DAVID ALAN PRESCOTT - ENGLISH FOR THE MEDIA C2 – 28 OCTOBER 2015

British spies need our data, and we should let them have it

It's the councils, taxmen and assorted other snoopers who want to play James Bond we should worry about

Fraser Nelson, The Daily Telegraph (accessed on 27 Oct 2015, 11.03 GMT)

James Bond films have long reflected trends in British espionage, and Spectre continues in this tradition. It involves mass digital surveillance, a practice championed by an odious civil servant called Max Denbigh who is out to replace 007-style spies with computers and drones. (In the film...) the computers are the baddies. In a few weeks, MPs will be discussing whether it’s time to rein in our real-life computer surveillance programmes. David Cameron wants to tidy the almighty mess of Britain’s snooping regulations, presenting a dangerous moment for our spies. Since Edward Snowden leaked details of what he claimed was a GCHQ mass surveillance programme, there have been suspicions that the spooks can’t really be trusted with their new powers and that they’re reaching too far, too fast. It’s quite possible that the coming Investigatory Powers Bill will be amended in a way that ties the spies’ hands. And this would be as great a threat to MI5 and MI6 as anything depicted on the big screen.

The Snowden revelations caused uproar in America, but polls show that very few Brits cared. We tend to trust our spies, but this can lead to lazy lawmaking – it’s easy for the government to play the “national security” card. When the Investigatory Powers Bill comes to be debated, most of the talk will probably be about spies and Jihadis and dark threats. But when David Anderson QC investigated all of this for the government recently, he came out with an astonishing fact: just 1 per cent of the private data requested by government agencies relates to terrorism.

The vast majority of the snooping is done by police, councils, trading standards authorities and suchlike – all of whom find it rather convenient to hide behind a debate about terrorism. Britain’s spies are simply not voracious users of snooping powers. In fact, our terrorist-hunters don’t even make the top 10 in the league table of those requesting communications data – and this is what should worry us. The old spying laws, brought in before the September 11 attacks, were certainly passed in the name of national security. But they soon ended up being used by local councils setting off on their own mini-Bond missions, targeting everyone from litter louts to wayward parents. Our spying law, as it stands, was not even strong enough to stop Suffolk police hacking into journalists’ mobile phone records.

So a new law is needed, and one that demands an informed debate. A “surveillance state” is not one where MI5 can trawl through a sea of otherwise meaningless data, looking for a worrying pattern. A surveillance state is where the council can hack into your email with no good reason, or a policeman can trawl your personal information on nothing more than a hunch. It ought to be possible to come up with a law that lets spies spy while making sure that the taxman doesn’t. And this is David Cameron’s mission – should he choose to accept it.

Government interference with interpersonal communication is for reasons of protecting the individual and/or the state is obviously essential. This author, however, expresses concerns about how authorities may be using easy access to our personal communication for purposes he considers disturbing. Discuss this passage, paying particular attention to the following aspects: What, according to the author, is the possible danger involved in the forthcoming Investigatory Powers Bill? Why does the author see the findings of a recent government report into this matter surprising? What exactly is it that the author finds frightening about the way that certain authorities use our information? In your opinion, to what extent, and for what reasons, should authorities be allowed to access private information and communication, such as e-mails, text messages and phone calls?