Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, it is a good idea to remind ourselves at times like these that we live in a democracy, and part of what defines a democracy is that our Government do not rule us and we are not their subjects; they govern on our behalf, and with our consent. So when our Government ask us to hand over prodigious quantities of our information that reveal in detail how we live our private lives, we must take great care.

We all have something to fear from these surveillance powers, for none of us can guarantee the benevolence of future Governments. The surveillance programmes run by our Government now go far beyond anything George Orwell imagined. The more personal data are dredged up and stored, the more the risk of misuse. Now that most of us carry smartphones, government agencies and the police have unprecedented access to location information about where we are 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They can also get their hands on all the information on our phones and computers: our contacts, our diaries, our emails, our web browsing, our social networking and everything we do on the internet. Their access to our lives has expanded massively in the past 10 years. In addition, there are myriad new databases that create digital dossiers about our lives which are held by private companies and public bodies, including our banks and our doctors, and the Government have access to all of them.

In short, far from going dark, as is often claimed, the police and security services are enjoying a golden age of surveillance. If government agencies were offered the choice of current capabilities or pre-internet capabilities, they would overwhelmingly prefer their surveillance abilities today. Listen to the words of Wolfgang Schmidt, who was a lieutenant-colonel in the Stasi in Berlin. When he first learned of the extent of surveillance currently carried out on their populations by the British and American Governments, Schmidt thought carefully and then said:

“You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true”.

Some proponents of bulk surveillance tell us, “You have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide”. It has been said that the original maker of that claim was Joseph Goebbels. Many people’s response is simply, “I don’t have anything to hide, but I don’t have anything I feel like showing you either, and the way I live my life is none of the state’s business”.

I fully support the amendments in this group. They seek to give effect to the Intelligence and Security Committee’s—

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. We have a great number of amendments to deal with today. I respectfully ask the noble Lord to address the amendments.

[Lord Strasburger]

That is exactly what I was just doing.

I fully support the amendments in this group. They seek to give effect to the Intelligence and Security Committee’s demand that privacy protections should form the backbone of the legislation around which these surveillance powers are built as exceptions to the privacy norm.

Clause 2 was the Government’s answer to the ISC’s demand, but it is incomplete and insufficient and needs to be seriously beefed up. The amendments in this group give full effect to the ISC’s reasonable requirement that privacy should be the backbone of the Bill by, among other things, incorporating the 10 tests devised by the Royal United Services Institute review. I commend these amendments to the House.