Liberty responds to Home Secretary’s review of Snoopers’ Charter

Liberty responds to Home Secretary’s review of Snoopers’ Charter, Meg Goulding, lawyer at Liberty, said:

“We all want to have control over our personal information and data, but the Snoopers’ Charter flagrantly allows the State to collect the messages, location and browsing history of all of us without grounds for suspicion.

“We are deeply disappointed by the Home Secretary’s review. It’s very concerning that the Government thinks the best course of action is to expand surveillance powers and lessen safeguards. Weakening safeguards would be an unjustifiable assault on already reduced rights, and the Home Secretary’s proposals would give even more power to the State to access sensitive data such as a person’s health records or confidential legal communications. We already know that the current so-called safeguards are totally ineffective in protecting our rights and holding those in power to account. Only a few months ago, in a landmark Liberty legal case, the courts concluded that MI5 had been failing to follow safeguards and unlawfully spying on the public for years.

“Dangerous mass surveillance powers do not keep us safe, they breach our privacy and undermine core pillars of democracy. The Government must urgently reassess the invasively wide powers it already has at its disposal to snoop on our lives, and instead, develop proportionate and targeted surveillance measures that better protect our fundamental rights.”

You can read Liberty’s full submission to the independent review of the Investigatory Powers Act here.