Theresa May’s right – we need to rethink stop and search

Emma Carr is Deputy Director of Big Brother Watch. Follow Emma on Twitter.

Over the last few decades a worrying trend has emerged in Parliament: knee-jerk reactions to a problem, followed by ill thought-out legislation which is open to abuse and overzealous use by public officials.

Big Brother Watch has long warned against the risk of police powers being used far beyond how Parliament intended, and in situations where there is no real cause for suspicion. Stop and search powers have been one of the starkest examples of how things can get out of control.

Under the last Government, stop and search spiralled out of control, with hundreds of thousands of innocent people stopped and searched without any good reason. The Home Secretary should be applauded for reining in the use of these powers to both respect people’s liberties and ensure the police focus their resources on where there is suspicion of wrongdoing.

Emma Carr: It's time to ditch the Snoopers' Charter

Emma Carr is Deputy Director of Big Brother Watch.  Follow Emma on Twitter.

Under the Coalition we have seen some of the most tech-friendly policies in decades. However, the Communications Data Bill poses a substantial threat to the internet and subsequently, Britain’s social and economic future. With concerns about its economic effect on business, warnings from within Number 10, a haphazard consultation process and failures to scrutinise existing powers, it’s time for this bill to be ditched - as a group of leading academic experts urged yesterday.

The basic arguments behind the bill are now beginning to collapse. We were told it was essential to catch criminals using internet telephone services; it then emerged that British police currently receive more data from Skype than any other country in the world. More than the U.S, more than double Germany. This mirrors what we already knew about Google and Twitter – companies do cooperate with the police. And of course, since when have laws from Britain applied to companies based in the U.S?

Whether or not it is the same bill that Jacqui Smith proposed in 2008 (when she ruled out a central database), the wider impact could be catastrophic. The Coalition for a Digital Economy warned that it would make Britain a much less attractive place to start and grow a business, for fear of a Whitehall official one day arriving and saying you had to change the way your business works to provide the data the Home Office wants.

As well as a badly managed consultation process, there has been little in-depth scrutiny of existing legislation and powers. Research published by Big Brother Watch has shown how communications data is used across police forces, and makes clear that there are significant inconsistencies in the way that communications data is being treated. Furthermore, it emphasises how it is almost impossible to form a measured view of how the current system is operating, given the huge discrepancies in the way forces are recording how they use Communications Data.