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Younger Report-Curbs on bugging
ELAINE POTTER and JAMES MARGACH
A series of far-rcaching proposals for protecting the
private life of citizens in the age of computers and
sophisticated spying services is ret out in a report on the
right to privacy to he presented by Mr. Reginald
Maudling, the Home Secretary, at the beginning of
next month. It is expcctcd that Mr. Maudling will
give general approval to the proposals, though the
committee was appointed by his Labour predecessor,
Mr. James Callaghan, just before the 1970 election.
The highlights of the report are :
1. Protection against unlawful surveillance through
the creation of a new legal offence punishable by im-
prisonment and fine. The committee lists about 20
different spying devices, including an "infinity tran-
sistor," which can he fitted in three minutes and trans-
mits all the sounds in a room, and flourescent dye to
he applied to a person to he tailed.
2. Protection against the disclosure of information
acquired unlawfully.
3. New rules to prevent the leakage of confidential
information stored in computers in Government depart-
ments and elsewhere.
4. Stricter review of personal information acquired
by credit-rating agencies, with the right of a citizen to
know what the agencics know about him.
5. Banks are told to be more forthcoming in telling
customers about inquiries made about Uieir financial
standing.
6. The operations of private detectives should be
supervised by setting up a system of licensing, which
could be handled by the police.
7. Press, TV and radio would'be opened up to allow
greater opportunity for members of the public to make
effective complaint. The Press Councd membership
would he changed to recruit about half from outside
the newspaper world.
8. Students, too, could be protected by a code of
practice on the use of their personal records.
The 19-member committee is headed by Sir Kenneth
Younger, former Director of Chatham House, and in-
cludes barristers, two MPs, journalists and novelist
Margaret Drabble. In its report it says that privacy for
the citizen is not just a question of taste which can be
left to the restraints of social convention. On the other
hand, the need to preserve freedom and the right to
tell die truth openly makes it a difficult balance to
strike between control and liberty.
Somewhat dismayingly, the Committee found that
the public generally was not greatly concerned. Response
to the Committee's request for information about
privacy invasion was so small that they commissioned
a public attitude survey. The survey showed that people
attached less importance to protecting privacy, than to
keeping down prices, reducing unemployment and
stopping strikes. It rated between building more houses
(more important) and building more schools (less im-
portant).
When Mr. Maudling makes his statement on Younger,
he will also announce the setting up of an inquiry
into safeguarding the citizen's private rights against
invasion by nationalised industries, all state agencies
and services and big semi-public bodies, as well as local
authorities.
He will be able to announce measures being taken
to tighten up the confidentiality of the mass of private
information hanked by the computers of a dozen and
more Ministries. Whitehall, it is recognised, knows afl
great deal alxmt the private lives and family details of
every citizen. The Younger Committee betrays anxiety
about the risks of Whitehall departments centralising
their mass of privately filed details.
The Home Secretary will soon receive a report of a
committee of civil servants on their two-year investiga-
tions into ways of controlling this confidential informa-
tion.
The Younger Committee was appointed after the
Private Member's Bill of Mr. Brian Walden had been
rejected. Younger was asked to consider whether legis-
lation was needed to protect the individual citizen
against intrusion into privacy. Brian Walden's Bill pro-
posed the creation of a new general law of privacy,
so that substantial infringements would be open to a
civil legal action.
The Younger committee says the need for a general
law of privacy has not been made out. Such a law
might infringe upon other rights of greater importance,
but in a minority report, Alexander Lyon, MP, argues
that a general law of privacy would be an effective
way of protecting the individual's rights.
Perhaps, the most important and far reaching of
the Committee's recommendations is that an individual
should have a legally enforceable right of access to the
information held about him by credit rating agencies.
At present there is little protection for the citizen
against a credit bureau—or indeed anyone—who
collates information about hiin. As to the use of that
information, Younger says it should only be possible
successfully to sue for libel if the information was de-
famatory and was both untrue and provided maliciously
by an agency.
To keep the activities of credit rating agencies under
review Younger endorses the idea of a Consumer Credit
Commissioner, recommended by die Crowther Com-
mittee on Consumer Credit.
(Tht Sunday Times)
11 June 1972
211