Big Brother Britain
Per capita, Britain boasts the most CCTV cameras,
the biggest DNA database and some of the widest powers of communications
interception of any western power. Recent laws, many introduced in the
open-ended ‘war on terror’, give the security forces draconian powers of
arrest and detention. MANNY THAIN reports on the ominous rise of the
surveillance state.
WE ARE ALL familiar with the dystopian futures
served up by science fiction, where cutting-edge technology is harnessed
by shadowy authoritarian regimes to maintain complete control. What is
disturbing is just how familiar that looks today. Britain’s ‘information
commissioner’, Richard Thomas, agrees: "Two years ago I warned that we
were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear
that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already
all around us". (The Guardian, 2 November 2006)
Five million CCTV cameras keep watch in England and
Wales, nearly one for every ten inhabitants. Each one of us can be
caught on 300 cameras a day. In the name of fighting terrorism, crime,
fraud, drugs, tax evasion, speeding, unlawful parking and fly-tipping,
800 organisations, including the police, Inland Revenue, prisons, local
and central government demanded 253,000 intrusions on privacy –
including phone-taps, email and snail-mail – in 2006. The monitoring
organisation, Privacy International, gives Britain the worst record in
Europe, putting it on a par with ‘endemic surveillance societies’, such
as Russia and Singapore. (The Guardian, 6 February 2008)
This represents a qualitative change. In the past,
intelligence gathering and surveillance were aimed at specific targets –
individuals or movements – or, if more generalised, could be sustained
for a limited time. Today’s technological advances give states and
agencies the potential to blanket cover an entire population, even to
develop international coverage.
Britain’s DNA database, set up in 1995, was the
first and is by far the biggest in the world for the size of the
population. Excluding Scotland, it holds DNA samples of over four
million individuals, 7% of the population, including one in three black
males and nearly 900,000 youth aged between ten and 17. Most EU
countries have no more than 100,000 profiles. The police routinely take
a DNA sample from anyone they stop. According to the Nuffield Bioethics
Committee, the DNA database grows by 40,000 samples every month.
The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2007
extended the right of tax and customs officials to intercept phone
calls, emails and letters, to bug homes and private vehicles. Formerly,
their use of those techniques was restricted to criminal investigations
into drugs and guns. In Britain, surveillance interception has never
required a warrant. Only the approval of the home secretary was and is
necessary.
Nothing to fear
A BBC TV Panorama programme last September reported
that two-thirds of the population would favour a law requiring that
everyone’s DNA should be stored. It is easy to see why. DNA is portrayed
as a failsafe method of tracking down criminals, and who opposes less
crime?
Yet, it is less reliable than most people think.
Although it almost never provides a false negative reading, it can
produce false ‘positives’. Professor Allan Jamieson, director of the
Forensic Institute in Glasgow, points out that a person’s DNA can be
transferred to a place or item that he or she has never seen or touched.
(The Economist, 27 September 2007) This risk is exacerbated with the
development of ‘low copy number’ detection, in which a single cell can
be enough to produce a DNA profile.
On top of that, Britain’s National Policing
Improvement Agency is responsible for IDENT1, the database holding seven
million sets of fingerprints and other biometric details used to search
for matches from crime scenes. As with DNA, many of the prints are from
people with no criminal record or are yet to be matched to a named
individual.
The National Health Service database, which will
hold the records of 53 million people, can be accessed by state security
services on demand. And the government is developing the world’s first
national database for every child under 18. The potential exists for
massive abuse in the wrong hands.
It is not as if the government is good at keeping
data safe. Last year, the Inland Revenue lost the tax and bank details
of 25 million people after it sent data-packed CDs via TNT post. When a
laptop computer was lost, so were the details of more than 100,000 navy
personnel. In June 2006, the Home Office admitted it had wrongly
identified 2,700 people as having criminal records. The list of this
type of incompetence is frighteningly long.
‘If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear’, is
the authoritarian slogan. In reality, however, we are all becoming
potential suspects. Who can access the data? How do we know it is
accurate? Even some in authority have expressed concern. Alex Marshall,
deputy chief constable of Thames Valley police, said: "Extending the
taking of [DNA] samples to all offences may be perceived as indicative
of the increasing criminalisation of the generally law-abiding citizen".
(The Observer, 5 August 2007)
Identity crisis
IN MARCH 2006 the Identity Cards Act became law.
Immigrants will be the first to carry the card, followed over the next
two years by ‘key security workers’, such as airport staff, as the first
registered British nationals. Home secretary, Jacqui Smith, plans to
phase in the scheme to different sections of society, minimising the
potential for united, mass opposition.
The government’s claim that ID cards are essential
to fight terrorism is completely false. ID cards did not stop the
Spanish train bombers on 11 March 2004, and would not have prevented the
7 July 2005 London transport bombers, who were British.
The biometric card will include items such as name,
signature, other names you have been known by, date and place of birth,
gender, where you live and have ever lived, your picture, fingerprints
and iris image, residential status, national insurance, driving licence
and passport numbers. It will record when your card was issued and what
details you gave to get it. It will log every time it is used, leaving
an audit trail to all connecting databases.
An ID card will be required to access health and
social services, and to function in society generally. Fines and/or
imprisonment await those who fail to register or for other ‘misuse’.
According to the Home Office, 265 government departments and 44,000
accredited private-sector organisations will use it to verify people’s
identity.
‘Oversight’ will be provided by a national
commissioner. But he or she will have no powers over the chiefs of the
security and intelligence services or any chief police officers. Welcome
to Big Brother Britain.
We are told that abuse of the data is unthinkable in
this ‘democratic’ country. Yet why should we trust a government which
blatantly lied to us in the run-up to the Iraq war? How can we trust a
system which allowed the Metropolitan police to walk away after gunning
down Jean Charles de Menezes and then promoted those in charge? To give
our trust to a state with such an appalling record would be a major
mistake.
That is before we take into account the fact that
parliamentary democracy is by no means a permanent form of state
organisation. Even the most ‘democratic’ capitalist state reserves the
right to declare martial law in times of social strife. If that were to
happen in Britain, the mass of centralised information would become a
colossal weapon of state repression.
Claw-back
SMITH IS ALSO boosting police stop-and-search
powers. The proposals come in a review by Sir Ronnie Flanagan, former
chief constable of Northern Ireland, who will recommend reductions in
the use of ‘stop-and-account’ forms for ‘lesser crimes’ – shoplifting,
vehicle collisions, vandalism, drink-driving, etc.
The forms were introduced after the McPherson report
in 1999 which branded the Metropolitan police ‘institutionally racist’
after its failure to bring to trial the killers of Stephen Lawrence in a
racially motivated attack. The mass outrage provoked by Stephen’s murder
compelled the state to introduce some limited measures of
accountability. Now they are being clawed back.
The review will propose that the police use
BlackBerry mobiles to transmit brief stop records to police stations.
Borough commanders will be allowed to introduce random stop and
searches, a return to the hated ‘sus laws’ of the early 1980s, when
suspicion of illegal intent was enough to stop and search someone. In
practice, this already happens. This move officially sanctions it.
Widespread use of sus laws inflamed volatile inner-cities, which
exploded in riots in Bristol, Brixton, Toxteth and elsewhere. Tory
leader, David Cameron, backs the measures, competing with New Labour
over who is ‘toughest on crime’.
According to ministry of justice figures for 2004/05
(which do not quite add up but give an indication of the situation),
white people accounted for nearly 75% of stop and searches while making
up 91.3% of the population; black people were 14% and 2.8%; Asians, 7.5%
and 4.1%; ethnicity was not clearly denoted in the remainder. Therefore,
black and Asian people were six times more likely to be stopped than
white people.
Chief superintendent, Ali Dizaei, president of the
National Black Police Association, warned: "The reintroduction of such
draconian powers will do untold damage to police and community relations
and damage the fight against terrorism at a time when we most need the
support of all communities". (The Guardian, 31 January) That gives the
lie to the claim that the ‘war on terror’ is the prime motivation behind
strengthening police powers.
Flanagan’s review rejects the idea of communities
electing police commissioners or authorities, which could have
represented a small degree of accountability over the police.
Lack of evidence
BRITAIN IS ONE of the few countries which do not
allow the use of intercept evidence in court. The security services have
always opposed it for fear it would expose their methods and give too
much information to the defence. Recordings from free-standing bugs are
admissible, as are recordings where one of the speakers is an undercover
cop, and phone-tap evidence gathered abroad.
The civil rights group, Liberty, calls for the use
of intercept evidence on the grounds that it would provide defendants
with the evidence against them which is currently kept secret. Liberty
also argues that it offers an alternative to lengthy pre-charge
detention (up to 28 days, with government plans to raise that to 42
days). That might sound reasonable. And moves are underway to allow its
use. However, the government set up another review to look into the
issue, under the auspices of the privy council, an exclusive and
unelected body of former prime ministers, former heads of the civil
service, judiciary and security forces – the elite of the British ruling
class.
On 6 February, prime minister, Gordon Brown, echoed
its recommendations. Agencies would not be compelled to use in court the
material gathered. Security services and police would have a veto on
evidence being passed on to most defence lawyers. The amount of
transcribed material provided to the defence would be limited. State
forces, therefore, will be able to use intercept evidence to strengthen
their case, while providing a minimal amount of information to
defendants.
Thought-crime
IN JULY 2006, five young British Muslim men were
jailed under section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2007, which makes it an
offence to have books or items useful for a terrorist. They had
downloaded Islamist material from the internet. The prosecution claimed
they planned to fight in Afghanistan. Their defence was that they were
engaged in ideological research.
On 13 February this year, the court of appeal
overturned the decision, Lord Chief Justice Phillips saying that
"[Section] 57 must be interpreted in a way that requires a direct
connection between the object possessed and the act of terrorism". (The
Guardian, 14 February) It is an important judgment, but these men spent
over 18 months in prison, branded as terrorists.
There appears to have been no physical evidence for
the prosecution’s claims. The appeal judge even said the case should
never have been brought in the first place. It bears all the hallmarks
of the thought-crime in George Orwell’s 1984. But would the outcome
always be so fortunate? Can we rely on a judge to make the ‘right’
decision?
Although the judiciary jealously guards for itself a
certain independence from political interference, it is one of the key
guardians of the capitalist system, defending the interests of the
ruling class. We are moving into a period when we can expect more
intense struggle, provoked by intensified exploitation as a result of
economic crisis and increased social tensions. Inevitably, workers and
other sections of society will come into confrontation with state
forces. Laws introduced on the pretext of ‘fighting terrorism’ can and
will be used to clamp down on the workers’ movement. In the 1970s and
1980s, Irish trade union activists were rounded up under the Prevention
of Terrorism Act, brought in to combat Irish Republican Army terrorism.
And the Guildford Four, Birmingham Six and many other innocent people
spent years in prison, falsely convicted of terrorism.
Bugging MPs
GIVEN THE GREEN light by the ‘war on terror’,
sections of the state clearly feel they can do what they want. It has
been reported, for example, that the police bugged conversations at
Woodhill prison, Milton Keynes, between a New Labour MP, Sadiq Khan, and
Babar Ahmad, one of Khan’s constituents. Ahmad had been arrested in
December 2003 by the Metropolitan police on allegations that he was
helping to finance terrorists. He was released after six days. In August
2004 he was detained on a US extradition warrant and has been held ever
since. The bugging in May 2005 and June 2006 had been carried out by
Thames Valley police on the request of the Met.
Eavesdropping on MPs breaches the ‘Wilson doctrine’
– brought in by former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson in 1966 –
that constituents should be able to speak to MPs in confidence. Although
this specified phone-tapping, the spirit of the doctrine could be said
to apply to other forms of electronic surveillance.
The bugging was carried out by detective sergeant
Mark Kearney, who claims he was part of an attempt to influence a Royal
Commission report. According to Kearney, the aim was to ensure that if
suspects exercise their right to remain silent in custody it should
impact negatively on their cases in court. (Independent on Sunday, 10
February)
Kearney has been accused subsequently of wilful
misconduct in public office for leaking case details to a local
newspaper – which was what he says his superiors expected him to do. He
will face trial with three others, including Sally Murrer, a local
journalist. She has been charged with aiding and abetting misconduct in
public office, which carries unlimited imprisonment. They are being
scapegoated to divert attention from the architects of the scandal.
Some commentators complain that it is unjust for MPs
to get preferential treatment. Given the rotten nature of British
politics – cash-for-honours and MPs channelling thousands of pounds to
family members, etc – this resonates strongly with the general public.
MPs are generally and rightly despised.
But, with New Labour firmly ensconced in the
capitalist camp, this case is another reason why a new workers’ party is
an absolute necessity. Genuine working-class representatives need to be
protected as much as possible from the prying eyes and ears of the
capitalist state. Such safeguards help the working class combat
exploitation, discrimination and report miscarriages of justice, etc.
The Khan/Ahmad case is not only about bugging MPs.
Over the weekend of 9/10 February, British newspapers alleged that
hundreds of lawyers have been bugged while visiting prisoners, including
at least ten at Woodhill jail. The court of appeal in 2005 ruled that
this seriously undermines the rule of law, and that the trials affected
should be halted and any convictions overturned.
When Jack Straw was foreign secretary he was in no
doubt about this principle. An editorial in The Guardian (12 February)
recalled what he said a few years ago: "There could and would be no
effective relationship [between a lawyer and client] if the advice… was
disclosable to the other party. If that were so, our system of justice
as a whole would suffer". Straw was applying that principle falsely to
keep secret from the British people the attorney general’s advice on
Iraq, before the invasion of that country. Now, as justice minister, he
seems strangely silent on the subject.
Democratic rights
OVER RECENT YEARS, we have seen a frontal attack on
democratic rights. This was facilitated by mass revulsion at the
horrific terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. The killing
of 3,000 people, many of them working-class, in the World Trade Center
twin towers, has been used by governments around the world to increase
their grip on power. As Tony Blair said at the time, ‘9/11 changes
everything’.
The onslaught has been made possible by the
capitulation to capitalism of the leaders of former social-democratic
parties, such as the Labour Party. Blair, Brown and company have moved
so far to the right that even the Tories criticise them for trampling on
democratic rights! Of course, such criticism is totally hypocritical as
the Tories in office would be just as authoritarian. It is a marker,
however, of the extent of New Labour’s betrayal of the working class.
In combination with amazing advances in information
technology, data storage and analysis, these laws give the modern
capitalist state immense power over its citizens: 1984 in the 21st
century. In most sci-fi dystopian nightmares, however, the state is
all-powerful, the masses compliant and enslaved. In reality, the working
class – when conscious of its potential power as the producer of the
wealth in society – is the most dynamic agency for progressive change.
We defend democratic rights within capitalism, even
though it is clear that genuine democracy is not possible on the basis
of this profit-driven, exploitative system. And the ‘rights’ which
sometimes can be taken for granted – the right of workers to organise in
trade unions, of assembly (to meet and demonstrate), to strike, to form
political parties, for legal representation, to vote, and for a
relatively free press, etc – have only been won through bitter struggle
over decades, even centuries.
They are not permanent. They remain in place only so
long as they are defended by the organised working class. The British
state has got away with its attacks so far – on the basis of 9/11 and
the capitulation by New Labour leaders. But, as part of a revival of the
workers’ movement, working-class people will fight to reclaim our
democratic rights.
Those rights are also tools which can be used in our
struggle to bring about a socialist transformation of society. Such a
society, democratically organised, would apply scientific advances for
the benefit of all, not the maintenance of control in the hands of a
few.
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