Simon Asks about Intrusion Justification

[Ian G Batten]

On Tue, 29 Oct 2002, Watkin Simon wrote:

> Short of being caught in the act, the point of an investigation is to
> establish the guilty from the innocent.

No, that's the point of a trial in a court.  An investigation by the
police obtains information to lay before a court.  It's nice to know
that the Home Office regard the police as the arbiters of guilt,
however: can we quote you on that?

> A guilty individual who knows they are acting (or have acted)
> unlawfully will have some expectation that whatever authority is
> tasked with investigating that conduct, might well undertake such
> intrusion into their privacy as is necessary and proportionate to the
> seriousness of the offence.

> An innocent individual has no such expectation.

Exactly.  But you're wanting laws which allow the police to intrude into
my privacy whenever they like.

> What you can (seek to) justify, in the public interest, is such
> intrusion as is necessary and proportionate to the seriousness of the
> offence.  Sorry to parrot but it's relevant.

Telephone tapping to pursue people who clock cars is proportionate, is
it?

> I go back to my starting point, that the public needs to be clear what
> sort of intrusion it considers necessary and proportionate in what
> circumstances.

Yes, that's right.  Which is why the Home Office published a Statutory
Instrument defining that intrusion without a breath of public
consultation.  Since it was howled down in 72 hours, one has to assume
that any consultation would have told you it was unacceptible.  You
didn't do any.

> > You can't justify intruding on people on the grounds that 
> > they are guilty,
> > because it's impossible to tell if they are guilty before you intrude.
> 
> Guilt is not the justification.

Then what is?

>  
> > You have to justify intruding on innocent people, not on 
> > people who have
> > committed crimes (and you have to justify the latter as well).
> 
> You do.  The justification is that the nature of the intrusion, including
> collateral inclusion and the nature of that intrusion, is proportional to
> the nature of the offence (and in the context of authorisation levels,
> oversight and safeguards). 

Yeah, and those safeguards are, as drafted, worthless.  Where are the
penalities for malfeasance?

ian