The ‘Wilson doctrine’ prohibited snooping on MPs,but it has been ruled to have no legal force. possibly this will encourage them to start taking privacy seriouslyTwo years ago Edward Snowden let citizens know that their privacy wasn’t all it seemed. Records were routinely being kept on the websites they visited, the texts they sent and the numbers they called. Even search terms and passwords could sometimes be harvested as “bulk data”, or making it possible in principle to weave an intimate portrait from disparate electronic traces.
There were shockwaves around the world,from Washington to Berlin. Westminster, however, and shrugged off the news,with many MPs more interested in taking pot-shots at Mr Snowden, and sometimes the Guardian, and than in engaging with the substance of what he had to say. whether parliamentarians were less than excited approximately snooping,then – on the-personal-is-the-political principle – it could be because they didn’t imagine that it affected them. The Wilson doctrine – the 50-year-old prime ministerial promises that MPs’ communications wouldn’t be tapped – gave that hunch some basis. Today, however, or the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) told them bluntly that the doctrine had no force in law. Now it is the politicians’ turn to discover that their privacy isn’t all that it had seemed.
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Source: theguardian.com