“It is apprehended, that arbitrary power would steal in upon us, were we not careful to prevent its progress, and were there not an easy method of conveying the alarm from one end of the kingdom to the other. The spirit of the people must frequently be roused, in order to curb the ambition of the court; and the dread of rouzing this spirit must be employed to prevent that ambition. Nothing so effectual to this purpose as the liberty of the press.”

So said the enlightenment philosopher David Hume in his essay Of the Liberty of the Press in 1742. His words ring as loudly today as they did more than two centuries ago.  The recently exposed scandal of the way British MPs have been abusing the internally-regulated expenses system, often to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds at taxpayers’ expense, has brought shame on the British Parliament, and rightly so. Acres of column inches have been devoted to lamenting the demise of the once immutable British sense of fair play, as it was revealed that it was not so much the letter but the spirit of the expenses rules that had been broken so badly.

Yet in one sense - a sense, indeed, that appears to have been lost on almost everybody - this whole fiasco is tremendously reassuring. The reason the British people are able to get so angry about the whole issue is because they live in a country where they get to hear of corruption in politics from a media unafaraid to write about it in the first place. The truth is, that whatever abuses British parliamentarians attempt to perpetuate, ultimately the truth will out and they will reap the consequences. This was true of the cash for questions scandal of the early 1990s, it was true of the cash for honours scandal in the mid 2000s, and it is true of the expenses scandal now. The two cornerstones of any democratic society, a free press and free speech, are still alive and well in the United Kingdom.

The inquiry that followed the cash for honours affair revealed the strength of the system when it was permitted to go as high as the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who was himself questioned by police. That episode saw Blair the subject of a laughably ironic taunt from then Russian President Vladimir Putin, who responded to Blair’s criticism of Russian democracy at the 2006 G8 summit by suggesting that the British premier could be a useful advisor in the fight against corruption, since he himself appeared to have such intimate first hand experience with the problem. Yet there is a good reason why so little (beyond dangerous speculation) has been written about the financial misdealings of Russian politicians, namely that they do not operate in a society that tolerates such a level of exposure and accountability. Since 23 June 2000, Russia has been on the International Press Institute’s (IPI) Watch List owing to its “repression of the independent media… physical harrassment… [and] murder” of journalists who report critically of the Kremlin administration. With two dead already in 2009, Russia is second equal on the IPI’s death watch list, behind Pakistan, and equal with Somalia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Iraq. Reporters sans frontiers provides a worldwide picture of the state of press freedom generally.

If corruption cannot be exposed, then it cannot be rectified, and in this sense, Britain should be thankful. There are those who question the methods used by the Daily Telegraph, the paper responsible for breaking the expenses story, over how it obtained the data and whether, indeed, it should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting breaches of the Data Protection Act, the Computer Misuse Act, and even the Official Secrets Act. In reality, the paper is performing a clear public service and has a strong public interest defence. The press should not be punished for truth-telling and holding authority to account. Indeed, that is their very raison d’être.

British politics is currently in a sorry state. That even Prime Minister Gordon Brown has seen fit to apologise is a good indicator of just how bad things are.  What the expenses system needs is simply a far greater level of transparency combined with tighter rules imposed by an independent authority, such as will hopefully be recommended by Sir Christopher Kelly’s report to be published later this year. What Britons need to be thankful for is that such a review, and such revelations to which it responds, are possible and indeed encouraged in the first place.

The European Commission began legal proceedings against the British Government yesterday over its failure to protect the privacy of internet users. Many in the UK object to the EU on the grounds that it is “invasive” and a threat to British sovereignty and the so-called British way of life. Yet here is an example of the EU acting to uphold the civil liberties of British citizens in place of a government seemingly incapable of doing so.

The case concerns the apparent failure by the British Government to prohibit the unsolicited interception and surveillence of internet users’ communications, as required by the EU’s Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications.  Specifically the case focuses on BT’s use of software provided by the advertisement serving company Phorm, which monitors the browsing habits of internet users to deliver individually targeted advertising.

EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said, “We have been following the Phorm case for some time and have concluded that there are problems in the way the UK has implemented parts of EU rules on the confidentiality of communications.” Phorm insists that their technology is legal and complies with all data protection standards since the data is not stored, but deleted almost immediately and is not retrievable.

On 4 April 2008 the UK Information Commissioner’s Office issued a statement giving BT the green light to trial the technology so long as they had users’ prior consent. However, it appears that BT conducted a trial of the technology without informing users and the Government failed to prevent this from happening.

What is objectionable about this technology is not the purpose for which it is currently intended, but the ends to which it might subsequently be utilised. It is to the potentially lasting misfortune of the British public that they have a government that appears unable to comprehend this threat.

We have been here before. From ID cards to anti-terrorism legislation, the mantra of the current administration has been that strict safeguards are or will be in place, and in the case of crime-prevention powers, only wrongdoers need be worried. Yet already, the fallacy of such assurances has begun to emerge. In October 2008, the British Government used powers granted by the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act to freeze £4 billion worth of British financial assets in the failed Icelandic bank Landsbanki. Hardly the use for which such powers were intended. Likewise, it was also revealed at the end of last year that half of UK local councils were using anti-terror legislation to spy on individuals suspected of committing “bin crimes“. What is to say that technology originally intended to improve targeted advertising might not subsequently be modified to fulfil more pernicious ends?

It must be hoped that British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith - hitherto one of the greatest proponents of such anti-privacy technology - might have modified her views in the wake of a spate of scandals that should have brought home to her the dangers of putting private information in the hands of those who wish to use it to cause harm.

The EU is right to have started legal proceedings over the UK’s failure to enforce the regulations governing the use of technology such as that created by Phorm. No one is accusing Phorm, BT, or the British Government for that matter, of wanting to use this advertising targeting technology to undermine civil liberties. But that does not mean this technology should not be stopped, for the destruction of civil liberties in the UK will not happen but by degrees.