A Defence of the Surveillance Society

The recent story of the bugging of Siddique Khan MP and the subsequent revelations by the national media that such operations were the norm and in some cases required no more authorisation than the go ahead from a senior police officer, led to the biggest assault on the State's powers of surveillance for quite some time. This furore, however, was not a new debate, but rather the fierce reignition of an ongoing one over the use of surveillance technology by UK security forces. In my position as a press officer for the Association of Chief Police Officers, I strangely found myself caught in the middle of this debate, helping the Police to make the case to the public for increased use of surveillance, whilst my own party, the Liberal Democrats were berating it as an encroachment too far of our civil liberties.

I have traditionally been indifferent to the claims that we are 'sleepwalking' into a surveillance society and have found assertions that we are ultimately headed towards a police state, V for Vendetta style, just plain farcical. However, the debate of security versus liberty and where to draw the line between the two has always fascinated me. This was a debate that last month I was fortunate enough to witness myself when I attended the House of Lords Constitutional committee session on surveillance. There, the three chief police officers responsible for presiding over the Police National Database, the DNA database and the use of CCTV sat before this collection of Peers from all parties and were grilled over the impact of their actions on civil liberties in Britain.

I have no intention of giving a verbatum recital of how this debate went (for anyone interested in the transcript though, see: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/lduncorr.htm#const) but safe to say it helped me to clarify my own position on the issues at stake. The Peers' concerns were far more refined than those of the traditional scare mongers who occupy the most media time such as Liberty. They have always frustrated me as appearing to be passionate defenders of freedom without demonstrating any real understanding of why it is important. Rather the Peers got right to the crux of the issues; why were innocent people being kept on the DNA database? Was the stigmatism afforded to people given criminal records for the smallest of offences worth its weight in national security? Did innocent civillians own CCTV images of themselves stored away by the police for later use in an investigation? Were there even any protections afforded to them in return for not seeking their consent to be filmed?

This tight scrutiny yielded many important facts, some very interesting, others quite startling. Perhaps most interesting, for those who accuse the defenders of CCTV of manufacturing a police state, was the revelation that 84% of all CCTV cameras in operation are privately owned, whilst the bulk of those publicly owned were put in place by local councils at the behest of local communities. This is actually a bit of a red herring as CCTV does not prevent crime -or at least not the kind of crime they're afraid of; violent, alcohol fuelled, crime. Rather, CCTV's value lies in its use as an aid to Police investigations, providing evidence to be used in court to seal prosecutions that might otherwise be lost

For example, CCTV evidence was a vital element of the successful prosecution of two recent anti-terror trials. However many cases have continued to fall away because of a horrifying lack of co-ordination between the surveillance methods of the security services and the playback capabilities of the criminal justice system. For instance, CCTV evidence recorded on state of the art digital cameras is frequently deemed redundant owing to many courtrooms possesing nothing more than VHS video recorders for playing evidence back to juries.

Similarly, DNA samples too small to aid investigations when originally taken many years ago or taken for a smaller crime were crucial to solving long-standing crimes such as the Soham murders. The retention of innocent people's DNA was defended as being equally crucial to such investigations. This was because one of the ways Police go about identifying a potential assailant in say a rape or murder case, where DNA evidence is particularly relied upon, is to rule out the people closest to the crime scene by testing their DNA against any samples they may find. This enables them to narrow down their search and gives them a much better chance of actually finding the rapist/murderer. However, this therefore mandates the police to arbitrarily collect the DNA of anyone in or around the vicinity of the crime scene regardless of whether they have any reason to suspect them of doing anything wrong or not. Furthermore, as such cases can take decades to solve, their DNA cannot be removed from the DNA database, the Police argue, without hindering the investigation.

So which side do I fall on?

Well, I've always highly valued my privacy to the extent that I close my curtains even in my own home because I don't want people across the street to be able to see what I'm doing. But, when it comes to CCTV, I have no problem with being filmed by a device that I know could help to put away my potential mugger or worse. Similarly, being observed in public is a lot different to being watched in private. Everyone can see when you walk down the street. The notion that local authorities are violating our privacy by filming us seems somewhat bizarre to me, therefore, even if that does seem simplistic. In fact, I'm far more peturbed by the fact that there is a 4 out of 5 chance that every time I am filmed walking down the street it will be by a privately owned camera. This is for the simple reason that I can't make an ordinary individual think twice about filming me by threatening to vote for somebody else and ultimately that's what my admittedly lax attitude to state surveillance is down to. I could, of course, threaten them with rudementary violence, but I think you'll agree that's not the point.

Indeed it is the snooping techniques of the private sector that bother me the most; inexplicable junk mail from companies to whom you never gave your address, cold calls from salesmen to whom you never gave your number, employers checking your facebook for personal information they could never legally ask you at an interview. It gets worse though. In 2005, the Guardian revealed how Tesco was collating and then selling personal data gathered on millions of households throughout the UK, using a database called 'Crucible'. Apparently amongst the reams of personal information stored on Crucible were: "a map of personality, travel habits, shopping preferences and even how charitable and eco-friendly you are." The information was collected through application forms for Tesco loyalty cards combined with information gathered from subscriptions to magazines run by associated companies as well as the electoral roll. As a result, not only did Tesco gather detailed profiles on their own customers but also on a host of people who had never even shopped there in their life. One journalist trying to garner the full extent of Tesco's information gathering skills filled out an application form for the loyalty card, giving as few personal details as possible. Within one year they had two full pages on her and her shopping behaviour.

And of course, let's not forget the basic bugging devices you can buy from gadget shops or the firms that have taken the role of the old pashioned private investigator to new levels. One U.S firm called 'Advanced Surveillance Groups' offers to spy on their clients' spouses and partners to see if they are cheating on them. On their homepage it boasts: "Private Investigators have the ability to watch your spouse, monitor who they are with, where they go and what they do, discreetly and confidentially. We can do this through surveillance, utilization of vehicle tracking devices and providing you with software to monitor e-mail, chat room discussions and internet activity".

Yet, all I ever hear are complaints that it is the State that is infringing on people's individual liberty, comparing the UK today to totalitarian regimes of the past. They forget that the Police have to regularly submit themselves to investigation by three seperate regulatory bodies created specifically to hold the Police to account any time they take or use someone's personal data in an investigation of their own. They forget that they willingly and regularly open themselves up to questioning by committees such as the House of Lords Constiutional committee and the House of Commons Home affairs committee. They forget that the Police are granted these powers by democratically elected officials and can equally have them taken away as according to the will of the electorate aided by the rigorous probing into their activities by the free press. Most of all they forget that the aim of these measures in the first place is to make our streets safer and to put the few terrorists, rapists and murderers who slip through the net in jail where they belong. Any renegade officers, such as Mark Kearney, who abuse this power are promptly dealt with, rooted out through the fierce scrutiny applied by the Information Commissioner's Office and the Houses of Parliament.

This brings us back to bugging, one of the most contraversial aspects of police surveillance. The main reason why I have not said much on this so far is because the Police are about to go before the Home Affairs committee to be grilled on the Siddique Khan case specifically and I feel that such testimony would make a much better background for a piece on bugging than just my own random musings. But to address it briefly; every police officer I have discussed this with has defended the bugging of MPs when talking to terrorist suspects, especially when the two share a friendship, as necessary for the MP's protection above all else. This defence runs along the lines that an old friend with intimate knowledge of an elected representative's past or simply an emotional connection could attempt to bribe or blackmail an MP to pull strings for them to secure their release outside of due process. How much you buy in to this ultimately depends on how much or how little you trust the Police, but as someone who was initially horrified by the revelations as well as someone who does have a great deal of faith in the integrity of our security services, I was willing to accept this. Although the more cynical alternative remains: that the Police are bugging MPs sensitive conversations so they can coerce them for their own ends, the threat posed by empowering elected officials alone to authorise such activities seems greater to me. After all Joe McCarthy wasn't a police officer.

To conclude, as much as I am grateful to the press for leaving no stone unturned -once they get interested- and even the likes of Liberty for taking it upon themselves to oppose what they see as being breaches of my privacy, I still think they are missing a trick here. Rather than focusing on the seemingly uninhibited surveillance methods of private sector companies who answer only to their shareholders and are motivated only by profit, they allow their instinctive suspicion of the State to cloud their judgement. Whereas someone like me is happy for the State to be as large or small as circumstances require as long as it is under my instruction as a voter and accountable to me as a citizen, they won't be happy until they roll its frontiers as far back as they can go. Getting their way, however, would only succeed in making us more vulnerable to serious crimes and terrorist atrocities - although I don't want to demonise them as if any future terrorist attack could be blamed squarely upon Shami Chakrabarti. In the meantime, Tesco will still be offering my details to the highest bidder even though I made a conscious choice to shop at Waitrose (Sainsbury's at a push) a long time ago.