Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, to address the comments made by my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater and other noble Lords, in my opinion there is no doubt that we all face a very serious threat of terrorism. There is also no doubt at all that, because of the way that technology has moved on, there is a gap that means that the police and the security services cannot now get the information on mobile phone communication that they used to, due to changes in the way that people communicate via the internet. The first issue is: where does the balance lie between measures that would close that gap and the freedoms and civil liberties that we all enjoy? The second is: how do we fill that gap technologically Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I have done some homework over the weekend. Obviously, I am not a technology expert, but this is what I have been told by technology experts. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blair, for saying that he has no issue with people who argue on the basis of principle. One of the effects of these amendments, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra alluded to, would be to require communications service providers to store 12 months of web logs—the history of every website visited by everyone who uses the internet in the UK. The Joint Committee that my noble friend Lord Blencathra chaired said that this has considerable implications for the privacy of everybody who lives in this country and who uses the internet. I am sure that that is immediately obvious to noble Lords across the House What has not been mentioned is what I have learnt since we were in Committee. When people use web-based means of communication such as WhatsApp—according to my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater, ISIL is one of the groups that uses this means of communicating —Facebook Messenger or any others, all these communications are encrypted. The vital data that the police and the security services need are held on servers that are mainly in the United States of America. Even if these amendments were agreed to, and even if these web logs were kept, there are serious doubts as to whether the American companies would comply with the UK legislation Another aspect of these amendments, and of the draft data communications Bill, would require United Kingdom communications service providers to skim off the encrypted data transmitted to and from the secure servers in the United States, in case the Americans decided that they were not going to play ball. This would cost in excess of £1 billion, and it is unlikely that the UK-based communications service providers would do so. Because of the levels of encryption, and because companies such as Facebook are constantly reviewing their encryption and making it more and more difficult to decipher, even if that data were captured there is serious doubt that the UK communications service providers would be able to make head or tail of it. Plus, they would not be able to decide what part of that encrypted data was the content of messages or Facebook pages and how much was simply who sent the message to whom, from where and at what time—that is what these amendments and what the draft data communications Bill was about. The noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, talked at length about intercept evidence. These amendments and the draft data communications Bill have nothing to do with interception. They are about only what is on the envelope of the message, if you like, not its contents So what do we do? Obviously, something has to be done to try to get that data. That is why the coalition Government have appointed Sir Nigel Sheinwald as special envoy on international data sharing to sit down with the US Government and US companies to identify ways to overcome legal jurisdictions so that we can tackle crime and terrorism without compromising the privacy of the law-abiding majority. This is not a situation where these servers in the United States are beyond our reach. In 2013, US companies processed around 30,000 requests for "envelope" data from UK authorities. There is already consultation and collaboration and it is producing results These amendments are disproportionate, are likely to cost billions of pounds and certainly cannot be implemented immediately. Almost all communications service providers in the UK do not currently keep this data and have no storage capacity and capability to store it. That would be a long-term project; nothing of use would come out of it in the six months that my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater talked about as a stop-gap measure. These amendments are likely to jeopardise the collaboration that we already have with the Americans, which is serving the police and the security services reasonably well Mention has been made of a debate that the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, and I had on BBC Radio 4 at the weekend on "Week in Westminster". During that programme, the noble Lord said that the amendments tabled last week were too broad and that, if it had come to a vote last week, he certainly would not have voted for them. As these amendments have been changed hardly at all since last week, I assume that the noble Lord, Lord West, will not vote for his own amendments.