The Institute has reviewed the proposed surveillance bill and is publishing its principal concerns. The full review will be published as a Brief in the coming weeks; this Statement records the headline points.
Our principal concerns are three: the proposed authorisation standard is narrower than the substantive standard required for adequate prior review; the institutional architecture of oversight does not match the operational scale of the proposed authorities; and the procedural rights of affected persons in subsequent review are insufficiently defined.
We do not take a position on whether the underlying surveillance authorities should exist. Our concern, here as elsewhere, is procedural: whatever the substantive authorities, they should be exercised through a procedural architecture adequate to constrain them.