Graham Cobb’s Blog

Here is the text of an email I sent to my MP, David Cameron…

Dear Mr. Cameron,

I am writing to you to strongly oppose the Communications Data Bill which was announced in the Queen’s Speech. This measure is illiberal and ill-conceived. The government should be turning back the surveillance state created by the last government, not extending it.

It is the job of the Police and the Security Services to ask for more powers to make their operations more efficient and more effective. They would not be doing their job if they held back from asking for more and more every time one request is granted or if they did anything other than their best efforts to justify the requests.

However, it is the job of our democratically elected representatives to say “No”. We require our MPs to apply good judgement to limit the powers of the police and security services. I, and I believe most other voters, want the police to have reasonable powers to catch criminals, but we do not want them to be able to watch, monitor or trawl through data about people who are not being investigated for any crime.

In a democracy, it is neither necessary nor acceptable to make the police too efficient. Maintaining inefficiencies forces the police to choose to allocate scarce resources to the most important tasks, which is what we require from them. If the police are too efficient we turn into a police state — in which I do not think a single Conservative or Liberal Democrat supporter wishes to live.

I have been working in the computer and telecoms industries for more than 30 years and I am well aware that if data is collected, it will leak. This is completely impossible to stop. Unfortunately this is not just an issue for totalitarian regimes or banana republics — the Leveson inquiry has shown us that it is a problem in the UK today! And even if the amateurish activities of the press can be cleaned up, the inquiry has not even touched on the activities of serious professional criminals such as fraudsters and gangs.

Instead of legislation to extend collection of data on innocent people I require the government to bring forward measures to reduce data collection. The top priority is the destruction of DNA records of anyone not convicted of a serious crime. Second is the introduction of a need for a warrant from a court for any request for communications data. Third is the reduction in data retention for anyone other than named individuals to no more than 6 weeks. Fourth is making ANPR use by the police illegal (or at least making sure that it cannot be used to record anything other than a limited number of pre-loaded registrations of people under investigation, not data which can be trawled through later).

We are told that these police powers are needed to allow the police to keep up with new technology. That is completely untrue — these are massive expansions of police powers. For example, ANPR allows the police to apply a virtual “tail” to millions of people at once, instead of being limited by the number of officers who can be assigned to physically follow a car around.

I would ask that next time you are in Germany you ask to visit one of their Stazi museums. I defy anyone to support data collection after seeing how the Stazi worked. The only reason people in East Germany were eventually able to protest was because the number of dissidents eventually exceeded the power of the Stazi to monitor, track and imprison them all. It is while seeing those museums that one makes the shocking realisation that if the Stazi had had the technology envisioned in the Communications Data Bill the Berlin Wall would never have fallen.

I ask you to oppose the proposed Communications Data Bill and, instead, to ask for an independent review of how surveillance should be reduced to limit police and security service powers to the same effective level as they had during the Cold War and Irish terrorism, which served us fairly well (although there were still several well known miscarriages of justice). I realise that some of this (like data retention) will require undoing some EU directives but the UK government should be supporting those changes, like some other governments are.

I am inclined to re-use a slogan I remember using against the Iraq war… “Not in my name”. I do not live in fear of crime or terrorism and I do not believe the police and security services need any more powers. There is no need for a climate of fear and I do not believe voters support increased surveillance.

If you want to send your MP a letter opposing this bill please see http://action.openrightsgroup.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1422&ea.campaign.id=8601

I have just voted for the topics I think should be included in the Power2010 Campaign which aims to give UK people more control over our democracy.

My top issue is to scrap ID cards and the related databases.  I also voted for:

• Expand the Freedom of Information Act
• Cap political donations
• Give MPs control of the parliamentary timetable
• Strengthen select committees
• Reduce the use of statutory instruments
• More free votes in the Commons
• Stronger local government

The reasons to vote for these are, of course, explained in the text associated with them.  However, I also had deliberate reasons for not voting for some of the proposals:

• House of Lords reform — there are several proposals around reform of the House of Lords but I don’t think any of them will achieve the right aims of increasing critical review and improvement of legislation.  Full election will, unfortunately, increase the powers of the parties and just create a second version of the Commons.  The sector-based suggestion is interesting but seems unworkable and in danger of being dominated by very large organisations which become surrogate political parties.  I think the right answer is a combination: say 1/3 elected, 1/3 appointed (as today), and 1/3 sector-based (including charities, professions, religions and other special interests).
• Electoral reform — our election process is not perfect but none ever is.  While I like the idea of PR, it would strengthen the parties enormously and I am very much in favour of the opposite: strengthening the individual MP against their party.  I don’t think the electoral process is particularly standing in the way of good democracy: the problems are the power of the parties and the power of the government.

Whether you agree with me or not, express your view by voting on these proposals.  There are only a few days left!

This is my personal blog.