Writing in The Guardian today, Nick Clegg claims that in 2010:
When a senior official took me aside and told me that the previous government had granted MI5 direct access to records of millions of phone calls made in the UK– a capability only a tiny handful of senior cabinet ministers knew about – I was astonished that such a powerful capability had not been declared either to the public or to parliament and insisted that its necessity should be reviewed.
That the existence of this previously top secret database was finally revealed in parliament by the home secretary on Wednesday, as part of a comprehensive new investigatory powers bill covering many other previously secret intelligence capabilities, speaks volumes about how far we’ve come in a few short years.
He goes on to explain
One of the merits of coalition politics is its incompatibility with sofa government. For once, the securocrats in the Home Office had to persuade two sets of ministers from different political traditions. In the case of my party, our inbuilt mistrust of big government and belief in civil liberties meant we took the time to scrutinise the proposals that were put to us in huge detail.
…
This combination of internal friction and external public debate proved to be a potent recipe for change. We overcame the head-in-the-sand attitude of securocrats and Conservative ministers, first by vetoing the draft communications data bill in 2013 (to dire Home Office warnings of blood on the streets), and then by attaching conditions to every new piece of legislation that dealt with security matters.
That allowed us to set up a root-and-branch review of the existing surveillance laws, which was conducted by David Anderson QC; to convene a civil society panel under the auspices of the Royal United Services Institute; to appoint a senior diplomat to wrest control of the international data-sharing agenda away from the Home Office; and to place a “sell-by date” on a substantial chunk of the powers, forcing the government elected in 2015 to bring forward fresh, comprehensive legislation by December 2016.
The draft bill that was published this week is the result.
Although the Bill is far from perfect
We are now in touching distance of a comprehensive new law covering every single surveillance power at the disposal of the government – which will have been thoroughly debated in both houses of parliament, including scrutiny of hitherto secret capabilities. Whatever people may think about the decisions eventually made, democratic oversight will have been strengthened, transparency enhanced, and secret powers forced out into the open.
You can read the full article here.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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5 Comments
Woo. So here we have our former leader (who continues to miss key votes in the Commons) coming out broadly in favour of legislation to record the internet communications of every person in the country. How wonderfully liberal.
@George – The security services have been doing that (recording internet communications and more…) for some years under existing laws…
I think Nick Guardian article puts the case very well, in that the very existence of this bill and the statements made by the Home Secretary on Wednesday are down to the largely out of public view activities of LibDems in the last administration and Edward Snowden.
The Home Secretary on Wednesday gave a glimpse into the world of our security services and what they have been quietly doing for some years now. The Bill in some respects is simply attempting to put onto an explicit legal footing what our security services have been doing for years with respect to data collection from the PSTN and Internet. However, the important thing is the debating of this bill! Because now the powers have been put openly onto the table we can now have a meaningful debate and decide if the powers are actually proportionate and appropriate.
It is a shame that the current administration isn’t also a coalition as we do need this bill to be properly debated and scrutinized.
The simple fact is that the core proposal in this new legislation – the recording and storage of everyone’s website visits – is scarcely any different from the most egregious element of the snooper’s charter which we blocked in coalition. No liberal should be welcoming that.
“the core proposal in this new legislation – the recording and storage of everyone’s website visits”
An interesting chestnut…
I suggest you only object to this because of the way we’ve been accustomed to paying for our Internet access and usage; I wonder if you would think in the same way if it were billed differently, namely, in the same way as voice calls are typically billed.
Here is a very good article, from a company that specialises in Information Law, about the ‘loophole’ in the Telecommunications Act (1984) that was used to legally enable the acquisition of bulk communications data by the security services:
http://amberhawk.typepad.com/amberhawk/2015/11/section-94-of-the-telecommunications-act-1984-a-warning-from-history.html
Another site worth watching is that of the Open Rights Group, their blog currently contains some initial discussion of the draft bill. However, the item that I’ve found most interesting is their wiki page for this bill: https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Bill
As it gives a list of relevant committee members and the proposed members from the Commons, it is notable that not a single LibDem is listed.