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Mr. Fabricant: Far be it from me to introduce division on the Conservative Benches, but surely that has always been the case under Post Office regulations.
Mr. Bruce: That may well be true, but I do not think that, if it is true, we should perpetuate the system. We should think carefully about exactly what could happen, especially in view of the penalties provided for in the Bill.
In any event, I am not sure that my hon. Friend is right because I have not read all the Acts involved. In general, we assume that, once the Post Office has delivered something, what happens to it is not subject to legislation. Let us assume that my wife decides to open my post. Under the Bill, if I have not authorised her to do so she, too, could end up in prison. What if post arrives for one's children and one thinks, "This looks important: I had
better open it to find out what it is"? If the contents prove embarrassing to the children and they are over the age of consent, they may well have grounds for an action against their parents. Packages are often delivered to tenants who have done a flit, having not paid the bills. What if a landlord opens such a package, either to readdress it or to find out what has been going on?
As for the telecommunications aspect, I am a little worried about the implications of even answering the telephone in the event of a wrong number. I suspect that one could not be caught for doing that, but what if a "wrong number" telephone call was recorded on my answerphone, and was then available to me? I might well be committing an offence.
Under the Bill, an existing private system will become attached to a public system. Nowadays, almost every household contains a telephone extension; certainly, every business has extensions. The change in the law means that anyone listening to anyone else's conversation will be committing an offence punishable by two years in prison. Cordless telephones often pick up other people's conversations; again, someone listening might inadvertently commit an offence. I am not sure that the House wants to introduce such a provision, but the Bill introduces it.
I have received e-mail that was sent to me because someone had forgotten that the copies were being forwarded to the wrong people. Someone whom I threatened to sue wrote to a friend with copies of my e-mails, asking for an opinion. When the friend sent the e-mails back to that individual, I received copies of both the original correspondence that the guy had sent and the stuff sent to me. According to my interpretation, the Bill would make that an offence.
What about employers who record telephone conversations? That is done in most spheres of financial services. I hope that the Minister has worked out how it will be dealt with. People are often not told that conversations are being recorded, although it is normal practice in many businesses, so that there is no dispute about what was said by a customer or by someone involved in the business. Frequently, such recorded calls catch information from people who are engaging in personal conversations that are nothing to do with the business.
I had intended to talk only about the technical side, but what really worries me is the fact that we seem to be tying the hands and legs of our police officers. So complex are the arrangements for the issuing of warrants that I fear that the police will constantly fall foul of the rules. They will try to keep to the rules, but if they have got some detail wrong they may find that they have done something illegal under those rules, and that, as a result of their acting on criminal intelligence on that basis, the case is thrown out of court.
Someone may believe that the police are going to impose surveillance on a particular named person, only to discover after the issue of the warrant that a different person is involved. If the right information was not given to the magistrates in the first place, it will make no difference that a criminal was caught, and that there were good reasons for the method employed. The arrangements are too bureaucratic and involve too many people, and I do not think that that helps.
When I first read the Bill, I thought that I had misunderstood the way in which the European convention on human rights--which we have now incorporated into our law--will affect the way in which the police do their business. I am not talking about surveillance in the sense in which we all think of it--people planting bugs and so forth, for which warrants have always been issued; I am talking about the fact that a police officer who does not identify himself as a police officer, who is involved in following a criminal or getting into conversation with one, needs a warrant from a senior officer. The document that I have received from the Library refers to a superintendent; the Bill refers to a deputy chief constable. In any event, that officer needs a warrant to do what we all think happens all the time.
Let us suppose that a police officer is sitting in a public house. A guy walks up to him and offers him drugs, a radio or something of that nature. If the police officer arrested him immediately, saying, "I am a police officer", there would be no problem, but let us suppose that he strings the guy along. Let us suppose that he says, "I have some friends who would like this. Got any more?", or, "Go back and see whether you can get any more drugs from the other guy." Any covert operation of that kind would be caught by the Bill, which requires officers to go and find a warrant.
I commend the document from the House of Commons Library, especially pages 16, 17 and 18. It is interesting to read. It states:
Mr. Beith:
I am slightly surprised that the hon. Gentleman should quote words said by the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) that she did not use in the debate. Perhaps she has subsequently concluded that the Bill does not work in quite the way that he suggests.
Mr. Bruce:
That is a question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald will have to address, but it seems extraordinary that the House of Commons Library has interpreted the position in that
Mr. Darvill:
The hon. Gentleman has quoted the House of Commons Library paper, but that paper just sets out quotes from the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), without commenting on them in detail. It is merely quoting.
Mr. Bruce:
The hon. Gentleman is incorrect. The paper goes into the Association of Chief Police Officers code of practice, pointing out that the code is not legislative; it is the way that the police normally deal with things. The paper goes on to say on page 18:
Everyone thought I would talk about the encryption keys. I again commend to Members who will be on the Committee--I am already on the Committee that is considering the Utilities Bill and will not be able to serve on this Bill--the words of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, its director Caspar Bowden and the papers that have been produced by one his colleagues, Dr. Gladman. They are clear and easy to read. It is the sort of thing that we sad people do on a Sunday: actually read about what is happening.
I have tried to be analytical about the Bill. I am less unhappy about the encryption side than I thought I would be. It is clear that one does not have to give away keys, the private keys, as long as one is decrypting what the law enforcement people require. That is reasonable.
It is unreasonable to force someone to give away the key so that some other person can decrypt. Often, that private key is the private key to masses of data, which have nothing to do with the criminal investigation.
Ministers need to look carefully at the matter and to ensure that all the codes, let us say, of a bank are not broken, and that all the accounts are not got at, simply to get at the one account that someone is trying to go after.
People hide information on their computers. They include not just criminals who send messages about where the drugs will be picked up, or whatever; often, it is apt for pornography. I want the Government to try to help the police to break that terrible crime and to help the victims, the children, who are exploited to get the pornography and the paedophilia that goes with it. One can take a better route to ensure that people can decrypt as much as possible.
What did surprise me in the Home Secretary's comments is that anything that is received by way of a warrant is not adduceable in evidence. Obviously, lawyers think that that is right. It seems bonkers to me. If we are going to go to the lengths of forcing people to provide information through decryption under a warrant, it should be available to the courts. There will be occasions when one does not want to say that there has been surveillance. The prosecutor should not be forced to use that evidence and to reveal that it has been acquired via a warrant, but it seems mad to disallow that as evidence, so I hope that Ministers will look at that matter.
We need to discuss whether a criminal can be caught by the legislation. If we are to put burdens on the rest of electronic commerce, it will be important to achieve the purpose, which is to catch criminals. If a criminal wants to ensure that, once he has read a message, he cannot be forced to give up the key, he will find a trustworthy person and say, "You see this key. Here is a light. I am burning it. I now have absolute proof that I no longer have the key." That seems to be the way in which someone will try to ensure that no one can get to the information after it has been read.
The Home Office should know that even though people are securing something within the memory of the computer, often, all the information that has been translated and put on to the screen has gone through a buffer and that buffer can be read by a competent computer technologist. Reading the hard disk to find out what had gone before is not that difficult.
Again, if someone wants to see what is happening on a screen, they could set up a covert camera to point at the screen--a simple surveillance technique--so that they could see exactly what is being decrypted. After all, that should be adduceable in evidence. For example, if someone who is looking at pornography is seen with the screen, one could prove that they have looked at the pornography, as well as possessed it.
When someone is putting things on to his screen, it is not that difficult technically to have a device in the computer--again, put in as a surveillance device--to send all information to the screen along a telephone line to a bug. In many ways, at the right level the old surveillance systems are perfectly adequate for dealing with these issues. That matter should be looked at carefully.
I have a worry about someone being given a warrant to obtain information. A police officer may walk in and give the managing director, or company secretary, of a company a warrant, saying that, as the persons responsible for the company, they must provide him with the key to the information. Under the law, they cannot go to the computer engineer and say, "How do I do this?" because
information will be passed on, which is not allowed. They are allowed to talk only to a lawyer about the matter. That seems silly and impractical. The wording should be correct--it should ensure that people who have to provide the information will be able to do so.
Of course, it will be an impossible situation. The police may have been to a particular organisation and perhaps talked to one or two people there. Another guy may come up and say to those two guys, "Crumbs, what are you doing?" They will say, "We have been asked by the police to get the key to this. You can get five years in prison for doing that." Imagine the conversations that might ensue. One goes home to one's wife and says, "I'm sorry that I'm a bit late tonight, darling", to which she might well reply, "Where have you been?" "Well, it's a bit of a secret." "No, where have you been?" "Well, some police officers came in and asked me to get the cryptographic keys, so that we could decrypt something."
In the legislation, the husband in that dialogue, by divulging that information, would be guilty of an offence carrying a possible five-year sentence. Such a situation is nonsense. If someone releases information that gets back to the criminals, enabling them to get away with their crimes, that person should be prosecuted. However, people should not be liable to prosecution merely for telling someone that they have passed information to someone else. The innocent would be caught by such a provision, and that would be silly.
Plain clothes detectives who spot known criminals in the street will need written permission to summon other officers to monitor the suspects' behaviour, under new rules governed by the European Convention on Human Rights.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), the shadow Home Secretary, said:
If the regulations are not followed, any prosecution will automatically fail, even if the officers subsequently witness a blatant crime.
This is absolutely potty . . . It shows that all fears about incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into British law have been proved right. Jack Straw should state immediately that these rules will not apply here. It is complete nonsense.
It is in the Bill, however. Warrants have to be obtained for people to conduct ordinary covert police operations. Either they must go around wearing badges saying "I am a police officer", or they must be in uniform, or else they must have warrants. Even if they are following up a known criminal, they must give sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant to allow them to engage in covert surveillance. That is bonkers.
One force has summarised the rules by telling its detectives: "In the scenario where a known shoplifter is seen in shops and plain clothes officers are sent to keep observations, the Superintendent's authority must be sought."
It will be a deputy chief constable under the Bill.
"In that case, where an officer in plain clothes sees a likely offender, and keeps observations, the authority is not needed"--
although I am not sure that that will be the case under the Bill--
"however, if he calls other officers to the scene, a Superintendent's authority is required.
The hon. Gentleman may know that my son is a police officer. We often have late-night conversations because we both do not finish work until all sorts of strange times. I have listened to his frustration as a police officer running around after criminals trying to secure proper prosecutions. This country has tied up the detection of criminals and securing a prosecution with more and more red tape, more and more regulation and more and more paperwork. The Bill does not help. It is probably the most backward step in that procedure that we have ever had. If we give a police officer a warrant--that is what he gets when he signs up--he should be able to go after criminals. By all means, if that officer has used some covert system to do that, that should be recorded, but to have to get, all the time, prior authorisation by a very senior officer seems completely potty. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald used that word; it is very apt.
These codes will become law in October. If any cases where these codes have been breached are heard after this time, the prosecution will fail".
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