Today, the Guardian reports that “Labour has edged closer to supporting the ‘snooper’s charter’“, referring to the Investigatory Powers Bill carried forward from the last session of Parliament. Andy Burnham, Labour’s shadow Home Secretary, said “Her commitment to an independent review of the case for bulk powers is a major concession but the right thing to do and something which will build trust in this process.” He went to say she was “reassuring members on this side of the house about this bill.” Continue reading
Tagged with Snoopers’ Charter
Labour MPs abstain on snoopers’ charter. Straight talking, honest politics?
Yesterday in the vote on the second reading of the Investigatory Powers Bill (aka the snoopers charter), there were just two Labour votes against. All credit to Dennis Skinner and David Winnick who were amongst the 15 votes against (plus two tellers) comprising Lib Dem, Plaid, Green and SDLP MPs and a solitary SNP rebel. No doubt this caused much discomfort to Corbynistas in the PLP who felt obliged to abide by collective responsibility. New times.
Andy Burnham had justified Labour’s (i.e. essentially his) decision to abstain on the bill by claiming that to describe the bill as a snooper’s charter was “insulting” to the police and intelligence services:
To call this a ‘Snooper’s Charter‘ I think is to be insulting to people who work in the police and security services. It implies they do the jobs they do because they like spying on people. Actually they do the jobs they do to keep people safe. I don’t think the issue is that people will generally just poke around (in your email or web browsing history).”
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The snoopers’ charter raises its ugly head again
Bang on cue, Cameron this week reiterated what Andrew Parker, head of MI5, had demanded just before, that in the light of the Paris killings the UK security services needed more surveillance powers. Whenever there is a terrorist incident MI5 never misses an opportunity to demand ‘more resources’, closely followed in tandem by Cameron and May. Nobody of course would wish to deny the security services the funding and powers they need to target terrorists, but there are genuine questions to be asked as to how far extra powers are needed, especially if it is in the blanket form of mass surveillance. Continue reading
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Britain’s human rights record: things can only get worse
The revelation that the US National Security Agency and FBI were enabled in a major international snooping operation to access the systems of 9 of the world’s biggest internet companies and then to share that information with GCHQ, the UK giant eavesdropping and security agency, without ordinary US and British citizens being aware that their phone and online transactions were being observed, highlights yet again how the internet is being manipulated by State agencies routinely to breach basic civil liberties and rights to privacy.
We are told it is necessary to keep track of terrorists – though significantly these sweeping powers failed to detect and apprehend either the US Boston terrorists or the UK Woolwich terrorists – and no-one would object to all reasonable measures being taken to protect citizens from terrorists, including by clandestine means.
