13.
PRINCIPLES
A question of trust1
13.1.
I have described the public debate on investigatory powers as double-jointed,
because it features arguments for more and fewer capabilities, more and fewer
safeguards. The debate is also polarised: often characterised by exaggerated rhetoric
and by a lack of trust between participants. In the words of one observer:
“On one side there are civil liberties groups demanding increased privacy and
transparency; on the other there are securocrats and law-enforcement
spokesmen, under pressure to keep us safe and facing a bewildering array of
security threats, insisting they need to monitor more of our online behaviour ...
The debate is lurching between these nightmarish poles: we can choose a
dystopia where our every move is secretly monitored, recorded and analysed,
or a world where criminals are able to do what they like.”2
Both sides are motivated by fear: not least, their common fear that technological
change will throw into jeopardy what they hold to be most important.
13.2.
The silent majority sits between those poles, in a state of some confusion. The
technology is hard to grasp, and the law fragmented and opaque. Intelligence is said
to have been harvested and shared in ways that neither Parliament nor public
predicted, and that some have found disturbing and even unlawful. Yet this was
brought to light not by the commissions, committees and courts of London, but by the
unlawful activities of Edward Snowden. Informed discussion is hampered by the fact
that both the benefits of the controversial techniques and the damage attributed to
their disclosure are deemed too secret to be specified. Politics enters the picture, and
for informed debate in the media are substituted the opposing caricatures of
“unprecedented threats to our security” and “snoopers’ charter”.
13.3.
If one thing is certain, it is that the road to a better system must be paved with
trust:
1
2
3
4
5
(a)
Public consent to intrusive laws depends on people trusting the authorities, both
to keep them safe and not to spy needlessly on them.3
(b)
This in turn requires knowledge at least in outline of what powers are liable to
be used,4 and visible authorisation and oversight mechanisms in which the
wider public, as well as those already initiated into the secret world, can have
confidence.5
I chose the title of this Report before learning that it had been used for Onora O’Neill’s BBC Reith
Lectures of 2002. I have since read them, and gained some valuable insights.
J. Bartlett, Orwell vs Terrorists, 2015.
3.7, 10.14(g), 12.6 and 12.11 above.
7.27 and 12.16-12.17 above.
12.50, 12.82 and 12.83 above.
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