MPs say UK risks drift to surveillance society

The government must guard against the drift into a "surveillance society", only keeping data on individuals as long as is absolutely necessary, a parliamentary committee said on Sunday.

The Home Affairs Committee called on the government to adopt a principle of what it called "data minimisation", collecting only essential information and keeping it under a tight curb.

"What we are calling for is an overall principle of 'least data, for least time'," said committee chairman Keith Vaz.

"We have all seen over the past year extraordinary examples of how badly things can go wrong when data is mishandled, with potentially disastrous consequences."

Last year a government department lost in the post two unencrypted computer discs containing the personal and banking details of 25 million people claiming child benefit.

Concern was also raised after it emerged that security services had recorded a conversation between a prison inmate and his local parliamentarian.

The committee rejected charges that Britain was already a surveillance state but warned against "function creep" - the use of data for purposes other than for which it was collected.

It also warned against adding microphones to surveillance cameras that would make an already high level of information collection even more personally intrusive.

"What we are concerned with is the tendency to collect more and more data just because the technology allows it and for data to be used beyond the purposes it was initially collected for," said Vaz.

"For example, we would completely object to any attempt to use data on children for the purposes of predictive criminal profiling rather than child protection."

The committee the information commissioner should produce to parliament an annual report on the state of surveillance in Britain.