Stuart Waiton: What price freedom now for the coalition?

It’s a curious state of affairs when on the one hand we have the Leveson Inquiry denouncing the phone hacking of journalists, while at the same time the government is discussing a new bill to allow the state to tap into not only our phone messages, but also our texts, e-mails and just about any other form of communication we make with one another.

This is made all the more ironic when we look back at the way the coalition government portrayed itself as the defender of freedom.

Just as the Conservative and Liberal Democrats came to power, they published The Coalition: our programme for government. Here, the argument was made that when in power the new government would not only stem the tide of authoritarianism that had developed under New Labour, but would reverse this trend.

The British state, it was noted, had become both too authoritarian and had “abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties”.

For both David Cameron and Nick Clegg, there was a need to “restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power” and also a need to “end the storage of internet and e-mail records without good reason”. Our liberties appeared to be in good hands, not least of all with Clegg himself, who had previously, and usefully, carried out critical research exposing the fact that while Labour were in power they had introduced a new law for every single day they had been in office.

Now we discover that the very same government is planning to extend its surveillance powers so that all of our web, e-mail, text and phone usage can be tracked and recorded. Assurances have been given that access to this information will only be granted in certain situations, but nevertheless, as Conservative MP David Davis has argued, this will give the state, “unfettered access to every single communication” that we make.

In many respects, this could mean the end of private communications. It would mean that each internet site we access will be logged; each offensive joke we text to our friends is recorded, each argument, angry e-mail exchange, or simply our intimate conversations with wives and lovers is stored and accessible if and when the state deems it appropriate.

But why are the government doing this?

For such a significant and intrusive development, one would have thought that there would be very clear reasons for this new proposal. So far, however, the arguments put forward defending this possible development have been highly unconvincing. Some issues have been raised about the terrorist threat during the Olympics, but as David Davis again points out, any new legislation would not be passed until after the Olympics have finished.

The recent killings in Toulouse were offered up by security expert Anthony Glees as a good reason why new powers are needed. But should the act of one man in another country mean we change the basic freedoms we enjoy in the UK? As it happens, the French already have powers to snoop into the communications people make, but this did nothing to stop the Toulouse murderer.

As well as the “terrorist threat”, the government has also made some vague reference to the problem of criminals and paedophiles who use the internet and new communications technologies to do their dirty work. Catching these individuals is all our business, but should it mean that all of our personal calls and online activities should be recorded by the government and security services?

Surely in a free society we cannot adopt the perspective of the lowest common denominator when calculating what freedoms we can and cannot have.

The nervousness about the “dangers” of mobile networks and the need to regulate activities on the internet appear to be at the heart of the government’s new proposals. However, their reassurances that they would only access our communications when there is a terrorist threat or a serious criminal activity taking place is no reassurance at all, given the authoritarian legal changes that were made by the previous government and the increasingly illiberal interpretation of existing laws.

Twitter and Facebook are already being trawled by the police, resulting in the arrest and imprisonment of individuals for what are basically speech crimes. The 2006 Terrorism Act made it illegal to glorify terrorism even when there is no evidence that an individual has any intention of carrying out a terrorist act. Similarly, the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act has created the woolly crime of stirring up religious or race hate, replacing the far more robust legal category of incitement to violence.

Meanwhile, concerns have been raised by QC Alex Bailin about the growing and flexible use of the 1986 Public Order Act to fine individuals or lock people up for protesting or proselytising: A situation that he argues means that Britain and indeed Europe, compared with the United States, are increasingly losing a defence in law for free speech.

The coalition government appears to be aware that the Labour governments created a more authoritarian state. The above changes in law and legal practices are just some examples of this. All the legal trends in the UK point to a reduction in liberty, not least of all with the increased policing of ‘offensiveness’. The new snoop proposals look profoundly worrying for anybody who cares about their own and other people’s freedoms.

• Stuart Waiton is a sociology lecturer at Abertay University and founder of Take a Liberty (Scotland).