'Big brother' Britain extends its snooping powers

10.00am

LONDON - Britain is poised to increase dramatically the range of authorities who can pry into people's private lives to the fury of civil liberties groups who say a "Big Brother" mentality is taking hold.

Under a law passed two years ago, information about private telephone calls and e-mails can be demanded by the police, tax authorities and security services for reasons such as national security or serious crime prevention.

But according to reports, admitted by government officials on Tuesday, that right will be extended to several other government departments, every local council in the country and even health service and food safety bodies.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said the new powers, to be enshrined in law next week, will be useable only under carefully monitored circumstances.

"These powers are not taken lightly," he said, stressing the safeguards involved.

He said information could only be sought on grounds of national security, crime prevention, Britain's economic wellbeing, public safety or public health, tax or duty matters, to prevent death or any damage to a person's health.

But pressure groups were furious at the long arm of the law being allowed to stretch further.

"I am appalled at this huge increase in the scope of government snooping," Ian Brown, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research told the Guardian newspaper.

"Two years ago, we were deeply concerned that these powers were to be given to the police without any judicial oversight. Now they are handing them out to a practically endless queue of bureaucrats in Whitehall and town halls."

The government argues that monitoring e-mail and the internet is vital to catch modern, hi-tech criminals.

Campaign groups such as Liberty say the British state is becoming ever-more intrusive and fear the climate since the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States will accelerate that process.

Britain is estimated to have more than two million closed-circuit television cameras scanning streets and public places, far more than anywhere else in Europe.

Blair's spokesman said that if the technology -- and legal power for authorities to use it -- had been available in the 1970s, serial killers such as the Yorkshire Ripper could have been caught much earlier.

The Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, was convicted in 1981 of the murder of 13 women over a number of years.

Sutcliffe, who preyed on lone women some of them prostitutes in a five-year reign of terror, cropped up on paper-based police records a number of times, years before he was caught.

- REUTERS

nzherald.co.nz/privacy

Related links