Battling the Snoopers' Charter
Last week, our Smart TVs suddenly became a little bit sinister after WikiLeaks published the biggest tranche of documents from inside America’s security services since whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations.
The Vault 7 leak saw some of the CIA’s most disturbing capabilities splashed onto the front pages of our newspapers. With help from our own MI5, the spooks have been turning TVs into listening devices, breaking into smartphones and are even planning to develop tools to take control of people’s cars.
But these “revelations” are nothing new. Last year our own Government passed the most authoritarian law in our history to allow UK security services to hack at will.
The Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), or Snoopers’ Charter, gives authorities the power to break into thousands of our devices en masse – with no need to suspect us of a crime. They can alter their contents, switch on their mics, turn them on and off and much more.
And that’s just for starters. The IPA also forces our internet providers to collect and store our browsing histories, and make them accessible to dozens of public bodies – from HMRC to the Welsh Ambulance Service. It lets agencies intercept all our communications on an industrial scale and collect and analyse ‘bulk data’ on all of us – everything from electoral roll information to health records to details on where our Oyster Cards have been used.
As the Bill was debated in Parliament, the Government was repeatedly asked to present evidence to show that these totalitarian powers were necessary or effective. They repeatedly failed to do so – even though experts, including ex-spy chiefs, told them we needed a more targeted system to properly keep us safe.
Despite this, determined to look tough on crime – no matter the costs for our democracy – MPs mustered barely a whimper of opposition as the plans breezed through.
But, as the reality of this new regime dawned on the public, there was an outcry. More than 200,000 people signed a petition calling for the Act to be scrapped.
When ministers ignored them, Liberty asked the People to help us take the Government to court. If our elected representatives won’t protect our rights, we must retake them ourselves.
We were floored by the surge of support – almost 2,000 people gave £53,000 through CrowdJustice in just a week.
The Vault 7 revelations came just days after we’d taken our first step towards toppling the Snoopers’ Charter, submitting a formal application in the High Court for a judicial review of the sweeping powers contained in the IPA.
Defending democracy
The People vs the Snoopers’ Charter is going to be a long battle – but at stake is everything that upholds our democracy.
Think about what it means to hand the state every detail of your life – your political views, your religious beliefs, your friends, your family, your health concerns and sexual preferences. The threats are obvious – to our freedom of speech, our right to protest, our free press and our right to a fair trial.
The powers in the IPA let authorities intrude far deeper into our lives – and our living rooms – than ever before.
If police wanted to search your home, you’d expect them to have a warrant. Now the State can find out everyone you talk to, everywhere you go, everything you search for online with no need even for suspicion of criminality.
The Government tells us to “trust them” not to abuse these powers. But our authorities have a track record of abusing surveillance capabilities in the most disturbing way.
Last year, Daily Mirror journalists had their phones hacked by police – riding roughshod over the principle of a press free to hold the powerful to account. In January, Cleveland Police apologised to two Northern Echo reporters for abusing their anti-terror powers to pore over their private phone records. Officers had spent four months examining 1.2 million minutes of private billing and call data on two police whistleblowers who allegedly leaked material to the press.
In 2015, a case brought by Liberty and others revealed GCHQ had illegally spied on human rights campaigners at Amnesty International in a move characteristic of an authoritarian regime.
Even victims of crime haven’t been off-bounds. The family of Stephen Lawrence were spied on by the Metropolitan Police as they campaigned for his death to be properly investigated. An undercover officer gathered intelligence on the family and passed it to those involved in defending the force's conduct.
The Lawrences were a grieving family who'd been let down in the most appalling way by the police – they simply wanted justice for 18-year-old Stephen, and to know why he died. This spying operation had nothing to do with protecting the public – and everything to do with saving the police’s reputation.
Now, under the Snoopers' Charter, police will be able to hack phones, tablets, computers – anything that connects to the internet – and you'll never be told if your device has been compromised. Such enormous and unchecked power is a magnet for corruption – and risks eroding the public's faith in the police, and obliterating the very concept of policing by consent.
These are just the stories that found their way into the press. By its very nature, covert surveillance isn’t done in the public eye – but the Snoopers’ Charter includes a clampdown on whistleblowers that means similar cases of corruption and abuse of power may not make it into the light again.
What the UK has created here is a ‘world-leading’ surveillance state that makes a mockery of our proud democratic tradition. But this unprecedented level of intrusion has been creeping up on us for decades.
The rapid growth of CCTV starting in the 1990s normalised our acceptance of being watched from the moment we leave the house.
In 2000, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act let agencies collect details of all our communications, watch our internet use and demand internet service providers hand customers’ messages over and fit equipment to make surveillance easier.
As Edward Snowden revealed, these powers weren’t just used to target suspected criminals. In the space of just six months in 2008, GCHQ collected more than 1.8 million webcam images – including sexually explicit communications – and stored them on their databases as part of its Optic Nerve programme. As of 2013, over 50 billion communications were intercepted by GCHQ every single day – a figure that is likely to have rocketed in recent years.
In 2014, after the EU’s top court (CJEU)) ruled such powers breached our rights, the Government introduced ‘emergency’ legislation to reinstate this blanket surveillance. Liberty immediately launched a legal challenge to this Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA) with MP Tom Watson.
Just weeks after the Investigatory Powers Act became law last year, the CJEU ruled core parts of DRIPA had been unlawful – saying the indiscriminate collection of the nation's internet activity and phone records violated ordinary people’s rights.
It was a massive victory for human rights and civil liberties with huge implications for the Investigatory Powers Act. Because the IPA re-legislated for the powers now declared unlawful – and introduced new, even more draconian measures – swathes of it, too, are effectively unlawful.
With this landmark ruling behind us, we at Liberty are quietly confident as we await permission from the High Court to challenge the Government.
With the People behind us, we have a fighting chance of forcing our elected representatives to uphold our democratic traditions and stay out of our living rooms.
Silkie Carlo is a Policy Officer at Liberty, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting civil liberties and promoting human rights
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