The stalker state

Phil Booth (London, NO2ID): The mainstream media has finally woken up to the dangers of the government's proposed Communications Data database – the detail of which openDemocracy published back in August.

As National Coordinator of NO2ID I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies. But this hardly includes the thin sugar-coating on the Home Secretary's speech last week when she described her promised 'consultation' on the Communications Data Bill. Hers was a transparent attempt to misdirect the argument.

The government says it won't be storing the content of your telephone or internet use, as if that makes it all right. It is however proposing to record – for life – the details of everyone you call or write to and what websites you visit.

Do you want the State (which in the UK means a large and growing number who can gain access to its systems) to have a record of your religious and political interests, your sexual curiosities, your financial and medical worries, your wider (or narrower) concerns and your special relationships; not to mention a trace of what it reckons ‘you’ have done on your computer even when it is done by someone else? You don’t?

But Jacqui Smith says they are only keeping this information "just in case" it ever become of interest to the authorities.

Were an individual to spy on you like this, it would be called stalking. Which is a crime. It is not a defence for a stalker to claim, “I was only following her in case she fell over”. The action of continuous snooping is itself recognised in law as a wrongdoing.

Now we hear that the government is considering compulsory registration of all mobile phones. Clearly, this is motivated by the same desire to monitor all communications data in yet a further extension of the stalker state.

Sometimes, quite often in fact, the government comes up with ideas that are not just very expensive and inefficient and – as with stalking – plain wrong. In addition there are times when it is hard to imagine anything more designed to make matters worse.

This is a classic example. Registering ownership of a mobile phone with your passport would work only on the compliant. Organised criminals (and terrorists) would have a neat range of options open to them: they could use stolen phones, or buy phones second hand in private deals; they could re-programme the International Mobile Equipment Identifier (IMEI) of the mobile phone handset, and maybe sell such a service to others; they could forge or steal the ID required to buy the phones; bully or deceive others into buying a phone for them (or even just swap phones); use a foreign phone, clone phones or corrupt the supply chain.

Compulsory registration not only won't seriously hinder criminals, it may actually assist them and will certainly create a profitable ‘secondary’ market in sub-prime, sliced up fraud.

Fraud is already enough of a problem with dodgy mobile phone shops or crooked employees getting access to your credit card or bank details, without any need to make it worse. But worse it will become if as now proposed the government forces you to hand over your passport or ID card when you acquire a new blower. Such a law will only fuel more copying, cloning and trafficking in personal data. Fraudsters and organised criminals will be rubbing their hands with glee.

But, however much it may not work in defending us from crime, terrorism and identity-theft, the problem with arguing against these measures in this way is that it accepts the premise and appears to accept that they are being put forward in good faith. It is a bit like arguing against torture on the grounds that it produces bad information.

The government’s desire to track and record all digital traces of our lives is an assault on liberty. It is a basic right – yes, a human right – to be free to call whoever you choose, to read, write and watch what you want in your browser without the State keeping tabs on you, and your friends and your connections.

The government is attacking our right to remain a private citizen.

Ah, but 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' comes the tired refrain…

Wrong. Dead wrong. Privacy is necessary, many secrets are good.

Let's just take a few examples – such as high-level negotiations in either the private or public sectors. Under the proposed system of blanket surveillance, the government of the day may always gain an advantage in, say, pay negotiations or industrial disputes when it can easily identify which union leaders and officials are talking to each other away from the table. The content of the call or e-mail is never the only useful information. In many situations, simply knowing who is talking to who can provide the upper hand.

And what sort of deterrent to commercial investment in the UK will it be when directors realise that the British state apparatus is monitoring who they and their employees are calling, and when? Or will their communications be given a cosy exemption when the government belatedly wakes up to the fact that trampling on commercial confidentiality is bad for business.

And for campaigners like me and my colleagues, fighting against this or any future government? Or investigative journalists rooting out corruption within an establishment which will, of course, have back door access? Or a whole host of others whose safety depends on anonymity - are we to be forced into criminality in order to protect our sources and contacts, ourselves and our loved ones?

You don't have to agree with everything I've said. I certainly hope it won't come true. But it could, if you simply put up with what the stalker state is trying to do.

Please write NOW to your MP expressing your disgust at this government's move towards spying on its people continually, and ask what he or she intends to do about it. (N.B. Please write in your own words - it is much more effective.)