Someone else might be listening

The dangers of a bad process are especially high because, as just one part of a recent torrent of anti-terrorism legislation, it is easy for bad legislation such as this to slip by unnoticed and unamended.

Protecting national security and investigating serious crime are important goals. However, we must be careful that in developing a legal response we do not lose sight of the rights and freedoms we are trying to protect. We should ensure that, where the government is to gain intrusive new powers over our privacy, these powers are balanced and go no further than is needed.

This Bill for surveillance powers over emails and SMSs goes too far. It contains more power than is needed over too broad a range of innocent communications and contains too few safeguards.

The government should go back to the drawing board to come up with a better proposal.