These latest proposals from the European Commission involve storing detailed data relating to all passengers flying in and out of Europe. Records will be kept for five years. As might be expected, this has prompted a dismayed response from civil liberties groups who claim that this kind of blanket collection of personal data is an infringement of privacy.
The European commission plan to be published on Wednesday would require 42 separate pieces of information on every passenger flying in and out of Europe, including their bank card details, home address and meal preferences such as halal, to be stored on a central database for up to five years for access by the police and security services.
The proposal, seen by the Guardian, describes itself as a “workable compromise” between European interior ministers, who want to see its swift adoption for all flights within Europe as well as flights in and out of Europe, and the European parliament’s civil liberties committee, which blocked the plan nearly two years ago.
Although the killings in Paris are invoked by some of those calling for tougher measures, others have pointed out that the Kouachi brothers had, in the past, been under surveillance, but then fell off the radar when the French security services lost interest in them.
Air travel is also the focus of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, currently at committee stage. Its proposed measures include new powers to seize passports at borders, the ‘managed return’ of those suspected of taking part in terrorist activities and tougher measures requiring airlines to provide passenger data. It will also require many organisations to take proactive measures to prevent the spread of extremism:
A new statutory duty on colleges, schools, prisons, probation providers, police and councils to “prevent individuals being drawn into terrorism”. Ministers will have powers to issue directions, enforceable by a court order, to organisations that repeatedly invite extremist speakers or fail in their duty in other ways.
It’s notoriously tricky to get the balance right between security and liberty. The Neanderthals of Robert Sawyer’s Parallax Trilogy (set on an alternate version of earth) take security so seriously that they record each moment of every individual’s life. Although generally kept confidential, this data can be invoked as evidence if anyone is accused of a crime. They don’t see the loss of privacy as an important factor, whereas in our society any loss of privacy or liberty needs to be scrutinised and justified, and, if it’s a response to a specific threat, implemented only for a fixed period (see the discussion of sunset clauses here).
The bill’s requirement that universities monitor and report on extremism, including non-violent extremism, has been seen as a threat to academic debate. Here’s Lord Macdonald on the problem:
Guidance accompanying the Bill requires a university to do much more than to report any suspected terrorists. Lord Macdonald writes: “It also requires our academics to ban and report to the police what the guidance describes as ‘non-violent extremism’. In future, apparently, it will be forbidden for anyone at a university to argue that democracy is wrong in principle (goodbye Plato), or to give a talk that fails ‘to respect individual liberty’ or to offer ‘mutual respect and tolerance (to) different faiths and beliefs’ (adieu to whole swathes of our Western intellectual history).”
Macdonald is perhaps setting up some straw men here. But, although non-violent extremism is abhorrent, and its impact in universities is a cause for great concern, there’s still room for debate over the best way of tackling the problem – and it’s also important to remember the dangers of misapplication of the law, or of guidelines. When it comes to non-violent extremism – I’d rather see its proponents shunned with disgust, called out Maajid Nawaz-style when they use misleading language to hide their real views and rejected as meaningful allies against violent extremism.
This post by Frances Webber – though it’s not particularly congenial – tackles the real issues at stake here more directly than donnish Macdonald.
Extremism does not appear in the Bill, but it is defined in the Prevent guidance (to be made statutory) as ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’.[4] This might sound unexceptional on its face, although the reference to ‘fundamental British values’ suggests a political agenda. But recently, pro-Palestine posters in a student union office drew unwelcome police attention; and a Manchester teenager was referred to the Prevent programme for attendance at a peaceful protest against the Israeli ambassador.
I’d like to know a bit more about those two cases she cites – but campus free speech is an important issue, as Jonathan Chait explores in this very good recent post.
