A New Task Force on Privacy

Following an announcement at the Liberal Democrat conference in 2008, in early 2009 the Liberal Democrats announced that they were setting up a commission to look at the way organisations deal with our personal data.

The Commission on Privacy is supported by some well established names, including shadow leader of the house David Heath MP, Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, and Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty.

Why Was the Commission Set Up?

When the task force was announced, David Heath said that he believed the government had been drifting from one IT related data crisis to another, and that at the same time they were assembling ever more information about the citizens of the UK. He said that the commission had been organised to attempt to take stock of what is happening to our privacy and personal information, protect our rights to personal privacy.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg added that he felt that under the current government, the UK was suffering from “ the most sustained assault on personal privacy in history” and complained that other political parties were refusing to take any action to help stop what he saw as government snooping. He added:

“When it’s not thinking up new ways of snooping on the public, the Government has shown breathtaking carelessness with the data that has been entrusted to it.”

Who Are the Commissions Members?

The Commission’s members were announced in January 2009 and they are:

• Chair - David Heath MP (Chair) - Liberal Democrat Shadow Leader of the House
• Shami Chakrabarti - Director of Liberty
• Baroness Sue Miller - Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson for the House of Lords
• Simon Davies - Privacy International
• Henry Porter - Journalist
• Professor. Ross Anderson - Professor of Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge
• Richard Rampton QC - Barrister at law
• Richard Allan - Former MP; now Head of Government Affairs, Cisco Systems

The Commission’s Concerns In January 2009, the Information Commissioner ruled that the Home Office had breached data protection laws when it allowed a memory stick containing personal information relating to thousands of prisoners to be stored in an open drawer and then lost.

This was just one reason that the Commission was needed, according to Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne. He didn’t think that the measures that the ICO had insisted on, namely an undertaking to be more careful, had gone far enough, and said:

"A formal undertaking to improve procedures is all very well, but disregard for our personal data continues to worsen.

"It only demonstrates that going ahead with the proposed ID card scheme will pose a real threat to the security of our personal data.

An Enforcement Notice for Breaching Privacy Regulations

Ironically, considering their crusade against misuse of personal information, The Liberal Democrats were given an enforcement notice in 2008 after the party was found guilty of breaching strict privacy regulations. The Lib-Dems called 250,000 people in September 2008 and treated them to a pre-recorded message from leader Nick Clegg.

The Information Commissioner has banned them from using this canvassing technique again, after it received 50 complaints from people who had been on the receiving end of the calls, which were made to voters in 50 marginal constituencies.