Background 

The Government published the Investigatory Powers Bill at the start of November 2015.  Theresa May says it will be ‘world leading’ and that’s right – if this Bill is passed, the UK will have one of the most extreme surveillance laws of any democracy.

The fact that this Bill has been published is largely down to Edward Snowden. His leaks showed that GCHQ had created mass surveillance programmes without informing the public or even parliament.

At first, the Government refused to confirm or deny that the Snowden leaks were true. Now they’ve put all the powers he described into a law – and even proposed to extend surveillance further by forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep a record of our Internet activity.

ORG has been calling for the Government to be transparent about what they were doing. Now that we know, we are calling for a surveillance law that means only people who are suspected of crime are put under surveillance.

What does the Bill mean?

• The police, security services and even organisations like HMRC can hack your phone or computer. This can be done on a mass scale by the intelligence agencies who can hack people and organisations who are not under suspicion in order to try to get to their targets.

• ISPs will be forced to keep a record of the apps we use and the websites we visit. It doesn't matter whether you are suspected of a crime or not – all of our data will be linked together so it can be searched and analysed by the police. Other organisations like the Food Standards Agency can also analyse this data.

• The security services can continue tapping hundreds of underground cables to scoop up and snoop on our communications in real time.

• The security services can access and analyse databases of personal information about millions of people who are not suspected of any crime. These include things like the phone book, the electoral roll or for example, a database of everyone going to an event.

Challenging the Government's PR machine

In the run up to the publication of the Bill, the intelligence agencies embarked on an unprecedented PR campaign, whether giving interviews to the One Show or showing The Times around GCHQ’s Cheltenham headquarters. There were leaks about what might be in, timed to look like the Government had made concessions. Post publication, the Government has claimed that the Bill would mean judges authorise surveillance – at best this is just a rubber stamp.

The public have also been repeatedly told that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. We need to challenge this sweeping statement and show people just what is at stake. We may not have things to hide but we all have things we want to keep private, safe and secure. If this Bill is passed, there can be no guarantee that we can do this.

We want to show the public what the IPB really means

Many people were outraged by the Snowden revelations. But the Government is using fear of terrorism to persuade the public that they should give up their rights. We need to show more members of the public that what the Government is proposing is mass surveillance and it does have serious implications for their privacy and security. We have just a few months to persuade them, the media and our MPs that this draft law needs to be changed before it it passed by parliament.

We want to launch a public-facing campaign in February, which is a crucial time for the IPB. The Joint Committee, who are examining the Bill, will report back in February and there will be media and political interest in what they have to say. At this point we, with the help of our supporters and the public, need to put pressure on MPs and members of the House of Lords who will amend, debate and vote on the Bill.

The focal point of this campaign will be a short film that shows exactly what mass surveillance means and the implications of what the Government is proposing. If we raise enough money, we will also produce other marketing materials, such as ads and flyers to increase awareness of the issue.

By raising public awareness, we want to galvanise people into taking action against the Bill. Some people think we are powerless but we have fought off the last Snoopers' Charter (twice) and we can fight this Bill as well.