Deputy PM Clegg to slow Britain's surveillance

LONDON (AP):

Britain's new deputy prime minister pledged yesterday to curb the country's extensive system of official surveillance and data collection by scrapping an unpopular national identity-card programme, limiting the retention of DNA samples and regulating the spread of closed-circuit television cameras.

Nick Clegg said the coalition government was rolling back government monitoring after years of complaints from rights groups that personal freedoms have been sacrificed in the name of national security.

"This government will end the culture of spying on its citizens," Clegg said during a speech in north London. "It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if they have something to hide. It has to stop."

He also promised to allow the public a say on which of the ousted Labour government's unpopular laws should be overturned, and to institute changes to the country's political system - including the right to recall errant lawmakers.

"It is time for a wholesale, big-bang approach to political reform," Clegg said. "And that's what this government will deliver."

The 43-year-old deputy chief, and leader of the Liberal Democrat party, is regarded as having driven a hard bargain on civil liberties in a coalition deal with Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives. An agreement between the new partners - following Britain's inconclusive election which denied any party a majority - includes almost all of Clegg's party's election pledges on personal freedoms.

Under Clegg's plans, a £5.1 billion (US$7.3 billion) plan for national identity cards and a linked database will be halted. The credit-card sized documents were planned to include biographical data and biometric details like fingerprints and a facial image, and intended to help prevent terrorism and identity fraud.

Biometric data

Plans to issue sophisticated new passport which also store biometric data will also be scrapped, Clegg said.

He pledged to impose new regulation aimed at restricting the increasing use of CCTV cameras by local authorities and private businesses. Clegg's office said no specifics have yet been drawn up on how new regulation will work, but insisted the plans will be halt the unwanted creep of cameras into offices, malls and on transit networks.

No figure on the total number of CCTV cameras in Britain is known, though applications under Freedom of Information laws in 2009 disclosed that town halls operate about 60,000, up from 21,000 in 1999.