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Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain. (Private…
Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain.
Crossman, G., Kitchen, H., Kuna, R., Skrein, M. and Russel., J. (2007) Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain. Liberty: London
National Identity Register (
NIR
): is a giant database that will be used to hold information about people in the UK, primarily in relation to Identity Cards.
As a consequence, while there might be individuals who are able to use human rights protections successfully 23, mass surveillance is not particularly vulnerable to human rights challenges through the courts. pp15
The justification for information collection and dissemination powers created by the Children Act 2004
to be contained on the ‘children’s index’ was child protection. The proposed NHS central data spine of patient’s records is intended to allow easier nationwide access to information for health service providers. pp16
Conflation of privacy and criminality presumes that those who are not criminals do not need to place a value on their privacy.
This is clearly nonsensical as it is difficult to imagine any situation where a person would be comfortable with unfettered access to his or her medical records or the information about their children that will be contained on the children’s index pp16
RIPA identifies different forms of surveillance such as communication interception, the use of undercover operatives and the capture of communication traffic data. The Act creates differing authorisation procedures according to the type of surveillance, while secondary legislation lists those public bodies that can use each power. pp16
Following the alleged attempted attacks on planes leaving UK airports in August 2006 there was debate about the extent to which racial and religious profiling of passengers might be justified in order to allow more rigorous searches of passengers and luggage. Similarly, following the July 2005 bombings there was debate about particular targeting of ethnic groups on the London Underground and elsewhere. Ian Johnston, Chief Constable of British Transport Police, attracted attention with his comments that his officers would not be searching “little old white ladies”. Meanwhile following the alleged attempted hijacking of aeroplanes from British airports in the summer of 2006 the former Metropolitan Police Chief Sir John Stevens suggested that much greater use of passenger profiling would assist security. This caused concern among Muslim groups in groups in particular while Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Ali Dizaei said that this would effectively create an offence of “travelling whilst Asian”. However so far there have no been specific formal developments towards anything that could be described as ‘racial profiling’ 25 .-personal-in-modern-britain. pp17
HRA:
The Health Research Authority is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health in the United Kingdom. The HRA exists to provide a unified national system for the governance of health research. The current chair of the HRA is Sir Jonathan Montgomery.
RIPA:
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, regulating the powers of public bodies to carry out surveillance and investigation, and covering the interception of communications
Private sector databases are huge. According to the credit reference agency Experian there are ‘440 million consumer information records in Experian’s database, which is the largest in the UK’ 27. The commercial use of data is a massive growth industry.
Tesco’s Crucible database is reputed to have constructed a profile of every person in the UK regardless of whether they have shopped there
pp28.
In particular, the passing of information to a company can literally result in the signing away of data protection rights through the giving of consent. It is unlikely that many customers will be aware of the extent to which they are allowing their information to be passed on through the use of a company’s services. For example, the following is taken from the terms and conditions for customers of Tesco’s online services;
“Any information you provide to Tesco (“data”) will be put onto the Tesco database and processed by us for marketing purposes, market research, tracking of sales data, and in order to contact you or send you publications. Tesco may also disclose the data within its group of companies and to its professional advisers and agents for the above purposes. By submitting your data to us you agree to our storage and use of the data.”
Surveillance, by its nature, requires that the subject should usually be unaware of the interest and activity of the authorities at the time the surveillance takes place. pp20
In the law enforcement field, the object of targeted surveillance is essentially to obtain criminal intelligence information, and in doing so the methods used are often more invasive than general surveillance. They include:
• the interception of communications: for example, telephones, e-mail and other internet-based communications
• covert audio surveillance: the use of listening devices ranging from microphones to laser beams
• human covert surveillance: the use of undercover agents with or without the use of other surveillance technology
• tracking and tracing devices.l-in-modern-britain pp20
Whilst using such methods to target individuals is not new, it is the emphasis on this as a key component of the
“war on terror” which has spawned an array of new domestic surveillance legislation across the world since 9/11.
A leading example is the US PATRIOT Act – the acronymic short name for the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act – enacted in October 2001. It has far-reaching provisions covering interceptions and access to personal information (including library, medical, education, internet, television and financial records)
without the need for individual suspicion.
pp21
Since the attacks of September 11 2001, the legislative focus on surveillance powers in the UK has not been to strengthen intrusive surveillance. This is mainly due the passing of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) the year before the atrocity. Instead, most of the ‘antiterrorism’
measures have increased the state’s ability to create or access mass informational databases or to create powers for use against individuals such as the internment of foreign nationals
under the Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 and the Control Order regime set up under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. pp21
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000; It can only take place in the interests of national security, for
preventing or detecting serious crime, or to protect the economic wellbeing of the country. pp22
8 See ‘Tesco stocks up on inside knowledge of shoppers’ lives’
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,3604,1573821,00.html
RIPA regulates invasive surveillance activities through a framework of warrants and authorisations. It is intended to provide a HRA-compliant framework for targeted surveillance by requiring that authorisation can only be given when the activity takes place for a purpose set by the statute and when it is a proportionate means of doing so.
This reflects the requirement for a ‘legitimate purpose’ and the need to be ‘necessary in a democratic society’ as required in Article 8 (2) HRA32 needed to justify any inroad into the right to privacy. pp22
The interception of communications must also be for a legitimate purpose more restrictive than the full set of acceptable grounds set out in Article 8 (2).
It can only take place in the interests of national security, for preventing or detecting serious crime, or to protect the economic wellbeing of the country.
pp22
Authorisation of access to communications data 33 is similar to the interception of communications in terms of necessity and proportionality. However
there is no need for the authorisation to come from the Secretary of State.
It is, instead, an internal process in which a senior figure within the body accessing the data will provide authorisation. pp22
Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, consequences, critique
Data in the Canadian Police
Information Centre, for example, remain there permanently. And when police include mental health problems in their records these can lead to denial of entry to Canadians trying to cross the border into the US. Attempted suicide calls, for example, have been uploaded to international databases with just this outcome (CBC, 2014). pp11
Lyon, D., 2014. Surveillance, Snowden, and big data: Capacities, consequences, critique. SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England