The email snooping plan isn’t a question of liberty: it’s simply against common sense

There’s a big hole in the coalition’s controversial internet surveillance plans, and it comes in the shape of the point. Right now, you see, everybody is ­making a fuss about civil liberties. This is because making a fuss about civil liberties is a blast. Once you work up a decent head of steam, any fool can do it. It’s sixth-form debating society stuff. This House Believes That Freedom Is More Important Than Security, sort of thing. This is the sound of intellectually lazy people returning to their comfort zones.

Look, I understand civil liberties. A leader in the Times put it best, the other week, when it said, ‘Civil liberties are the rights of individuals in the free world to not have to trust in the good intentions or the competence of authorities.’ (Brilliant! Who writes these things?) But civil liberties are not, in fact, yet the point. You start having the civil liberties debate when somebody has made a convincing case to curb them. And nobody yet has.

There is a civil liberties argument to be had, for example, on Ripa — the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which was these proposals’ antecedent. That allows various sorts of snooping and phone tapping, and it does, very clearly, reduce crime and anti-social behaviour. Does it, though, perform a valuable enough service to be worth the reduction in freedoms it entails? On balance, I’d say probably. It’s moot, though.

At a most crass and utilitarian interpretation, what these new powers would do is to allow the real-time monitoring of internet traffic. Without a warrant, spooks will be able to see who emails or otherwise messages whom (although not what) and what websites they go to. But why?

Ripa already allows interception of messages, with a warrant.