David Anderson, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s recently published report on investigatory powers was debated in the House of Lords last Wednesday.  Anderson was tasked with advising on what should replace the Communications Data Bill a.k.a. the Snooper’s Charter and other, existing legislation, that allows the state to invade individual’s privacy for the purposes of terrorism and crime prevention.

The Government Minister and other leading Tories talked-up the threat posed by terrorism.  I told the House we should listen to Anderson who said in his report ‘claims of exceptional or unprecedented threat levels – particularly if relied upon for the purposes of curbing well established liberties – should be approached with scepticism’.

Lib Dem Peer, Paul Strasburger led the charge with a comprehensive critique of the existing legislative framework and how the police and security services had been caught misusing existing powers.  Whatever follows must include greater safeguards and more effective scrutiny so as to ensure public trust.

Paul Scriven joined in our side, warning that while terrorists want to undermine the values we hold dear, there was a danger that giving draconian, authoritarian powers to the police and the security services to intrude on our privacy was effectively doing the terrorists’ work for them.  Searching for terrorists online is like looking for a needle in a haystack.  We need a targeted and proportionate response to the threats we face.  Bulk collection of everyone’s web logs, for example, is simply going to make the haystack bigger.  Anderson was quite clear on the way forward: ‘If a sufficiently compelling operational case has been made out, a rigorous assessment should then be conducted of the lawfulness, likely effectiveness, intrusiveness and cost of requiring such data to be retained.’  The fact is, communications using applications such iMessage, WhatsApp, Wickr and even Facebook Messenger are all now encrypted, so even if everybody’s web history was kept and interrogated, it would still not be possible to establish who was communicating with who, from where and when.

The fact is, technology is outpacing not only the police and the security services but also the legislators.  A law passed earlier this year that requires communication services providers (CSPs) to keep data on IP addresses and other information to identify the device used to communicate using the Web.  That doesn’t help if you use a Virtual Private Network (VPN).  If you do, the IP address registered by the CSP is that of the VPN and not of the device being used.  VPN’s like ‘Toro’ (the so-called Onion Router) uses 6,000 computers around the globe to encrypt traffic and disguise the IP address and all other data that might identify its users, so not even the VPN provider knows who you are.

My conclusion is clear.  The future capability of the police and the security services to defeat terrorism does not lie in greater legal powers to collect data on everyone but in agents of the state winning a technology arms race with the criminal.

Photo is of GCHQ Bude by Paul Walter

* Brian Paddick Is Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Home Affairs. He was Deputy Assistant Commissioner in London's Metropolitan Police Service until 2007, the Lib Dem candidate for the London mayoral election in 2008 and 2012, and a life peer since 2013. He is joint President of LGBT+ Lib Dems.