Private firm to run communications super database
Plans for a private company to run a super database containing the identities and location of every person in Britain are being considered by the Government.
The Home Office claims the new database, which can track phone calls and emails, is necessary in an advancing digital world to allow it to tackle terrorism and serious crime.
But Sir Ken MacDonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, said the multibillion pound behemoth would prove a "hellhouse" of personal private information that would inevitably leak into the public domain regardless of the stringent safeguards promised by Government.
His warning follows a series of major leaks of personal information in the past year, including the loss of 25 million child benefit records by the HM Revenue and Customs.
At present, Internet Service Providers and telephone companies can provide police with the lion's share of information about the whereabouts and identities of suspects from their communications.
Under the new system, which will be outlined in the new year in a consultation paper on the interception modernisation programme, one or a number of organisations would proactively collect all communications data, including from broadband phone calls and chatrooms, instead of such information being retrieved at the behest of police or intelligence agencies.
The potential cost of such a database has been estimated to reach £12bn, but the consultation paper includes an option to put it out to private tender in a bid to cut costs.
The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who postponed legislation to set up the database in October, has been at pains to emphasise that the content of communications will not be disclosed.
She has also pointed out that such communications data has been used as important evidence in 95 per cent of serious crime cases and almost all security service investigations since 2004, including the Soham murders and the 21/7 bombings.
"We have been very clear that there are no plans for a database containing any content of emails, texts of conversations," a Home Office spokesman said.
But Sir Ken, who worked extensively with intelligence and law enforcement agencies before leaving the DPP in October, said that no matter what safeguards ministers proposed, the scheme would be a disaster.
"Authorisations for access might be written into statute. The most senior ministers and officials might be designated as scrutineers. But none of this means anything," he said.
"All history tells us that reassurances like these are worthless in the long run. In the first security crisis the locks would loosen."
Sir Ken, who has previously warned that the Government is in danger of "breaking the back of freedom" through its creation of a security state, added:
"The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a
paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile.
"This database would be an unimaginable hellhouse of personal private information. It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate
and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls."
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