At the party conference, attendees debate a “Digital Bill of Rights”, as party president Tim Farron makes the case against blanket surveillance and internet porn filters.

Liberal Democrat party president Tim Farron: “Freedom is the very cornerstone of our party. We exist to safeguard a free, fair and open society. But that society has been challenged by the state’s imposition of blanket surveillance on us all. We must begin the process of restoring our liberty and ensuring that Britain is the country we can feel proud of again.”

The time has come for us to establish a digital bill of rights. The 1689 Bill of Rights codified the basic freedoms which we still enjoy today. As we live more of our lives online, we deserve to know that we also enjoy a similar level of freedom in what we do in cyberspace.

The motion before you seeks to address the untrammelled power of the state to roam through your digital life. We need to establish a commission of experts to review the powers the state currently holds. America has already vastly outpaced us in their reaction to this information. The time has come for Britain to catch up.

The motion would ensure that the Government does not undertake the bulk collection of data and only accesses the metadata – details of who, where and when contact took place – or content of communications if there is suspicion of unlawful activity.

But it also criticized Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts to supposedly protect children from online porn, warning that “Government-supported filtering of the internet will prevent people from accessing legitimate information and educational resources whilst giving parents a false sense of security“.

The spring conference proposals for a “digital Bill of rights” come in part as a response to US whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about state surveillance.

Before Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg closed the event, Mr Farron said: “The intelligence services can now call on powers which would have been completely unimaginable even 10 years ago.

“Blanket surveillance of any kind is not the answer to combating terrorism. Our country has well established rules on the deployment and use of communications interception.

“I do not value someone’s electronic conversations as any less private than their letters or phone calls. We should revise and extend our current legal safeguards to electronic communications as well.”

Here are extracts from the Lib Dem motion on a digital bill of rights.

The full text is in the conference agenda (pdf).

Conference believes:

i) Monitoring or surveilling people without suspicion is alien to our traditional British values.

ii) That systematic surveillance of people’s communications and

online activities undermines a number of fundamental human rights, including the right to respect of private life and correspondence, freedom of expression, of association, of conscience and of religion; that these rights are essential in safeguarding the democratic principles of our society; and that any interference with these rights must be necessary and proportionate.

iii) That our online communication and behaviour should be treated with the same respect and legal due process that we expect for our offline communication and behaviour.

iv) Government-supported filtering of the internet will prevent people from accessing legitimate information and educational resources, whilst giving parents a false sense of security.

v) That the indiscriminate harvesting and storage of the communications and metadata of people without suspicion is incompatible with our liberal and democratic principles, and has the potential to cast a chilling effect on free speech and free association.

vi) Whilst there are legitimate concerns surrounding national security, such concerns must not be invoked simply as a pretext to undertake blanket surveillance, stifle investigative journalism, or discourage public debate.

vii) That the work of the intelligence and security services is essential to the underpinning of a free, fair and open society, and that clear public agreement as to their remit and the extent of their powers would be to their benefit as well the country more broadly ….

….

Conference therefore calls for:

1. The annual release of Government Transparency Reports which publish, as a minimum, the annual number of user data requests made by law enforcement, the intelligence agencies, and other authorities, broken down by requesting authority, success rates, types of data requested and category of crime or event being investigated.

2. The establishment of a commission of experts to review state surveillance and all recent allegations from the Edward Snowden leaks, with specific scope to:

a) Scrutinise relevant legislation including the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Intelligence Services Act 1994 and section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984.

b) Assess the implications for privacy and internet freedoms of Project Tempora and other programmes revealed by the Snowden leaks, and consider alternatives to the bulk collection of data.

c) Review powers, scope, appointment and resources of oversight committees, commissioners and tribunals.

d) Consider the use of judicial involvement and approval for surveillance and for access to communications data and metadata likely to reveal sensitive personal data.

e) Publish its findings and recommendations.

3. The Government to define and enshrine the digital rights of the citizen to protect from overreach by the state, through:

a) Ensuring that powers of surveillance, accessing data, and accessing new technologies are not extended without Parliamentary approval.

b) Ensuring that government does not undertake the bulk collection of data and only accesses the metadata or content of communications of an individual if there is suspicion of involvement in unlawful activity.

c) Ensuring that oversight of government surveillance is independent, informed, transparent and adequate.

d) Supporting a prompt, lawful and transparent framework for data requests across jurisdictions and between governments.

4. The Government to accelerate and expand the midata project, to grant citizens access to all their data in an open digital format, regardless of which business holds that data, by using powers under the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013