Tories to rollback surveillance state

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The Conservative party has said it's time to roll back the surveillance state in a new policy outline ahead of a looming national election.

The party has long been promising to cut ID cards if elected, but the new 11-point plan unveiled by Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve shows just how far the Tories want to take such cuts.

In addition to scrapping ID cards and the controversial ContactPoint database, the Tories would remove innocent people's records from the DNA database, tighten data sharing laws and boost the Information Commissioner's powers.

“No-one is suggesting we should not harness IT or surveillance technology to strengthen public protection. I am not amongst those who nostalgically yearn for some luddite return to a pre-technological age,” Grieve said today in a speech.

“But, the government’s approach to databases and surveillance powers is the worst of all worlds. Intrusive. Ineffective. And enormously expensive,” he said, noting that databases keep going over-budget – and that doesn’t include the costs following data breaches.

He added that the UK has the most CCTV cameras in the world, but just one crime is solved for each 1,000 cameras, and that the DNA database holds details on innocent people, but not all convicted criminals.

“We have a series of IT systems that hoard personal data on us, but the butter fingers of the database state lost the entire nation’s child benefit records in the post,” he continued. “And we have intrusive surveillance powers now used to monitor children walking home from school, check the permits of paper boys, and even follow dog-walkers to check where their canines poop.”

In his speech, Grieve called for fewer massive databases, and said they should hold the least amount of data possible. Individuals should be given control over their own data and which government agencies can access it, he claimed. The party also called for “stronger duties” on the government to protect data.

“Over-reliance on the database state has proved a woefully poor substitute for human judgment and care on the frontline of public service delivery,” he added. “The state has encroached on the privacy of the innocent citizen, but delivered precious little in return.”

In practice, this would lead the party – if elected – to take 11 steps.

Database state

The first few pertain to databases. The Tories would scrap the National Identity Register and the ContactPoint database. The former is the database backing up the controversial ID card scheme, while the latter contains records of all children in the UK. Both databases have been declared illegal in a report by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

The Tories would also set out how long DNA should be retained on the National DNA Database, and no longer permanently hold innocent people’s details.

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