The revelation that DPM, Nick Clegg, approved the pointless destruction of a number of the Guardian’s hard drives shows how confused liberals have become over state security. For a life long advocate of civil liberties to endorse intrusion into a newspaper’s officers by MI6 to suppress the news of widespread illegal spying by US and UK agencies, is perhaps Clegg’s most hypocritical stance yet.
But the Conservative Right on either side of the Atlantic, is no less contradictory. For too many years they have adhered religiously to the Bush/Cheney philosophy of fighting terrorism should supersede individual freedoms for the sake of domestic security.
The Edward Snowden revelations make them condemn the man not the outrageous disregard for privacy, by NSA and GCHQ, they have exposed. Placing security over rights to liberty, should only really apply when there is a clear and present danger and not for all time.
Some commentators and politicians have been citing incidents in Yemen and closing embassies as justifications for NSA’s intrusion into US citizens emails and phone calls. But this was all carried out in secret. These voices were not calling for enhanced powers against the public prior to the news that it was going on anyway.
In the UK, we have some safeguards through ECHR but rely heavily on a British ‘sense of fair play’, which is hardly bulletproof. Much depends on the liberal instincts of the Home Secretary and PM who invariably have been scared witless by spooks’ secrets and are pliable to almost any infringement of civil rights in the name of security from terrorism. If that means agreeing to detain, threaten and confiscate the possessions of a journalist’s partner at a UK airport under terrorism legislation, then so be it.
In the US, there is of course the Constitution. And although many Conservatives have got themselves in a blue funk about public protection, the document will always remain the cornerstone of US law. In the UK, all we have, in finding the right balance on freedom and security, is the fallibility of the Home Secretary and political weakness of the Prime Minister.
The Home Sec was wrong to say she has no ability to question the operations of police and security services. It is the Home Office which makes the law so has an interest in how it is applied, in the case of David Miranda, wrongly. The Terrorism Act 2000 applies to “someone involved in committing preparing or instigating acts of terrorism.” It is simply not acceptable, nor legally sound, to broaden its scope to include holding information for publication which could, in the opinion of MI6, potentially be of use to terrorists.
The only people who are not confused are the top rank civil servants and senior spooks who are clear freedom of press and individual liberty is expendable when covering up illegal phone-tapping and intervention on emails. Every party appears to have their own version of patriotism. But the patriotism which upholds civil liberties first appears, since 9/11, to be denigrated by those who fear terrorism more. In fact they would, like the Home Office, advocate that questioning the legal excesses of the police amounts to "condoning" terrorism itself.
