Let’s leave the snooper’s charter on the shelf where it belongs

All it took for two young men to mount last week’s vile attack against Drummer Lee Rigby was a car and some knives. In trying to stop similar atrocities in future, there needs to be a joined-up approach between effective security measures and the long-term prevention of jihadist extremism.

Nevertheless, under the grisly aegis of not letting a good crisis go to waste, snake-oil salesmen across government are peddling the anodyne-sounding Data Communications Bill as a catch-all remedy.

Last November a joint parliamentary committee said the proposed bill – which has been vetoed in Cabinet by the Liberal Democrats – would grant ‘sweeping powers to issue secret notices to communications service providers (CSPs) requiring them to retain and disclose potentially limitless categories of data.’

This includes information on who we call, text, tweet, send instant messages to and which websites we look at. It even covers gaming. Police would only need a warrant to access the content of the communication, not the communications itself, giving them enormous new discretionary powers.

The bill is wrong in principle because it doesn’t just pinpoint a few terrorist suspects, it sweeps-up the data of the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens too, with all the inherent risks of our information being lost, stolen or abused in some way.

Easy to see why this invasive measure has been dubbed a “snooper’s charter”.

The not-so-subtle campaign now underway to promote the bill is led by Home Secretary Theresa May, who says it is “essential” in combatting terrorism.

Yet the bill is wrong in practice too. The Security Service, MI5 has taken the unusual step of letting it be known, via this morning’s Independent newspaper, that this is a “cheap argument” and last week’s atrocity would not have been prevented by the powers in this bill.

These arguments have not stopped the bill’s supporters. Over the weekend, former Labour Home Secretary John Reid and former security minister Alan West joined calls for the legislation to be passed, echoing London Mayor Boris Johnson who is also pushing for it. Labour’s frontbench is said to be cool on the idea, although it might be persuadable if stronger safeguards are included.

All too often in the past, defending civil liberties has been seen by some in the party as an abstract concept best kept for the seminar room, especially when the nation’s security is under the spotlight.

This often cavalier disregard for civil liberties led the last Labour government to submit proposals that would have allowed the police to arrest, interrogate and incarcerate a member of the public for three-months without charge, in its response to the 7/7 suicide bomb attacks in 2005.

Back then, the excuse for 90-day detention was that encrypted computer files taken from terrorist suspects’ hard drives took time to decipher. The answer should have simply been, ‘well get better computer technicians then’. There is usually another solution, but Whitehall does like its security crackdowns.

The response that says “something must be done” after a crisis is not a green light for “anything should be done”. Framing a security response in the shadow of an atrocity delivers bad policy.

The unhappy precedent of the Prevention of Terrorism Act tells us that. It was rushed through parliament following the IRA’s Birmingham pub bombing in 1974 in which 21 people were killed. The Labour Home Secretary at the time, Roy Jenkins, actually described the provisions of the act as “draconian” and they were later cited in miscarriages of justice.

For Labour grandees like Lords Reid and West to join with Tories to try and bounce the Lib Dems into accepting the invasive, illiberal Data Communications Bill shows how cheaply we sometimes value the protection of our individual liberties.

More welcome advice has come from former communities’ secretary Hazel Blears. She is calling for the restoration of the ‘Prevent’ programme across government which sought to identify the grievances – real and imagined – of those susceptible to being groomed for terror. Not just tough on terrorism but tough on the cause of terrorism, if you will.

Let’s respond to last week’s horror by learning the right lessons and reject Whitehall’s more undemocratic impulses.