Value your privacy? Object to mass surveillance and the unprecedented collection of the UK population’s data? Intimate personal data such as your bank account details, your home’s details, your kids’ personal information? And that’s only the tip of the information iceberg this Government is trying so illegally to rush through to become…wait for it…law! PLEASE write to your MP NOW! This minute! Not tomorrow! Tomorrow is when the Second Reading of this threat to our democracy gets read. Tomorrow will be too late to save democracy! Copy and paste the below template letter to your MP NOW, and add your details marked in red.
Template letter to your MP:
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Mr/Ms (add your MP’s name here – find out who your MP is),
As you are aware, the Investigatory Powers Bill will receive its Second Reading in the House of Commons tomorrow, on Tuesday 15 March 2016.
I am asking you as a member of your constituency, (add your constituency here), to reject this Bill.
Whilst I support a new legal surveillance framework, it must be focused, targeted, proportionate and necessary. I am not in support of the current Bill that is being rushed and fails to take into account the far reaching implications to the nation’s most basic of human rights, that of having a right to a private life.
Indeed, Article 8 Right to a Private and Family Life of the Human Rights Act 1998 clearly sets out that the state is to refrain from interfering with the right itself.
Among many issues, the issue of everyone having the right to have his/her private and confidential information, particularly the storing and sharing of such information, being respected; everyone has the right not to be subject to unlawful state surveillance; the right to respect for privacy when one has a reasonable expectation of privacy; and the right to control the dissemination of information about one’s private life.
For your ease, Article 8 reads:
Article 8 Right to respect for private and family life
1) Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2) There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
The Bill fails to address this Article and instead, is being hastily rushed through at the very real cost to the nation’s privacy, security and that what we hold dear – democracy.
Hastily making the Bill legal does not mean this Government’s robbery of our most basic of civil liberties is okay. Contrary, it is a blatant disrespect of both the Human Rights Act 1998 and each and every individual the Act protects.
Whilst I appreciate there are people who have leanings towards committing serious crime, the vast majority of the population do not. I strongly object to the fact that this Government is riding roughshod over my basic human right to have a private life by its proposed mass surveillance of the nation. Employing such a law will neither secure the nation’s security nor prevent any attempts to destabilize it in the future. Contrary, such a law will enable possible mass acts of personal violation upon innocent people of the UK.
The costs alone of such a proposed mass surveillance of the nation must render the Bill void – especially in such a period of austerity.
Surely, the most cost effective method and accountability for this Government is to be specific and targeted in its pursuit of preventing serious crime? Not this scatter-gun approach that will only incur immense costs to implement and sustain but will also, importantly, fail to respect the individual’s right to a private life whilst failing to strengthen the security of the nation.
Additionally, to make mandatory the collection of individuals data poses the very real threat of having unscrupulous hackers hack into such data collection companies, enabling illegal access to masses of the UK population’s personal and sensitive data, rendering it readily available for illegal use and possible sale on the Dark Net.
The Government is also putting companies such as BT, Apple, Google and et al under the excessive pressures of collection, storage, management and disposal of this personal and sensitive data. And when one of these companies are hacked, vast swathes of the mass populous data will be readily available resulting in millions of innocent people having their lives negatively impacted.
Many would have their lives impacted in such dire ways as having:
– bank accounts hacked,
– monies stolen,
– homes burgled,
– homes’ ownership re-allocated and stolen,
– locations known,
– possible muggings, assaults, kidnapping and people trafficking,
– identities stolen,
– intimate personal details laid open for use and purchase by anyone intent on making millions, if not trillions of pounds from such an act.
What then?
Will this Government hold it’s hands up and admit it failed in this Bill?
No.
It will hold the individual companies accountable for not managing the nation’s data in a professional and safe manner. The data collection companies cannot win.
The Government, however, will have access to the most intimate details of our lives.
Not only this, but the UK is the only country in the world where it’s Government is attempting to introduce such a law.
If this Bill is passed, our lives will never, ever by ours.
In writing this, I am struck by a quote from George Orwell’s book “1984”:
‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever”.
How apt with this Government so completely disrespecting our basic right to have a private life.
I ask you to reject this Bill and allow the UK its freedom from the tyranny of mass surveillance.
I ask you to vote against this Bill and allow the nation its continued democracy. For if you vote for this Bill is a vote against continuing democracy. A vote against securing security. And a vote against our human right of privacy.
We, as a nation, have always and will always, value our right to a democracy.
I attach Liberty’s Summary of the Investigatory Powers Bill for the Second Reading (download it direct from Liberty’s website , click on Surveillance, first link: download and attach to your email, please and delete this link in your letter) in the House of Commons document for you.
Yours sincerely,
Add your name here
Correspondence Address: Add yours here
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(Template letter ends here)
Now email your letter to your MP TODAY! Help secure the UK’s continuing democracy for not only this generation but future generations to live.
Thank you for reading this and thank you for emailing your MP today.
Here’s to the continuance of democracy, security and privacy.
Dawn
dawntaylorx 