City AM – Passing the Public Authorities Bill will hand away Brits’ privacy rights

Why you should care about the Public Authorities Bill
This week the troubling Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill is making its way to the House of Lords, with Second Reading scheduled for 15 May. In the name of cracking down on welfare fraud, this problematic legislation would effectively mandate banks to trawl through everyone’s bank accounts on the government’s behalf. This represents a gross intrusion of privacy rights that everyone should be concerned by – and even more so for past and present benefits claimants, who could face disproportionately punitive measures if they have been overpaid not only as the result of fraud, but even due to the Department for Work and Pensions’ own error or oversight.

Having defeated similar provisions under the previous government, Big Brother Watch has been leading a large coalition of organisations – including poverty, disability and age-focused groups – campaigning for crucial protections to be introduced to the Bill. Although some of these concerns were voiced in the House of Commons debate, unfortunately the most worrying provisions remain intact as the Bill winds its way to Lords. Inexplicably, although the Bill contains provisions for four accompanying Codes of Practice, these have yet to be published – rendering it impossible for parliamentarians to fully consider the wider potential scope of the Bill. The government must publish the Codes of Practice without delay.

As for the House of Lords, we urge peers to robustly scrutinise the Bill and table amendments necessary to safeguard privacy rights before it’s too late. And for those working in finance who might (rightly) feel disinclined to spy on their customers – now is the time to speak out!

Wikipedia vs the Online Safety Act
As the Online Safety Act begins to take effect, the Wikimedia Foundation is the first to file a major legal challenge, seeking a judicial review of provisions that could see Wikipedia held to the toughest duties under Category 1, which imposes strict requirements on the largest websites and apps. The Wikimedia Foundation argues that these provisions could jeopardise the safety and privacy of its volunteer editors and put information on the site at risk of manipulation and vandalism. Big Brother Watch is among those who vigorously campaigned against the overly broad provisions and sweeping reach of the Online Safety Act, which poses a significant threat to online free speech in the UK. With the schedule of provisions due to take effect between now and next year, there will no doubt be a flurry of other legal challenges to follow.

A major blow for NSO
The global spyware industry suffered a major blow last week when a California jury ordered Israeli spyware company NSO Group to pay $168m (approximately £128m) in damages for targeting Whatsapp’s infrastructure with its intrusive Pegasus technology. NSO has been at the heart of the controversy surrounding the use of spyware to target journalists, human rights defenders and dissidents around the world – including cases here in London, such as Roula Khalaf, the editor of the Financial Times and human rights lawyer Rodney Dixon KC. UN experts, the European Parliament and human rights groups such as Amnesty International are among those campaigning for a global moratorium on the use of spyware.

Quote of the week:

“This is too stupid to be believed, right? Like, this can’t happen, so it has to be an elaborate deception operation.” – Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, on the Signalgate story at the Truth Tellers Summit in London, 7 May

– Rebecca Vincent is interim director at Big Brother Watch

City AM – Passing the Public Authorities Bill will hand away Brits’ privacy rights

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