Comment: A threat to our liberties

Thursday, 12, Mar 2009 12:01

Technology has always brought great advantages to our daily lives. Can you imagine or remember how life was, twenty years ago, without the internet, emails or mobile phones?

As a member of parliament, I use email and Facebook everyday to get in touch with my constituents. Getting advice, help, or just raising an issue that matters to you with your MP should be easy. And with Web 2.0 technology like Facebook and instant messaging, it is easier than ever to get it touch with MPs.

A technological revolution has occurred. We are reaping all the benefits of these changes but, in parallel, our freedoms have been put at greater risk. CCTV on every street corner, massive databases to log all our calls and emails and Google Latitude might enhance our security or, in the case of Latitude, provide a fun way of tracking friends but - without safeguards - they also pose a threat.

Google Latitude tracks people's mobile phones and displays their locations on Google Maps. Latitude is based on a reciprocal opt-in system. That is, before a person can be tracked, a sharing arrangement must be agreed with a requesting party. After this process has been executed, location data is made available on a time-to-time or continuous basis.

In one week, Google Latitude attracted more than 1 million users in the 27 countries where the software is available, according to a Google spokesman. It is clearly a commercial success for Google. But their commercial success does present a risk to people's privacy.

After a number of newspapers reported my concerns, I received dozen of emails from people who thought I was wrong to criticise Google Latitude because it is an opt-in service and to know where your friends are you need a sharing arrangement.

Of course I have no objection to people voluntarily signing up but it is the risk of people being signed up without their knowledge that worries me.

Privacy International highlighted the following scenarios.

• An employer provides staff with Latitude-enabled phones on which a reciprocal sharing agreement has been enabled, but does not inform staff of this action or that their movements will be tracked.
• A parent gifts a mobile phone to a child without disclosing that the phone has been Latitude-enabled.
• A partner, friend or other person gains access to an unattended phone (left on a bar or in the house) and enables Latitude without the other person's knowledge.
• A Latitude-enabled phone is given as a gift.
• A phone left unattended, for example with security personnel or a repair shop, is covertly enabled.

These scenarios are perfectly feasible. It takes minutes to enable a phone left unattended and it is hard to detect that a phone has been enabled.

There is one clear and simple partial solution. Google should send a daily text message to remind users that the device is on. In Google's FAQ, they confirm that this function does exist but only for certain phones and it is unclear whether, if the phone is set to work continuously on Latitude, any text messages are sent at all.

I consider this only a partial solution because people who do not know about Google Latitude may receive the text message, without realising its meaning and simply disregard it.

Google has chosen to launch the service without universal access to adequate safeguards, a matter I have taken up with Google's chief executive and urged him to make Latitude more respectful of people's privacy.

Just as we should be worried about the government rolling out fully integrated databases and ID cards, we should also worry about private companies such Google inadvertently creating further threats to our civil liberties.

The information commissioner's office - responsible for protecting personal information - has confirmed that they are closely monitoring Google Latitude and that they will ensure that the appropriate safeguards are in place.

I am not a technophobe. But we should not assume all technology, particularly when controls are lax, is 100 per cent beneficial and presents no threat.

We cannot rely on the present government to safeguard our civil liberties or our privacy. Longer periods of detention without charge, DNA databases clogged up with the DNA of innocent people and proposals for extensive data swopping between government departments in the coroners and justice bill are the hallmarks of a government which cares little about civil liberties.

We, the Liberal Democrats, are determined to resist the slow death by a thousand cuts of our hard-won British civil liberties.

We have published a Freedom Bill. Our first draft contains 20 measures to restore the fundamental rights that have been stripped away in recent years.

The duty to protect our civil liberties is one we as individuals must accept. We need to keep a careful watch on government projects and laws and private sector developments, such as Google Latitude.

If we do not, our lack of interest or concern could lead us unintentionally into a Big Brother state, where everything we say or do, anywhere we go is carefully monitored, catalogued and compiled. That's not the kind of state I want to live in.

Tom Brake is Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman and MP for Carshalton and Wallington.

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