Yvette Cooper, Shadow Home Secretary, will tomorrow (Monday) outline the challenges of navigating a new digital world and the implications of this for security and privacy.

She will set out how:

·         The pace of change is creating new opportunities for society and the economy, but also challenges for rising online crime such as fraud and child abuse.
·         Reform is needed to keep up. The police and security & intelligence agencies will need to do more tackle the serious increases in online fraud and online child abuse, and also respond to the use of online communications by serious criminals, extremists and terrorists.
·         But for them to do so, we also need stronger safeguards and limits to protect our privacy and sustain confidence in their vital work. The oversight and legal frameworks are now out of date.

She will argue that above all we need a serious public debate and the Government needs to end its silence over issues of privacy and security online as the challenges will only grow. The Government cannot keep burying its head in the sand and hoping these issues will go away – they are too important for that, for our liberty, our security, the growth of our economy and the health of our democracy too.

Rather than stifle debate and add to the concerns, the Shadow Home Secretary will call for the Government to engage in the reforms needed to be effective, as President Obama has done for the United States.

The much-needed reforms include:

·         A new national strategy for tackling online fraud, to replace the current fragmented approach, increase skills and strengthen the role of the private sector
·         Stronger action against online child pornography, involving the private sector and bolstering the work of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency
·         Reforming Parliamentary oversight by strengthening the Intelligence and Security Committee further with permanent technological expertise and sufficient resource. The Committee’s legitimacy would also be strengthened by an Opposition Chair to ensure it is not perceived as an extension of Government
·         Reforming non-Parliamentary oversight, with a major overhaul of the system of oversight Commissioners, looking at alternative models such as the Inspector General in Australia, with greater flexibility, thoroughness and independence. She will say that checks and balances in this field should not be weaker than oversight of the police, the borders agency or prisons.
·         A review of the 2000 RIPA Act, to make sure the law keeps up with the challenges of the digital age.
·         A debate about the wider challenges over privacy, data and the private sector, and how we protect British citizens’ interests in a global internet where everyone follows different rules.

The Shadow Home Secretary’s speech will make it clear that no matter the checks and balances on public agencies in this country, the real challenge of private companies knowing so much about our lives and the global nature of our digital footprints means this is just the start of a much needed debate on all of these issues.

Extracts:

Had you asked me ten years ago if I’d been comfortable with mainstream private companies holding and recording so much information on my shopping, leisure or reading habits I might have been a little uneasy.

But this is the world we increasingly take for granted. Communication and information sharing on a scale we could never have imagined even a few years ago. Families sharing photos on Facebook. Celebrities teasing fans on twitter. Teenagers chatting with friends on WhatsApp from their bedrooms. Grandparents Skyping grandchildren a continent away. Commuters shopping from their iPhones on the train home. And multi-billion pound businesses based on information and customers’ APOS data.

This digital revolution brings liberation, but also new challenges. Alongside the wonderful opportunities for communication, knowledge and business, come new forms of abuse and crime. And alongside the explosion in access to knowledge come new questions about data storage and access. Attitudes are changing too. Public debate, corporate practice, the law and government policy are all struggling to keep up with the pace of change.

I want to talk today about some of the reforms that are needed to keep up with that new technology. In the face of growing online crime and abuse, and the use of online communications by criminals and extremists, the police, intelligence and security agencies need to be able to operate more effectively in this digital world. But for them to do so, we also need stronger safeguards and limits to protect our privacy and sustain confidence in their vital work. The oversight and legal frameworks are now out of date. That means we need major reforms to oversight and a thorough review of the legal framework to keep up with changing technology. And there are difficult wider challenges about privacy, data and the private sector, and how we protect British citizens’ interests in a global internet where everyone follows different rules.

Above all we need the Government to engage in a serious public debate about these new challenges and the reforms that are needed. Online communication and technology is forcing us to think again about our traditional frameworks for balancing privacy and safety, liberty and security. The Government can’t keep burying its head in the sand and hoping these issues will go away – they are too important for that, for our liberty, our security, the growth of our economy and the health of our democracy.

New crimes are growing. Which?, the consumer watchdog, says half of us have been targeted by online scams. Recorded online fraud is up 30 per cent - but that’s the tip of the iceberg, because most of it is never reported to the police. Perhaps most serious of all has been the growth in online child abuse. Last year the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency received 18,887 reports of child abuse – an increase of 14% on the year.

The police and security services have been under pressure to explain why they didn’t know more about the murderers of Drummer Lee Rigby, and why more is not being done to disrupt the use of the internet by violent extremists looking to radicalise young people.

At the same time the new NHS database has just stalled due to public and GP anxiety about the privacy safeguards. And last summer Theresa May’s Communications Data Bill finally ran into the ground after it lost the confidence of the all-party Joint Committee set up to scrutinise it.

And – with perhaps the widest ramifications of all – former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked hundreds of thousands of US intelligence documents and 58,000 British intelligence documents – raising serious concern about the impact on national security and about the scale of activity of intelligence agencies all at the same time.

These issues – online crime, private sector data storage, intelligence operations –are often treated as separate. Yet all raise the same fundamental questions about how we sustain both liberty and security in a digital age.

Ends.