CHAPTER 13: PRINCIPLES
compliance, clarity and a unified approach. Those principles are now explained in
turn.
First principle: minimise no-go areas
13.7.
A trusted system must be not only fair but effective. My first principle is that no-go
areas for law enforcement should be minimised as far as possible, whether in the
physical or the digital world.
13.8.
It is often and correctly said that the first duty of the state is to ensure the safety of
its citizens (or indeed all within its borders, irrespective of their nationality). Good
order is a prerequisite not only for effective government in the public interest, but for
the creation of a space in which individual and collective freedoms – including,
among many others, the right to respect for private life – can be safely exercised.
Only in a society whose institutions are protected from attack and in which there is
an expectation that laws will be enforced is it possible for people to trust strangers,
live without the fear of attack or intimidation, participate fully in the economy and
society and develop to the full their own interests, personalities and quality of life.
13.9.
The libertarian view that the State has no business snooping on the private affairs of
the individual, and that some places or channels of communication should enjoy
guaranteed immunity, has its attractions for some. But those attractions wane once it
is recognised that there are individuals who will take advantage of any unpatrolled
space to groom, abuse, blackmail, steal secrets from, threaten, defraud and plot
destructive acts of terrorism against others. Any State that claims to protect its
citizens must have the ability effectively to detect, disrupt and prosecute such
behaviour. The central issue is how that ability can be combined with the expectation
of privacy which law-abiding people have and deserve.
13.10. My first principle applies in the physical sphere. If the State is to discharge its primary
duty of protecting its population, it needs the power to do the most sensitive things
that can be imagined: bug a bedroom, search a safe, trick a person into a relationship,
read a personal diary, eavesdrop on a conversation between lawyer and client or
journalist and source. None of those things will be appropriate save in exceptional
and occasional circumstances. Even then, they may well be completely impracticable
to implement. But the issue is when it should be lawful to exercise such powers, not
whether they should exist at all.
13.11. The same is true of the digital sphere. There may be all sorts of reasons – not least,
secure encryption – why it is not physically possible to intercept a particular
communication, or track a particular individual. But the power to do so needs to exist,
even if it is only usable in cases where skill or trickery can provide a way around the
obstacle. Were it to be otherwise, entire channels of communication could be reduced
to lawless spaces in which freedom is enjoyed only by the strong, and evil of all kinds
can flourish.12
12
The metaphor of the “ungoverned space” is less apt. I do not suggest that law enforcement or
intelligence should “govern” the internet: simply that they should have the ability to seek access to
material and data when duly authorised to do so for a legitimate purpose.
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