Right To Privacy Inquiry

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32215, 6 February 1970, Page 13

Right To Privacy Inquiry

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent) ]• LONDON, February 5. Three main types of bugging and snooping are likely to be examined by a British Parliamentary committee set up to study the right of privacy. They are: (1) the secret recording of conversations by people present at the conversations; (2) secret electronic bugging of rooms or tele- ; phones: and (3) misuse of | computers. i The first type involves the I use of tape recorders by one (party when the other party I believes a conversation is I completely “off the record." i Electronic bugging can injvolve telephone tapping, hidden microphones, directional i microphones, and the like. The same basic heading also j includes long-distance photoI graphy. . The third category assumes that it will soon be j economic for some agency to place on a central computer ; all the personal information

that individuals now hand over, much of it willingly, to I government, finance, medical! and other agencies. At pre-1 sent such information is j available, but is very widely! 'spread. Privacy became a news topic in Britain last month when Mr Brian Walden, a Labour member of Parliament from Birmingham, introduced a bill on rights to privacy in the House of Commons. It specified various kinds of intrusion and various defences. Mr Walden said that the bill was aimed at newspapers, private detectives, inquiry agents and others. It was not intended to limit activities by government agencies, who by and large did not misuse their rights to seek and obtain information. The Government rejected the bill as being unsuitable in practice, but set up a committee to consider whether legislation is needed to protect the right of privacy. “I am satisfied,” said the Home Secretary (Mr Callaghan) “that certain actions ■ by some business organisei tions, reputable or disrepu-

table, and certain actions by i the press or individuals have i constituted serious infringe- ] ments of personal privacy. It ; seems likely that legislation ] should be introduced.” At present it is legal to use < a secret microphone in your pocket, watch, cuff link er tie- i pin linked to a shoulder- 1 hoster tape-recorder—to re- i cord a “private” converse- < tion. Mr Walden doubts that 1 this should be legal. He also wishes to outlaw ’ most sorts of bugging that in- ; volves the use of electronic l or photographic equipment to 1 obtain, from long-range, in- 1 formation that an individual i believes is private. Mr Walden believes that ' the third form of snooping— 1 misuse of computers—is rela- 1 tively new and so far relatively rare. i He says that it is right that i finance companies should ' know a man’s financial back- 1 ground, that the police should know his criminal record, that his doctor should know his medical record, and so on. But his vision is that all this information, a mixture of fact and opinion, may soon be economically compiled on a central computer. His fear

is that a personal dossier on any individual may thus be publicly available to anyone able to plug into that computer, and he wants limits placed on the use of such computers. His -speech in the House aroused considerable opposition, much of it from newspapers and the Press Council who vigorously defended the freedom of the press. They have argued that investigations by newspapers are largely beneficial to the public, and that the law of libel is sufficient protection for the public against unwarranted actions by news media. Mr Walden replied this week that he was not opposed to press investigations and that he welcomed them. But the press, unlike Government agencies, was not answerable to Parliament for its methods, and some methods now being used by the press were not in the public interest, he said. Mr Walden said it should be a principle of anti-bugging law for a defendant to prove that his actions were for the public good. He supports Mr Callaghan’s inquiry.