Kim Howells MP knows all about surveillance. Back in 1984, he was one of Mrs Thatcher’s unnamed “enemy within” and played a leading role in the National Union of Miners organising the Miners’ Strike in South Wales. Now, he is trusted ex-Minister who chairs the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee which has limited scrutiny role over the very organisations that tapped his phone and monitored his movements those 25 years ago. A curious turn of events to say the least.
Kim Howells is in the news today calling for a phased withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and replacing it with the enhanced surveillance of the UK population. In today’s Guardian he writes that:
“Life inside the UK would have to change. There would be more intrusive surveillance in certain communities, more police officers on the streets, more border officials at harbours and airports, more inspectors of vehicles and vessels entering the country, and a re-examination of arrangements that facilitate the "free movement" of people and products across our frontiers with the rest of the EU”.
What is missing in Mr Howells’ analysis is any recognition that if there is to more surveillance, then there also has to be more focus on what prevents the misuse of surveillance powers. In his Guardian commentary he makes no mention of the need for a privacy counter-balance, although to be fair, this could be because he is writing a newspaper column of limited word length.
However, Mr Howells neither sees the need for additional checks nor balances in his Committee’s Annual Report published last May (heavily redacted by the Government, as his Committee has to submit its manuscript for editing prior to publication). In fact, over the last year, this Parliamentary Committee did not even bother to take oral evidence from any of the Commissioners who are there to scrutinise surveillance polices. And in its 60 page Annual Report, the activities of these Commissioners are dismissed by the Committee in less than half a page. As far as I can see, under Mr Howell, the Committee's role in reassuring the public that national security policies do not stray beyond the necessary has gone AWOL.
This week we have had the dismissal of Professor Nutt whose views on the risks of horse-riding are well known. We were told by Government that if the Professor wants to campaign to re-categorise cannabis as a lesser risk, he cannot be a Government advisor on drugs policy. Similarly, if Mr Howells wants to support a policy of more surveillance by the national security agencies, he should not do this from his position as Chair of a Committee that is expressly tasked by Parliament to supervise the surveillance policies of the national security agencies.
At the end of the day, Professor Nutt had to go – so should Mr. Howells.
(Readers who are interested in the kind of protective supervision we have in the UK are directed to my blog entries on 6th October: “Can national security agencies disclose communications data or ANPR images to anybody?”; on 8th September: “Home Secretary spends 90 minutes per day with interception warrants?”; and on 10th September: “Is there is no chance of winning a privacy complaint?”. Also the "Written Evidence: Human Rights Legislation and Government Policy towards national security - 2006" on the download section of www.amberhawk.com).
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