Chakrabati and Brooke say investigatory powers bill gives the state ‘a blank cheque’ to spy on citizens and threatens investigative journalism

Journalists should challenge the surveillance powers contained in the government’s draft investigatory powers legislation, argued two speakers at a panel debate on Monday.

Shami Chakrabati, the director of Liberty, and Heather Brooke, the journalist who exposed the MPs’ expenses scandal, believe the bill - drawn up largely to combat terrorism - will give the state “a blank cheque” to spy on citizens and also presents a very real threat to investigative journalism.

Chakrabati and Brooke were taking part in an event, Press freedom in a surveillance state, organised by the London Press Club and the Society of Editors at London’s Stationers’ Hall.



According to Chakrabati - once dubbed by the Sun as “the most dangerous woman in Britain” - if the investigatory powers bill is enacted it will “turn all of us into suspects.”

She called for “an appropriate balance between liberty and security. But since 9/11 to be somebody even calling for a more proportionate approach is to be a traitor.”

She praised Edward Snowden for his revelations, saying: “We wouldn’t be capable of having this debate but for his intervention.”

Challenged on the need for surveillance as protection from terrorism, she said that while the police always had the power search homes and tap phones, what we face “without public debate or knowledge or consent or with parliamentary involvement, let alone the involvement of the judiciary” is “blanket surveillance.”

And this surveillance is not about the targeting of those who have aroused suspicion “but something which would turn all of us into suspects.” She implored journalists to oppose it.

She said: “If everyone is suspect and all communications are to be captured and retained, looked at or not, how do you protect journalists’ sources, how do you protect parliamentarians, how do you medical confidentiality or legal confidentiality? You can’t.”

Brooke also warned against a “no privacy for us, no scrutiny of them” attitude, especially in view of the government’s current attempts to curtail freedom of information requests.

Now a professor at City University London, she served on the Independent Surveillance Review Panel alongside the former MI6 chief, John Scarlett (who argued in the Times on Monday that our way of life depends “more than ever” on “effective intelligence work”).

Brooke said: “It’s not that if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide. But if you are doing certain types of journalism, by definition you are pissing off powerful people – people with money and power – and you might be considered subversive to the state.



“For example, the stuff that’s been exposed about the police (infiltrating pressure groups) you are challenging the police, they don’t like it so, under their Ripa powers, they have made life difficult for journalists. And that’s the problem.

“When you give to the state this gigantic storehouse of all of your internet and telecommunications data, the minute you come on their radar as a person of interest, they have a litmus test maybe not to arrest you, but maybe to blackmail you, to put pressure on you, to do things than may stop you doing certain stories and may curtail your investigation.”

Fellow panellist Martin Bentham, the London Evening Standard’s home affairs editor, was less pessimistic. He believe Chakrabati and Brooke had “valid arguments... about the need for proper safeguards and proper monitoring” but did not “accept we are going to be living in some sort of East German state with everybody under surveillance.”



What had emerged post-Snowden, he said, was the extent of activities by the security services that even the regulators were unaware of, and in particular how journalists sources could be compromised.

“The question now is whether the new investigatory powers proposals will provide proper safeguards, and I am relatively optimistic that with judicial oversight, for example, on warrants on journalists, we will achieve something.”

*As chair of the debate, I did not take notes, so this report - published on the London Press Club website - comes courtesy of Paul Charman, for which I am grateful.

