The
law enforcement community’s response to the question of how the internet should
be policed continues to raise a number of significant questions. And it’s
leaving some representatives from academia and civil society in a bit of a
bind.
Paul
Bernal’s recent blog on a meeting organised by the Association of Chief Police
Officers on this issue touched on some of these questions. The feedback he’s received
is quite revealing.
One
respondent was unhappy that various stakeholders had agreed to meet ACPO in the
first place. They commented that “real debate
between those who disagree on the deepest philosophical and ‘legal’ in the
broadest sense matters, is hardly likely to take place at an event organised by
(and ultimately for) law enforcement/the state.”
I don’t agree.
Its important for all responsible stakeholders to feel that
their voices can be heard in a debate where everyone accepts that what is
required is policing by consent. At issue is what everyone (or almost everyone)
is capable of consenting about.
With new legislation focusing on how communications data should
be retained and used for law enforcement purposes on the horizon, its essential
that the Home Office and other interested parties consult as widely as is
practicable in order that, when the proposals are presented to Parliament,
politicians won’t need to criticize the measures on the grounds that
insufficient consultation has taken place.
The dilemma for the representatives from academia and civil
society is that, by becoming more aware of the practical problems facing the
law enforcement community, they may feel encouraged to support pragmatic
proposals that many people would shy away from. So do they risk being
ostracized from their more radically-minded colleagues, whose views on issues related
to communications data retention are not formed from any significant experience
of the distress felt by victims of serious crime, who care less about the
techniques used to deliver justice to serious criminals?
Academics and civil society campaigners that want to be reminded
of the perils of being associated with a “bad” initiative only need think back
to the manner in which Simon Davis from Privacy International was pilloried by
some of his contemporaries when his independent research found that, actually, the Phorm initiative wasn’t quite as awful as its critics had wanted it to be.
It’s hard to remain dispassionate and neutral about such issues,
and there will always be accusations that various academics have been captured
by the law enforcement community if they indicate that they support proposals
that benefit the law enforcement community. After all, who wants to make crime
fighting easier …
Responsible academics ought to remain engaged with the
policymaking process, and express their views from within the tent. It would
never be appropriate (nor has it yet happened, to my knowledge) for an academic
to take comfort in grandstanding from a distance, or causing so much fuss at
meetings that when they threaten to eject themselves from the meeting, their
offer is gratefully accepted.
Sources:
https://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/ethical-policing-of-the-internet/#comment-31195
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm
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