suggest that the Commission itself had “issued a warning”, merely that it had warned in the “alerted” sense, that Harbottle & Lewis had sent the letter. But that could have been made clearer, and we’re happy to publish Mr Collett’s explanation.
Padraig Reidy is Index on Censorship’s news editor
Tunisia’s data protection authority is in the process of amending the country’s 2004 privacy law, which will regulate the use of personal data.
Hacking into activists’ emails, tapping into dissidents’ phone calls, or installing surveillance cameras in the homes of political opponents were common practices during the reign of Zeine el-Abidin Ben Ali. Amending this particular law section related to the processing of personal data by public entities, would place the State and its organs under the scrutiny of the INPDP.