The UK Investigatory Powers Act: A Bad Example for the World

Surveillance law is absolutely necessary because it compels the government to write down, for all to clearly see, the rules that they must abide by as they undertake intrusive powers, often in secret, to investigate criminal activity and protect a country. To do so is to protect the rule of law, uphold democracy, and safeguard human rights. For two decades, successive British governments have evaded transparency, even as they failed repeatedly at passing mass surveillance legislation, and deployed – in secret – capabilities that nobody, not even the UK parliament, knew were allowed or even possible.

A chapter in this tawdry tale ended in November 2016 when the UK parliament gave the government a clean bill of health and, essentially, a blank check on a new era of secret surveillance. Privacy advocates would argue that the recently implemented Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) is a draconian and expansive piece of surveillance legislation that no other liberal democracy has had the gall to attempt. The UK government, on the other hand, claims it is the most rights-protective piece of legislation the world has yet seen.