The report – Freedom from Suspicion – Surveillance Reform for a Digital Age – is by Eric Metcalfe, former director of JUSTICE and recently returned to practise as a barrister. It reveals some pretty stunning statistics: for example, in total, there have been close to three million decisions taken by public bodies under RIPA in the last decade.
The report is highly critical of the legislation, which it argues is “neither forward-looking nor human rights compliant“. Its “poor drafting has allowed councils to snoop, phone hacking to flourish, privileged conversations to be illegally recorded, and CCTV to spread.” Metcalfe recommends, unsurprisingly, “root-and-branch” reform.
RIPA powers are to be curtailed through the Protection of Freedoms Bill (see this summary post by Obiter J) but Metcalfe argues that even if these are enacted, “RIPA will continue to provide a wholly inadequate legal framework for surveillance“.
The history of RIPA is interesting from a human rights perspective, as it was passed in direct response to a European Court of Human Rights ruling as well as the Human Rights Act itself. For more on the history of the act, as well as its central role in the phone hacking scandal, see my post: Was it human rights wot won the phone hacking scandal?
The Executive Summary and a Scribd version of the report are reproduced below:
• In 2000, Parliament enacted RIPA. At the time, it was acclaimed by government ministers as human rights-compliant, forward-looking legislation.
• Since RIPA came into force in 2000, there have been:
– more than 20,000 warrants for the interception of phone calls, emails, and Internet use;
– at least 2.7 million requests for communications data, including phone bills and location data;
– more than 4,000 authorisations for intrusive surveillance, eg, planting bugs in someone’s house
or car;
– at least 30,000 authorisations for directed surveillance, eg, following someone’s movements in
public, or watching their house.
• In total, there have been close to three million decisions taken by public bodies under RIPA in the last decade.
• This does not even begin to include the number of warrants and authorisations on behalf of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, which have never been made public.
• Of the decisions we do know about, fewer than 5,000 (about 0.16 per cent) were approved by a judge.
• The main complaints body under RIPA, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, has dealt with only 1,100 cases in the last decade.
• In the last decade, it has upheld only ten complaints.
• 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.
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Read more
- Was it human rights wot won the phone hacking scandal?
- More secret justice on the horizon
- Whose law is it anyway?
- A phone hacking scandal refresher
- Gagging on privacy
