The Internet and Privacy

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is a great privilege to be able to take part in this debate and, again, I congratulate the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing it. It is welcome and timely.

I have had an interest in the internet in many areas, politically as well as personally. Any combination of technology, commerce and civil liberties was always going to interest a Liberal science geek such as me.

As someone who is still new to Parliament, I have been shocked by the aversion that some hon. Members have to matters technological. There are a number of constraints on using tablets in the Chamber, and various other archaisms, which I hope, together with many other new Members, that we will be able to change. However, some of the aversion is due to the frustration of getting parliamentary hardware and software to work. Privacy is, though, something that Members should be concerned about, however technologically literate they are. It affects us and our constituents, who use the internet for all sorts of purposes. It affects businesses and how we interact with all those things.

Some first principles have been touched on, such as the balance between openness and transparency on the one hand and privacy on the other. One of the issues is about education—people who use things such as Facebook or Twitter do not understand what they are doing with their information. People giving information about their opinions on BT, available to the outside world and for BT to have a look at, is a perfectly valid choice. However, people should know that that is what they are doing, and they should be choosing to do so, rather than discovering that they have inadvertently done so without thinking about it.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

What about a health warning on Twitter? On cigarettes we have “Beware of death” or something. On Twitter we could have “Beware of giving too much information” in a big sign—it has got to be big—or something like that. Do those things exist and I just cannot see them because my eyesight is so poor?

[Dr Huppert]

“Excessive twittering may be bad for your future”—the problem would be fitting something into 140 characters. We can run out of space quickly. We need to have some way of educating people on the subject. That involves education in schools and, I am sure, the involvement of websites.

However, I am concerned about the idea of imposing draconian regulations on internet use. There is a balance. We know that it is hard to have regulations, with too many strict controls on what happens and what is done. I was recently with at least one other hon. Member in the Chamber on a trip to China, where we had some interesting discussions about the Chinese efforts to control what can and cannot be done on the internet. I am sure that we do not want to go down similar routes.

As the hon. Member for Harlow has already made clear, we cannot ignore those problems—they are affecting people and are doing so now. However, he did not mention a number of things. For example, the Firefox extension called Firesheep enables users to log into other people’s social networking accounts—I have not used it myself, I hasten to add.

As I mentioned in my intervention, the Government have a critical role. I am even more concerned about the Government’s ability to do such things. While we can argue about which is worse, there is no doubt that the Government should be seen to be leading the way in respecting citizens’ rights.

I was delighted to see in the coalition agreement the commitments to “roll back state intrusion” and “restore our civil liberties”. I suspect that many, if not all, of those in the Chamber today would agree. [Hon. Members: “There are no Labour MPs here.”] There is a Labour MP here—I am sure that he would support the coalition agreement on at least that point.

The welcome words in the agreement have to be matched by actions in Government. There are issues on which we have not done enough to reverse what happened under the previous Government and, in some cases, there is a risk that we will be worse.

The last Government had an extraordinary predilection for hugely costly and intrusive IT projects and policies—I was delighted to serve with the hon. Member for Harlow on the Identity Documents Bill Committee and I was pleased to hear that the only one of the cuts that the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) said in an interview that he agreed with was getting rid of identity documents. I am delighted that the Labour party has finally come along to that sensible position.

I turn to a couple of things being driven by the Government that I believe interfere with privacy. The first is the Digital Economy Act 2010. I could talk for the remainder of this debate about some of the controversial aspects of the legislation, but I shall not detain the House as I assume that everyone is aware of the debate and the many issues raised. However, I draw attention to a case that was reported in July this year, after the Act was passed.

A woman received a letter from her internet service provider accusing her of downloading homosexual pornography illegally. That eventually resulted in her discovering that her son was gay. That is not the way that privacy should be broken; we can expect to see many more such cases if provisions of the Act are not substantially altered—or, as I would like to see, abolished. BT and TalkTalk attempted to secure a judicial review, which reveals that even industry heavyweights understand the problems caused by some aspects of the 2010 Act. If the offensive parts of the Act are not repealed, it is essential that they are significantly modified, by legislation or through the Ofcom code, so that ordinary criminal or civil procedures can be used; we already have procedures for dealing with theft.

I hope that the Government will avoid the general trend towards administrative systems laden with Executive involvement. What is the Minister’s current thinking on the 2010 Act? Will the Freedom Bill be able to stand for freedom in this area as well as in others? Will he confirm that the Government will not adopt a position in which internet users will be guilty until proven innocent, as the Act effectively demands?

I could speak about summary care records and the fact that the Government have failed to deliver what I believe was an important promise, and I can give examples of the consequences. Instead, I shall speak about the reported revival of the intercept modernisation programme, although I am sure that it will not be known by that name.

I remind the House that the IMP was an ambitious £2 billion project that would have forced ISPs to log clients’ internet and e-mail activity for at least 12 months. That, I believe, is a great infringement of privacy. Indeed, the coalition agreement explicitly stated that

“we will end the storage of Internet and email records without good reason”.

There is no doubt that we face threats from cyber-terrorism. Malicious breaches of security could cost the Government, businesses and individuals dearly in all sorts of ways. However, that does not give the Government the excuse to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.