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Spied on from cradle to grave

Bugging is not the answer to crime

Special report: policing crime

For a decade, the world has been dazzled by the possibilities of information technology, but beside the opportunities lie new dangers. IT opens up avenues of communication, but it also opens avenues of government control. The British, with a tradition of an unwritten constitution, executive power and few automatic rights, are the most exposed of all. Today, we disclose confidential advice offered by the National Criminal Intelligence Service to the Home Office. It argues that in order to fight contemporary crime, they must fight fire with fire. They want to store every telephone call (including mobile) and every email made in a huge government-run data warehouse for seven years to allow them to run electronic checks in support of any criminal investigation they might make. Although they recognise the civil liberties implications of what they demand, they claim that fighting crime is impossible without access to cyberspace in this way.

It is a scandalous proposal. British common law makes no presumption that the individual has the right to privacy and this has generated an extraordinary culture in British officialdom which presumes a right to investigate. As usual, there are no proposals for serious safeguards, such as requiring investigating authorities to apply to a court for the right to gain access to such information. The new Human Rights Act may eventually make a difference, but it will take time to establish a body of case law in defence of individual liberties.

It is fair to acknowledge that some forms of surveillance of criminal activity in cyberspace may be necessary, as surveillance has always been. However, the conclusion is not to use new technology to enlarge the powers of the state and its investigating wing. Rather, we must extend the tried and tested principles that have underpinned justice in the pre-cyberspace world to the post-cyberspace world. We must presume innocence until there is proof of guilt, and the collection of evidence to prove guilt must be at the direction of a court with clear lines of accountability.

Instead, the NCIS disgracefully recommends that the entire population should be assumed potentially guilty, overturning the first principles of justice on a grand scale. We wish we could be confident that the idea will be rejected. It must be killed immediately and the NCIS invited to make more restrained proposals.