Overlooked - Liberty

Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain 1
Overlooked:
Surveillance and personal
privacy in modern Britain
Executive Summary
The past decade has brought many threats to personal privacy. However, over the last two years in
particular, growing nervousness in Westminster, the media and wider public opinion suggests that
the time may be ripe for broad and balanced debate about this important democratic value.
The contrast between the final years of the 1990s and the start of the current decade is marked.
The right to respect for privacy became enforceable in UK courts as recently as October 2000 via
the Human Rights Act 1998. However the political context at the time gave privacy a difficult
inception. The murder of Jamie Bulger in 1993, and the subsequent use of CCTV to help identify
and convict his killers, struck a powerful chord with the public. Although there was little evidence
that CCTV would actually deter crime, it became largely accepted with little debate over
effectiveness or lack of regulation.
Within a year of the new privacy protections, the tragic events of September 11 2001 served further
to entrench a belief that concerns over privacy were automatically trumped by the demands of
national security. ‘Nothing to hide, nothing to fear’ became a well-worn mantra.
So what has changed No single dramatic event has increased interest in privacy. Rather a series
of factors have combined to swing the pendulum back towards this concern. The flagship ID card
programme and other huge public IT projects have been regularly challenged over cost and efficacy.
The media debate has developed so that privacy and crime-fighting imperatives are no longer seen
as a simple trade-off. Further, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has regularly voiced
concerns over the lack of effective privacy protection and regulation.
Unfortunately, this late interest in privacy means that protection does not match the challenges of 2007.
Data protection laws have become outdated and fail to keep pace with the reality of modern data
processing; CCTV remains largely unregulated; expansion of the National DNA Database (NDNAD) has
continued apace; targeted state surveillance has also grown and remains under regulated.
An overhaul of privacy protection is needed. This report makes a series of recommendations
intended to improve the framework. This is not intended to champion privacy at the expense of
crime detection, national security or other vital aim of the state. Rather it sets out to provide a proper
regulatory regime, effective enforcement and improved accountability.