Upon receiving his invitation to speak at last week’s launch event of the Labour Campaign for Human Rights, shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan said he was puzzled that the Labour party had not yet established a policy group dedicated to human rights issues. His sentiment was emphatically shared, with messages of ‘long overdue’, as a wide range of Labour members attended a panel discussion in parliament to mark the launch and put forward a new Labour vision for human rights.
Given the recent Snowden revelations about NSA and GCHQ spying, the campaign has launched just at the right time. After a lively speech from shadow Foreign Office minister Minister Kerry McCarthy contrasting Labour’s international human rights approach to David Cameron’s ‘no questions asked’ trade missions, and strong calls from Stephen Twigg and Sadiq Khan to defend the Human Rights Act, the debate quickly moved onto data surveillance.
Data surveillance is going to be an early area of focus for the Labour Campaign for Human Rights. The revelations leaked by Edward Snowden concerning the GCHQ ‘Operation Tempora’ programme, whereby GCHQ gains access to people’s emails, social networking accounts, phonecalls, and general internet use, and the US PRISM programme, from which we receive information, have raised serious questions about violations of privacy.
Arguably worse, parliament was not aware of Tempora, nor can it be said to have knowingly legislated for anything like this. In any case, the legal basis of GCHQ’s actions is questionable. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Intelligence Services Act are often invoked, but they are clearly stretched beyond their original aims.
Britain is not the only country faced with these revelations, although it is out of step with the rest of the world in the way it is dealing with them. The United States for example, has seen Barack Obama express his desire to review the operations of the National Security Agency; a draft bill to limit the powers of the NSA is before Congress; and the head of the Senate intelligence committee calling for a ‘total review’ of NSA spying.
Meanwhile, France and Germany have expressed indignation about the NSA’s activities. Angela Merkel, having discovered that the NSA had been tapping her mobile phone, expressed concern and even anger about the extent of US spying. It also emerged that the NSA has been carrying out mass data surveillance in France. This has led both countries to call for new rules governing transatlantic intelligence cooperation.
In contrast, much of the debate in Britain has focused on the role of the Guardian in publishing the revelations, with David Cameron even indicating that he may censor the newspaper in the name of national security. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee has announced an investigation into these issues, but MPs have questioned the effectiveness of this committee. Indeed, the committee has already stated, in July 2013, that it did not consider the GCHQ activities to fall outside of the law.
Privacy, liberty and human rights are at stake, the very values that the intelligence agencies are meant to protect. Compared to the US and other European countries, there has been virtually no public debate in the UK. It is sorely needed. Parliament should be at the centre of this debate, as Congress has been in the US, assessing the legal framework and what needs to change. As Tom Watson argued in a recent parliamentary debate on the subject, if ‘the law permits such fundamental abuse of liberty, the law is wrong and must be changed’. The Labour Campaign for Human Rights will be seeking over the next few months to encourage a public debate about the changes that are needed.
———————————————————
Alexander Tompkins is policy officer at the Labour Campaign for Human Rights
———————————————————