Sputnik: MI5 is expected to share the information of 20,000 UK citizens suspected of having terrorist sympathies… How significant is this?
Helen Fenwick: That sharing of information has been occurring before, obviously it’s going to take some time to share that information and I think they’ll probably be selective in terms of deciding how high risk someone is before they start sharing it [the information] with local services; so I do think it’s significant. Information is obtained from various sources and is then disseminated more widely. There will have to be safeguards in terms of data protection. In other words, its security information going to a wide range of sources, so for example there may need to be an avenue where an individual can challenge the dissemination of information. Some form of check will have to be put into place to add to the specific dissemination they are talking about; even it doesn’t involve individual challenges.
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Sputnik: How effective will these new measures be do you think and what’s at stake here?
Sputnik: Should ordinary law abiding people be afraid of an infringement of liberties from these sweeping new strategies?
Helen Fenwick: It depends on exactly what checks on are in the information. The answer is of course it couldn’t be ruled out that there could be a case of mistaken identity, or some form of mistake could have occurred down the line of data selection. There will have to be some form of check, but exactly what form of check that will take we do not know. We don’t know at the moment what sort of checks these dissemination will be subject to.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.