Following a
prompt by the Open Rights Group I have written to my MP asking she intervene positively on the side of privacy or at least follow her conscience rather than party orders in the debate on mass surveillance in parliament next Thursday. Copy of my note below.
Dear Ms Blackwood,
As you know, MPs Tom Watson, Julian Huppert and Dominic Raab have secured a 'Westminster
Hall' debate in Parliament next Thursday, on 'oversight of intelligence and security services.'
Intelligence agencies have significant powers to collect and analyse private information. It is
Parliament's responsibility to ensure these are necessary, proportionate and that they are not
abused.
We now know from Edward Snowden's leaks that GCHQ has developed a range of mass
surveillance programmes, for example the tapping of undersea fibre-optic cables under the
codename 'Tempora'. From the information published so far, it seems clear that surveillance law is
unfit for the digital age and that significant reforms are needed.
Debates about the limits of surveillance and the oversight of intelligence agencies are being held
in America and across Europe including potentially historic hearings on the matter in the EU
parliament LIBE civil liberties committee. Whether the latter hearings come to be seen as historic
will largely, of course, depend on the change they can effect.
MPs in the UK, however, have seemed reluctant to take the initiative and discuss mass
surveillance by UK intelligence services. And so far the Government have only seemed worried
about whether newspapers should have told us anything about the surveillance.
It is high time a substantial debate took place in the UK too.
The debate next Thursday will be the first substantial debate in Parliament about the mass
surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden. It is an opportunity to begin the process of updating
our surveillance laws so they better respect our privacy and are more fit for purpose in facilitating
targeted electronic surveillance with the appropriate checks, balances and oversights to inhibit
the abuse of such laws.
I'm writing to ask you to speak up about this issue in the debate. There is a long and a short
articulation of why this issue is one of the most fundamental questions of the information age. I
appreciate you are busy so I'll use the short version. Simply speaking the evolving infrastructure of
our surveillance state represents a clear and present danger to our democracy. If that sounds like
hyperbole then I would just ask you to take some time to read two essays on the subject by hugely
respected commentators - Bruce Schneier's Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet available at
http://en.collaboratory.de/w/Power_in_the_Age_of_the_Feudal_Internet and Evgeny Morozov's The
Real Privacy Problem at http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520426/the-real-privacyproblem/
I would ask that you consider the issues carefully and draw your own conclusions rather than
follow the party line. The matter is far too serious to be in the business of just following orders.
If you would like some further details don't hesitate to get in touch. I'd leave you with one final
thought. Nearly 250 years ago, Lord Chief Justice Camden decided that government agents are
not allowed to break your door down and ransack your house and papers in an effort to find some
evidence to incriminate you (the case of Entick v Carrington (1765) 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029,
2 Wils 275, 95 ER 807, Court of Common Pleas).
The good judge also declared personal papers
to be one’s “dearest property”. I suspect he might view personal data likewise in the internet age. I
understand Lord Camden's reasoning in Entick became the inspiration behind the 4th Amendment
to the US Constitution which offers protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. For a
quarter of a millennium, fishing expeditions of the type that the GCHQ and NSA are engaged in
have been considered to fundamentally undermine the rule of law. It's time Parliament brought
these modern practices into line with that rule of law.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Regards,
Ray Corrigan
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