Going public about privacy

Simon Davies is networking internationally to bolster civil rights against legislative 'mission creep', writes Karlin Lillington

There can be few people in the world as passionate about privacy as Simon Davies. Mr Davies, the founder and director of global privacy advocacy organisation Privacy International (www.privacyinternational.org), has spent some 20 years campaigning to protect personal privacy - a concept or "right" many take for granted but which, he explains, is under attack on all sides, particularly from national governments and law enforcement agencies.

"It angers me when such an ancient right as this can be debased in such a fatuous way," he told an audience at Trinity College this week.

New laws brought in after the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the US and international moves to legislate for the "morality" of society, has led to unprecedented clampdowns on personal privacy, he says.

He is particularly angry about what he calls "communalism", where governments start defining community needs and undertake general population management, introducing legislation for vague "moral" reasons, or for "the common good".

"You see it creeping up like hogweed all over the world," he says. "Privacy is perceived as an encumbrance to responsible social management."

The result is fast-tracked legislation which leaves a gap open for governments to create the unspecified enforcement structures they'll need at some future point. He cites surveillance and identity checking legislation in the UK as an example, and is an opponent of CCTV and biometrics, and of course the hated identity card.

Even worse are the various elements of "mission creep", where privacy-compromising legislation is brought in under supposedly strict usage restrictions. The most common, he notes, are terrorism, serious crime and child abuse.

But he shows through several examples how both British and European legislation meant only to gather data on individuals to be used for specific investigations in these areas now encompass huge - and relatively minor - areas of crime. In the case of European arrest warrants, these three areas have expanded to 25 different offences, including trading in antiques and product piracy.

Similarly, British legislation to allow the collection of DNA samples for a national database has expanded from people convicted of specific serious crimes - murder, burglary, grievous bodily harm and sexual assault - to taking DNA from anyone who comes before the police, even if never convicted of any wrongdoing. DNA also was only to be held for specific lengths of time but now DNA can be held indefinitely. Mr Davies believes the UK is moving towards a mandatory national DNA database on all citizens.

And there's plenty more - almost anything that falls under the general category of e-government (which he says is always written in italics to "look flash") brings not simplicity, better service and security, but "uncertainty, expense, failure, rigidity, control and elitism". Not that it has to, but governments seem to find it difficult not to get sidetracked into data collection ad surveillance possibilities. He asks: "Shouldn't privacy be at the core of e-government?"

He is scathing on the privacy implications of the Irish Department of Justice's proposal to retain all electronic traffic data from phone calls, faxes, mobile calls and internet use - which has been set aside for the moment while the Dutch presidency considers introducing an Irish-driven proposal for EU-wide data-retention, first mooted during the recent Irish EU presidency.

"If we get all the communication data from the operators, that gives a pretty damn good picture of a person - who they are, who they associate with, what they're interested in." He adds: "Any right can be quashed in the attempt to search out evil."

He is dismissive too of claims by politicians that if one has done no wrong, one has nothing to fear from increased surveillance and databases full of the surveillance information.

"It's a political device and it's hypocrisy and any politician who uses that excuse is a rank hypocrite."

Such approaches turn on their heads long-accepted democratic principles such as the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence, because data is stored on the presumption that any individual is potentially guilty and privacy-compromising evidence should be taken in advance, he says.

Mr Davies - who is a fellow at the London School of Economics - has taken on the British government on issues ranging from surveillance legislation (such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, or RIPA) to the current effort to introduce national identity cards, and networks closely with privacy organisations across the world.

He is to become a commuter to Dublin in the next two months as he helps the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) to develop a "privacy audit" that could be used to measure privacy protections and abuses in Irish legislation and policy.

Initial research by the ICCL has shown that, unlike most EU countries, the State has no substantive legislation on or specific constitutional protections for privacy. What does exist is generally used by the rich and powerful to guard against investigations. Case law is also weak and, for the average citizen, the option of going to court to establish a point in law is too costly.