Liberty highlights Snoopers’ Charter concerns by pranking the Home Office – and making a funny video about it

Last Updated: April 27, 2016By
Human right group Liberty aims to highlight the privacy concerns of the Snoopers' Charter in latest video [Image: Getty Images].

Human rights group Liberty aims to highlight the privacy concerns of the Snoopers’ Charter in its video [Image: Getty Images].

Would you give a stranger your phone to let them browse through your text messages, emails and location history? Human rights group Liberty is betting the answer is no.

In its latest campaign called ‘No Snoopers’ Charter’ the organisation is attempting to shine a spotlight on the vast powers included in the UK surveillance bill currently passing through Parliament.

Alongside creative agency ‘Don’t Panic’, Liberty has released a short video featuring comedian Olivia Lee, who takes to the streets of London and demands access to strangers’ smartphones. Unsurprisingly, she is met with confusion and anger from both the public and the police. In once scene, Lee is escorted from the lobby of the Home Office after attempting to snoop on its communications data – much to the confusion of the officers standing guard.

“As our film shows, people naturally recoil when a stranger asks to see their phone,” said Larry Holmes, Liberty’s campaign coordinator. “There’s a reason we use encrypted services and protect our phones and computers with passwords and codes.

“Our emails, texts, online chats and browsing history paint an incredibly detailed and private picture of our lives, and we don’t want a stranger poring over them. This latest Snoopers’ Charter is a world-leading embarrassment – it will all but end online privacy, put our personal security at risk and swamp law enforcement with too much information. The Home Office would be wise to ditch it and come up with the targeted, intelligence-led system we need to keep us safe and respect our rights.”

Here’s the video:

Source: Liberty: Rights group highlights Snoopers’ Charter concerns by pranking the Home Office

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5 Comments

  1. paulrutherford8 April 28, 2016 at 12:22 am - Reply

    So many of today’s younger people are blissfully asleep to politics. Perhaps this will wake them up?

    Great little film that. The ‘actress’ was brilliant!

  2. Terry Davies April 28, 2016 at 6:31 am - Reply

    she is deserving of respect as a csmpaigner. also more courageous than possessed by the tory party. yes men editors etc will be flummoxed as to whether its sufficiently newsworthy to risk the wrath and punitive actions of tories.

  3. Gary Bowman April 28, 2016 at 9:14 am - Reply

    As with Benefits and Education the role of a few is turned into the popular narrative, the Government should have tackled the few that were ripping off benefits but no, it suits the Governkent to have us believe everybody is a cheat. Education deal with the failing schools but no, they can be better served by paying managers of MAT’s a small fortune. Snoopers charter, deal with the criminals terrorists and the “dark net”! But no, it is better for the Government to have access to every citizens private data, funnily enough they don’t want the public to have access to theirs, this is the slippery slope to Totalitarianism that we are halfway down and gaining speed! Don’t wheel out the old ” if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear” chestnut. With diminishing rights and freedoms, we all have a lot to fear!

  4. mrmarcpc April 28, 2016 at 3:28 pm - Reply

    Everyone, not just the youth, should wake up to this, she has my respect, all politicians are the biggest cheats and scroungers of all!

  5. Helen April 30, 2016 at 12:27 am - Reply

    A great idea and film. This should be shown to everyone. However, the Tories will not want to do that, will they! They’ll put a stop to it!

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