LONDON | Britain’s new deputy prime minister pledged on Wednesday to curb the country’s extensive system of official surveillance and data collection by scrapping an unpopular national identity-card program, 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 it’s citizens,” Mr. 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 Labor 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,” Mr. 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 that denied any party a majority — includes almost all of Mr. Clegg’s party’s election pledges on personal freedoms.
Some aspects of British surveillance have served as a model for official in other nations.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited Britain’s capital in a fact-finding mission recently in the wake of the failed Times Square bombing, visiting centers where experts monitor a vast network of security cameras — one of the largest in the world.
Mr. Bloomberg wants to ramp up the security camera network in New York City’s subways to mimic that in London’s underground train system. London authorities say the city’s train stations are watched by more than 12,000 cameras, and in a few years they aim to install a few thousand more.
Under Mr. Clegg’s plans, a $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.
Plans to issue sophisticated new passports that also store biometric data will also be scrapped, Mr. Clegg said.
He pledged to impose new regulations aimed at restricting the increasing use of CCTV cameras by local authorities and private businesses. Mr. Clegg’s office said no specifics have yet been drawn up on how new regulations will work, but insisted the plans will halt the unwanted creep of cameras into offices, malls and on transit networks.
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