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The report published today by Justice entitled "Freedom from Suspicion. Surveillance Reform for a Digital Age" supplies both the evidence of widespread disproportionate use of covert surveillance for the most minor of civil issues, a wholly unsatisfactory oversight regime and a clarion call for a sensible review of how the innocuous sounding RIPA Act of 2000 has been used.
I'll return to this report later on, but in the meantime here are some of the most germane points from the Executive Summary of the report:
"• Surveillance is a necessary activity in the fight against serious crime. It is a vital part of our national security. It has saved countless lives and helped convict hundreds of thousands of criminals.
• Unnecessary and excessive surveillance, however, destroys our privacy and blights our freedoms.
• RIPA has not only failed to check a great deal of plainly excessive surveillance by public bodies over the last decade but, in many cases, inadvertently encouraged it. Its poor drafting has allowed
councils to snoop, phone hacking to flourish, privileged conversations to be illegally recorded, and CCTV to spread. It is also badly out of date.
• RIPA is neither forward-looking nor human rights compliant. Piecemeal amendments are no longer
enough for what is already a piecemeal Act. Root-and-branch reform of the law on surveillance is needed to provide freedom from unreasonable suspicion, and put in place truly effective safeguards against the abuse of what are necessary powers.
• This report, therefore, outlines a series of recommendations to serve as the basis for a draft Surveillance Reform Bill. "
Here is the link to the report: JUSTICE-Freedom from Suspicion .Surveillance Reform for a Digital Age
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