WHEN my union, the National Union of Journalists, has been campaigning about secret state surveillance it has often felt like we are boxing with shadows.
No member of the public is allowed to know the extent of the types of operations involved and no-one is able to access the policies that relate to whether or not journalists and trade unionists are being put under surveillance.
The government’s response has been to draft the Investigatory Powers Bill, a new legal framework that specifies some of the state’s power.
The measures in the Bill include the ability to intercept and target electronic communications, including emails, social media and mobile phones; it also allows the state to collect general internet browsing records and to hack into computers.
The Bill can be summed up as a human rights nightmare, one that sends the wrong message to the rest of the world about how we operate.
