Nick Pickles: David Miranda's arrest shows why our anti-terror laws need a comprehensive overhaul

Nick Pickles is Director of the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, and a music photographer whose work can be viewed here. Follow Nick on Twitter.

If a British journalist was working to expose Government corruption in a foreign country and their partner was detained – under anti-terror laws or not – then I expect the British Government’s response would not be the muted silence we have heard this morning.

Instead, it is our own authorities who detained and questioned David Miranda, partner of The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, under anti-terror laws. This was not a random stop and search. Only 0.06 per cent of all people detained under Schdeule Seven are detained for more than six hours. Miranda was held right up to the maximum nine hours. According to the Government, "fewer than three people in every 10,000 are examined as they pass through UK borders".

From Greenwald’s article today, we also have an idea of what was discussed while Miranda was detained (without any legal or consular representation – you’re not entitled to either under Schedule 7). Miranda was not questioned about his involvement in terrorism, or how he posed a threat to the UK. He was asked about the NSA stories his partner had been writing and what information was contained on the various electronic devices he was carrying.

Whether you agree with Edward Snowden’s motives or Greenwald’s journalism or not, I think we can all agree that this is a case of anti-terror laws being used in a situation where there is quite clearly no suggestion anyone involved is a terrorist.

Nick Pickles: Local councils should stop putting local papers out of business

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, and was the Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford in 2010. Follow Nick on Twitter.

As you may have read on the internet, these are tough times for print journalists, not least local papers.  However, a vibrant local press is an essential part of our democracy. With localism comes greater power for councils, but equally it reaffirms the importance for local accountability and scrutiny.

I am not calling for a subsidy, or a new state-backed lending scheme for newspapers. But I do think that it’s time that the state, in the form of local authorities, stop using taxpayers money to produce their own rival papers, undercutting genuine reporting of local issues with town hall propaganda. In my own patch, the pages of the Wakefield Citizen somehow managed to miss a major childcare scandal, the fact the leader of Wakefield Council had a chauffeur-driven Audi A8, and that a multi-million pound water feature on a busy junction might not be a brilliant use of public money.  All is brilliant in Wakefield, nothing to worry about. Having lived there for most of my life, it would be generous to describe this as a rosy view.

Particularly for labour intensive and often quite dry beats like politics and court reporting, editors face very real challenges about cost-cutting and we are all worse off if local newspapers decide it is simply no longer viable to continue publishing. At a time when the local press is one of the most trusted sources of news, we need to protect our local press – and not allow councils to hijack this important medium.

Rightly, Eric Pickles has recognised that council produced newspapers (in the broadest possible sense of the word) are directly competing with local papers. A substantive local paper will never be able to sustain itself as a freesheet, yet councils are able to hand deliver thousands of copies of their own rag, free of the burden of needing to report actual news.

Nick Pickles: Voters would laugh the sham of a mandate referendum out of court

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, and was the Conservative Parliamentaruy candidate for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford in 2010. Follow Nick on Twitter.

The cries outside my window are impossible to ignore.

“What do we want?”

“A pre-renegotiation mandate referendum to give the Government the public’s support for a different relationship with the EU.”

“When do we want it?”

“At an appropriate time decided by Parliament, the Electoral Reform Society and Nick Clegg, but really quite soon, please.”

Actually, I am mistaken. It was a bloke shouting something at a pigeon. In literally no street - anywhere - is that the cry.

The one clear lesson from UKIP’s surge in the local elections is that more than ever before, the public are increasingly unwilling to listen to politicians. The ‘you’re all the same’ tag is nothing new, but Coalition, like Blairism before it, has certainly added fuel to the fire.  In the north and urban areas, where conservatism faces particularly tough challenges, this scepticism is even more acute.

Nick Pickles: Bloggers and local news websites should not be part of the Leveson stitch-up

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter.

As the bell tolls for press freedom, the realisation that a whole host of tiny websites, including Big Brother Watch, would be covered by the provisions of the new press regulator is dawning on Westminster.

On Monday, the Lords will vote on the legislation “underpinning” the Royal Charter on press-self regulation. They will determine who is to be a ‘relevant publisher’ and at present risks catching broadly any site that is has more than one author, carries news or information about current affairs, or gossip about celebrities, and has some kind of editorial control.

We are urgently trying to garner support for an amendment to exclude small organisations from the provisions of what is already becoming an unwieldy and unpredictable piece of legislative horse trading. We have until 3pm today for it to be tabled in the Lords.

Blogs were never meant to be included in the scope of the proposals and it is only by loose drafting that they have been caught up.

The Government should take the initiative rather than waiting for a Lords amendment and ensure that small organisations, local micro-newspapers and embryonic blogger sites are not cast into the same chaos as the large newspapers will imminently face. Those of us who cannot afford lawyers may decide we cannot afford to take our chances.

Nick Pickles: European justice can be strengthened by a Home Affairs opt-out

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter.

If Britain opts-out of the EU Home Affairs and Justice arena, it will not be the end of cross-border justice. It will be a wake-up call that substantial threats to the liberties of British people cannot be ignored and urgent reform is essential.

Today sees the launch of a campaign group, Justice Across Borders, backed by former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy and former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke. They claim that such a move would be the end of cross-border co-operation and to quote one director of the campaign, make it harder to get justice.

Quite simply this is nonsense.

Exercising an opt-out presents present the perfect opportunity to reform flaws in the system. It also gives us the opportunity to assess how we want to integrate our criminal justice system with a continental system that often works very differently to our own.

Nick Pickles: A total re-write of the Communications Data Bill is all that Parliament can contemplate

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter.

As the dust settles on two severely critical reports on the draft Communications Data Bill, two things are clear – the internet is an essential part of Britain’s social and economic future, and the Home Office’s handling of the bill has been deeply damaging.

Rushed tweaking and more sham consultations are not the way forward. If legislation is needed it must be proportionate, properly evidence based and technically certain, particularly on the impact upon British businesses. The consideration of how logging every website visit, email and social media message impinges upon privacy must be far more thorough, with the public fully consulted.

Indeed, the Financial Times dedicated its leader on Wednesday to a call for the bill to be scrapped and re-written, following Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ warning the draft Bill would be a disaster for Tech City and businesses.

The Joint Committee, chaired by the Conservative former Home Office Minister peer Lord Blencathra, made itself clear – not only was the bill too sweeping, based upon a ‘fanciful and misleading’ cost benefit analysis, but the process that created it was fundamentally flawed. The report has an entire section dedicated to the Home Office’s failure to consult, while the Intelligence and Security Committee raised concerns about the background information accompanying the bill and the insufficient consultation. 

Nick Pickles: A pro-business party of law and order should reject statutory regulation of the press

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter.

Whatever happened to the Conservative Party being the party of ensuring crimes are properly punished and that regulation was kept to a minimum? The Leveson enquiry risks making a mockery of these principles.

There is a simple truth being overlooked on an almost daily basis in the run up to the publication of Lord Leveson’s report (now due, we learn, on November 27) that Big Brother Watch made clear in its evidence to the inquiry: everything that led to the Leveson inquiry was already illegal.

Why were these crimes not properly pursued by the police? Why were those responsible not brought to justice? Is the Information Commissioner a law enforcement body or a hands-off regulator? Lord Leveson is likely to answer none of those questions.  Nor will statutory regulation of the press solve any of these issues.

Indeed it does now seem inevitable he will propose putting the British press under a statutory regulator. The absurdity of doing this in an internet-age aside, the gravity of such a move cannot be understated.

Nick Pickles: There are over 100,000 CCTV cameras in secondary schools - something has to change

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter.

The use of surveillance cameras in schools is a particularly sensitive part of the CCTV debate. From concerns about who is viewing the images to the broader question of acclimatising children to an environment where surveillance is the norm, it is not a topic to be taken lightly.

Today’s news that there are more than 100,000 CCTV cameras in secondary schools and academies highlights the extent of surveillance schoolchildren are now under.

The result of more than 2,000 Freedom of Information Act responses, Big Brother Watch’s latest report — Class of 1984 — raises a serious question about how the privacy of school children is being protected.

With some schools seeing a ratio of one camera for every five pupils, and with more than two hundred schools using CCTV in bathrooms and changing rooms, with more cameras inside school buildings than outside, the picture across the country will undoubtedly shock and surprise many. To put it into context, our research earlier this year found there are currently at least 51,600 CCTV cameras controlled by 428 local authorities.

Nick Pickles: The Prime Minister has the right policy on internet safety - and should stick with it

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter

Today Big Brother Watch, along with civil society groups like the Open Rights Group, Index on Censorship and Consumer Focus, has signed a joint letter to the Prime Minister and called for him to resist calls for Government to change the regulation of internet content.

We’ve written the letter in response to a petition that calls for the Government to install a ‘default block’ for some content (nobody has defined what this would be) and abandon its current policy of giving parents a clear choice about parental controls.

This position is based on two comprehensive studies, one undertaken for the last Government by Professor Tanya Byron and one published in 2011, by Reg Bailey of the Mothers Union.

Both reviews concluded that parents are the best people to decide how to control their children’s internet use, and that by using a ‘default block’ you undermine the dialogue between parents and their children, while also lulling some parents into a false sense of security.

Nick Pickles: It's time to take the scythe to the Grim RIPA

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter

When the Coalition took office, limiting the ability of local authorities to use surveillance powers was rightly identified as a key issue. The Protection of Freedoms Act means councils will require a magistrate’s warrant before they can use snooping powers, but is this the only action that is required?

The legacy of wide-ranging legislation is often most vividly defined by the unintended consequences produced. Few laws have had such broad repercussions as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, or 'the Grim RIPA’ as it’s become known.

Nick Pickles: Under the cover of David Cameron's Leveson evidence today, the Government slips out its plans to log every website visit you make

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter.

Today the Home Office will finally announce its plans to monitor the internet use of every British citizen.

Let’s be clear. Right now – without any new powers – the police and security services can read your emails, tap your phone, plant hidden cameras and microphones in your house and intercept your internet use. All of which can be done without any approval of a judge.

Aside from the blatant spin of announcing unprecedented spying powers during the Prime Minister’s testimony to the Leveson enquiry, the Home Office is trying to hide an unprecedented level of surveillance of the entire population behind a miniscule concession of removing the ability to access Communications Data from local councils.

Nick Pickles: Today's letter from May and Clarke offers no details or justification for new surveillance and closed-court powers

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Here he responds to Theresa May and Ken Clarke's letter to MPs regarding new surveillance powers and closed-door courts. Follow Nick on Twitter.

Four days after the Sunday Times broke news of Government plans to increase the surveillance directed at every person in the country, and following a scathing report from a Parliamentary Committee on their plans for extending closed-door court processes, the Home Secretary and Justice Secretary have written to MPs to address their concerns. Let me be clear – I absolutely support the Prime Minister in his belief that the primary role of Government is to protect its citizens. I also share his belief in ensuring proper legal safeguards on powers given to the state.

The reason I have opposed both the Communications Capability Programme and the Justice and Security Green paper is that I believe they will not make the public safer, yet will trample over legal rights enshrined in law since the days of Magna Carta. It is not for innocent people to justify why the state should not spy on them. It’s worth noting that most of the PR-disaster on both these policies has been self-inflicted. The reason there has been so much press uncertainty is that so little detail has been offered by the Home Office on the communications scheme. MPs in Parliament have been stonewalled for months with a line of ‘we will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows’, and this continues to be the line given. Ministers haven’t even been able to say if a bill will be in the Queen’s speech, nor offered any attempt to define the ‘communications data’ they are seeking to log.

It took nearly 48 hours for any Minister to appear to defend the policy, and in doing so offered no substantive detail on what is being proposed. Equally, the Joint Committee on Human Rights noted in its report on Ken Clarke’s Justice and Security Green paper that the only people they could find in support of the policy were ministers. The former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, was among many legal and terrorism experts questioning the plans.

Let me also ask a simple question – if this is so essential, why has it not been put in place before the Olympics? If Parliamentary time was the issue, perhaps we should have waited with the Health and Social Care Bill and fixed this problem first?

Nick Pickles: Ministers cannot be allowed to decide what evidence is heard in court

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. Follow Nick on Twitter.

This afternoon, Ken Clarke and James Brokenshire go before the Joint Committee on Human Rights to try and explain why after 800 years it is time to ditch Magna Carta and put politicians in charge of what evidence goes before the courts.

The Justice and Security Green paper would mean not only would it be in a Minister’s gift to decree what evidence should be kept secret, without any judicial approval, but this would apply in any civil case brought against the Government.

  It’s a long way from "sunlight is the best disinfectant", and is arguably an unprecedented attack on the British legal system. As Lord MacDonald QC told the Today programme yesterday, the proposals represent a broad rebalancing of civil justice system against fundamental principles of open justice.

Nick Pickles: Conservatives have yet to plant a flag in the north and appeal to Labour's disillusioned heartlands

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch and was the Conservative candidate against Yvette Cooper in 2010, securing a 12.5% swing in Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford. Follow Nick on Twitter.

I’ve been working in the music industry for the best part of a decade and the animosity that remains towards our party is not dissimilar to the reaction I faced when I was our candidate in Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford. I’d spent my whole life there and yet overnight some people I’d played football with as a teenager or worked with in local pubs simply stopped talking to me.

We assume at our peril this is a superficial problem, a relic of a bygone political age. Noel Gallagher’s interview in the Mail on Sunday has been lauded by some as ‘proof’ that Lady Thatcher’s detractors in the North are misguided. Yet it poses a far more complicated question that should remind us why we are a long way from being a viable electoral force in the North, in Scotland and in many urban areas across the country. When those who agree with us would still rather vote for a pirate than vote Conservative, what are we doing to change this?

I grew up in an environment where the main argument about money was that the state took too much.  Yes, most Yorkshire folk will generally complain about the price of everything, but the price of Government was an unavoidable part of the political debate.

How could people provide for their families when the state took more and more of your wage? The impetus of low taxes was that if you put the effort in, you would be rewarded.  The state wouldn’t get in the way, and you could get on. We won’t force you to work, but don’t complain that those who graft are rewarded more than you.

Nick Pickles: Why is the Government opposing amendments in the House of Lords which would seek to protect homeowners?

Nick Pickles is Director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch. 

Conservatives have led the debate to give people the protection to defend their property and in opposition led the calls to reduce the number of officials who had the right to enter your home without a warrant.

So why is the Home Office opposing amendments in the House of Lords which would seek to protect homeowners and implement what was Conservative party policy?

Cast your mind back a year and the Conservative Party’s Quality of Life Manifesto had this to say on the issue of non-police officials having the power to enter your home without a warrant:

“A Conservative government will cut back the intrusive powers of entry into homes. Public bodies (other than the police and emergency services) will require a magistrates’ warrant, and approval for such a warrant will be restricted to tackling serious criminal offences or protecting public safety. Labour plans to give bailiffs powers of forced entry into homes to collect civil debts will be revoked.”