This damning verdict on the snooper’s charter is the start of a longer battle 2


John Kampfner writes in The Guardian:

Rarely can a parliamentary report have been so thorough and so damning. The unanimous cross-party verdict on the snooper’s charter – the bill that would have allowed the authorities to monitor the communications traffic of every citizen – says the plans were ill-considered, expensive and dangerous.

But it goes further. Tuesday’s report implies that the Home Office acted in bad faith – that it tried to dupe MPs and the companies concerned in a sham exercise of consultation, presenting them with conjecture dressed as fact. The word “misleading” is used repeatedly. It calls one assertion, that the failure to tap some data costs an average of 150 lives a year, an “absurdity”.

For those of us who have lamented the lack of rigour in parliamentary scrutiny, the work by the joint committee on the draft communications data bill is a refreshing departure. It dissects each assertion put forward by Theresa May and her mandarins. It accepts that there is a case for legislation “which will provide the law enforcement agencies with some further access to communications data”, but it adds: “We believe that the draft bill pays insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy, and goes much further than it need or should for the purpose of providing necessary and justifiable official access to communications data.”


2 thoughts on “This damning verdict on the snooper’s charter is the start of a longer battle

  • Ian Russell

    What is it about the Home Office that has seen every Home Secretary in recent years going into the job at least partly connected with reality but becoming more and more totalitarian in their thinking the more time they spend in the job?

    Is their tea being spiked? Hypnosis?

    Please, Mr. Cameron, give Teresa May a good talking to and convince her that we do not want our “security” services to be modelled on the Stasi.

  • Ian Russell

    What is it about the Home Office that has seen every Home Secretary in recent years going into the job at least partly connected with reality but becoming more and more totalitarian in their thinking the more time they spend in the job?

    Is their tea being spiked? Hypnosis?

    Please, Mr. Cameron, give Teresa May a good talking to and convince her that we do not want our “security” services to be modelled on the Stasi.

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