In my opinion a balance has to be struck between the rights of ordinary people to be able to communicate without ‘big brother’ watching them and also the need for vigilance in tracking internet usage involved in terrorism or potential terrorist activities and also criminality and money laundering.
As you know proposals were floated towards the end of the last Government for greater surveillance of various forms of internet traffic but I was not convinced then, neither am I now, that there needs to be blanket legislation brought in. It is much better, in my opinion, if the security services seek the permission of the Home Secretary if they feel there is a need to monitor the internet traffic of certain individuals as is the case now when permission has to be sought from the Home Secretary for phones to be tapped.
Neither I nor the Leadership of the Labour Party have any control over what the Coalition Government intend to bring forward in the forthcoming Queens Speech but if there are proposals to greatly widen the scope of the existing legislation then I will almost certainly be opposing them and I very much hope that other colleagues in the Labour Party, including the leadership of the Parliamentary Party, also oppose them.
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