Privacy campaigners win concessions in UK surveillance report

Privacy campaigners have secured significant concessions in a key report into surveillance by the British security agencies. The 132-page report, A Democratic Licence To Operate, which Nick Clegg commissioned in 2014 in the wake of revelations by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, acknowledges the importance of privacy concerns.

“Privacy is an essential prerequisite to the exercise of individual freedom, and its erosion weakens the constitutional foundations on which democracy and good governance have traditionally been based in this country,” the report says. It says that there are “inadequacies in both law and oversight that have helped create a credibility gap that has undermined public confidence”. The report proposes that the intelligence services retain the power to collect bulk communications data on the private lives of British citizens, but it also now concedes that privacy must be a consideration throughout the process. The report, written for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) by a panel that includes three former heads of UK intelligence agencies, also calls for an overhaul of existing legislation. Despite its concessions to the privacy lobby, the report overall is more favourable to the police and intelligence services than to the campaigners.