Personal data of innocent citizens must be made available to the
Government to combat terrorism, according to an influential former
security chief.
Sir David Omand, Whitehall's former and security and intelligence
coordinator, called for unprecedented Big Brother powers to allow
access to private details - including phone records, emails and travel
information - to be given to the intelligence services.
Setting out a hugely controversial blueprint for the future of national
security he said 'moral rules' about individual privacy would have
to be broken.
His 17-page report calls for the creation of a vast state database
to gather information about terrorist groups which are increasingly
recruiting and operating online.
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But he argued that a citizen's right to privacy would have to be sacrificed
to allow 'intrusive' intelligence techniques.
'Finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking everyday
moral rules', he wrote.
'This is personal information about individuals that resides in databases,
such as advance passenger information, airline bookings and other
travel data, passport and biometric data, immigration, identity and
border records, criminal records,and other governmental and private
sector data, including financial and telephone and other communications
records.'
