Lords: Snoopers’ Charter threatens journalists

The House of Lords heard that the bill, which seeks to put the state’s surveillance powers on a statutory footing, needs safeguards for journalists.

At the committee stage on Monday, peers were told that the bill provides for the state to access journalists’ phones to recover data or remotely activate the microphone.

They were also told that safeguards against illegal interception of such data were too weak to preserve the anonymity of journalistic sources, which can be identified via security service and police access to communications data such as internet connection records.

Lord Colville moved a cross-party amendment calling for increased protections in the legislation for journalistic sources, among them a right for media organisation to be told of a request for a warrant targeting them before it receives judicial approval.

He said: “I am particularly keen for the power for targeted equipment interference to be covered by a safeguard for sources. This could be material owned by the journalist or the source who is giving the information.

“Targeted equipment interference includes the ability to use a mobile phone’s microphone as a bug. It could also include looking at a journalist’s electronic notebook and at footage shot in the course of a story, which, as a broadcast journalist, worries me a lot.”

Lord Black of Brentwood said existing protections only covered situations in which data is acquired solely for identifying a source.

He warned: “Crucially, it does not apply to acquisition of data for other purposes. But most importantly, it does not allow for prior notification to the media of an application to use the bill’s powers, and the opportunity for the media to make submissions on whether this will impact on the confidentiality of a source.

“It is all very well having judicial safeguards in place, but they will not work unless the judicial commissioner assessing the application has all the relevant information before applying his or her judgment and making an informed decision. After all, how can a judicial commissioner possibly know what they do not know? That is almost Kafkaesque.

“Without input from the media – and I recognise that there must be exceptions to this where a journalist or media organisation is under suspicion – they could not possibly, for instance, know how the use of surveillance could actually place the life of a source, or indeed of a journalist, in danger and other such considerations.”

Earl Howe, for the government, said the bill had already been strengthened to protect journalistic sources with the inclusion of a public interest test that must be satisfied before police and judicial commissioners can obtain and grant warrants.