New Home Secretary:  Will he reverse the trend of the Big Brother state?

Politicians trumpet that we live in a free society.  But define free?  Certainly our right to privacy can be called into question.  The right to privacy in the UK is a complex issue.  Some laws protect privacy others undermine it but what is true is that all of us…are watched, monitored and a huge amount of data is held on us.  As a Conservative who cherishes liberty I find this trend towards Orwell’s Big Brother State deeply distressing.

What we can see is that under Labour moves made, legislation passed, power granted and and even proposals in place seek an undeniable intrusion into our lives.  Alan Johnson, the new Home Secretary, has a chance to reverse this tide of suppression but will he?  Or will he be too busy plotting his autumn Leadership Campaign against Gordon Brown?

Let’s look at some of the intrusions into our lives………………….

National ID Card Scheme

 The Government’s centerpiece policy initiative, which looks like it could be dumped due to lack of support, is the National Identity Card Scheme and more importantly the National Identity Register, (NIR).  If this database ever saw the light of day it would be the world’s biggest database, (biometric database), which would hold 52 bits of private information on every citizen who is in the UK for more than 3 months.  This data includes up to 10 fingerprints, digitised facial scan and iris scan, current and past UK and overseas places of residence.  That’s some data!

Then Home Secretary David Blunkett stated in 2004 that the cards would stop people using multiple identities and boost the fight against terrorism and organised crime.   However, groups like Liberty question this pointing to Spanish ID Cards not stopping the Madrid Train Bombings.  Thankfully, then Home Secretary Charles Clarke admitted that ID card would not have prevented the London train & bus bombings.  Hence, TBB concludes that the ID scheme and NIR would be a huge waste of tax payers money, (estimated by the LSE as costing between £12 – £18bn),  in a crippling recession and a massive intrusion into our lives for little overall benefit.

Surveillance

Already the Government keeps large amounts of information on every one of us.  But what is even more scary is how safe and secure the government is in looking after our data, (lost briefcases, lost disks, lost papers on the train show data is not protected and respected by the state).  In the past few years the data of over 30 million people has been lost.  What sort of data is this?  Bank details, national insurance details, child benefit details and the poor armed forces have been truly exposed when their personal data has been lost.

Why does the state want to watch us and hold more information?  It does so under the guise of fighting terrorism and preventing crime.  Holding data on us helps officials in data mining and being able to use modern methods of fighting and preventing crime.  It does this by detecting unusual behaviours in patterns of data generated on its mining searches.  Some groups would say this is surveillance without any founding of suspicious grounding.  Hence challenging and intruding to our liberty. 

Of course surveillance also includes reviewing our emails, telephone calls and text messages.  Liberty estimates that nearly 440,000 authorisations for communications traffic data (the record of emails, telephone calls and text messages) took place between June 2005 and March 2006.  That is phenomenal. 

The Government had proposed to go further in monitoring our lives.  But backed down.  Then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, ruled out building a single state “super-database” to track everybody’s use of email, internet, text messages and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  Smith said creating a ’single database’ run by the state to hold such personal data would amount to an extreme intrusion of personal privacy.  But….But……..Instead the Home Office is looking at a £2bnsolution that would involve requiring communications companies such as BT, Virgin Media, O2 and others to retain such personal data for up to 12 months.  This lies in the in-tray of Alan Johnson’s desk.

So to clarify, while the super database is currently off the agenda, communications companies will be required by legislation to ensure that all traffic data – who sent a text to whom at what time and from where – is filed and kept in Britain. They will also store additional third-party data crossing their networks including phone calls and internet use from outside Europe.  This goes far beyond the current data collected for billing purposes. The companies will also be asked to organise the data – for example, matching it where it relates to the same person so that the authorities can access it in a form that is immediately usable.  Smith admitted that while the new system could record a visit to a social network such as Facebook, it would not record personal and private information such as photos or messages posted to a page….yet!

National DNA Database

Set up in 1995, the National DNA Database contains profiles (taken from samples) recovered from crime scenes, and taken from anyone arrested for a recordable offence, (even if they are not subsequently charged with any offence). What is frightening is the very definition of what is a recordable crime.  Could you believe that this even includes begging and being drunk in a public place…..totally minor offences and not a threat to national security!

How big is this DNA database?    It is estimated to contain 4.5 million samples.  This makes the NDNAD the largest per capita database in the world. So what does this mean?  Well in the UK  many thousands of innocent people, including an estimated 40 000 innocent children, have their DNA permanently stored.  What is also fascinating to understand is that the DNA database is proving discriminatory.  At current rates half of all ethnic men will be on the database by 2010.

CCTV

Conclusion

A long blog piece but one that hopefully demonstrates that the Conservatives could have another issue that could prove an election winner.  People hate intrusion and seeing their privacy and individual liberty curtailed.  Time for David Cameron to start pressuring the Government who have an atrocious record in this area.  Come on DC let’s roll back the state and champion liberty and privacy for all.  True Conservatives values!

 David Blunket:  The man who proposed the ID Scheme is now opposed to it!