Section:GDN 1N PaGe:8 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 19:29 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Thursday 8 August 2019
(^8) National
UN poverty
chief warns
Britain over
surveillance
unfairness
Henry McDonald
The UN’s investigator into global pov-
erty has warned that innocent people
in Britain are being caught up in the
mass surveillance system used by the
welfare state to combat benefi t fraud.
His warning, delivered to a con-
ference in Belfast yesterday, comes
as disabled rights activists in the
north-west of England claim that
demonstrators with disabilities pro-
testing against austerity cuts are
having their personal information
passed by police to the Department
for Work and Pensions.
The conference was organised by
the Right to Work, Right to Welfare
campaign on the use of surveillance
powers and their impact on social
security recipients as well as on
asylum seekers.
Philip Alston , the UN’s special
rapporteur on extreme poverty and
human rights, speaking in a mes-
sage from New York, described it as a
“tragedy” that people imagined “the
ever-more intrusive surveillance sys-
tem by the UK welfare state ” was used
only against alleged welfare cheats.
“It’s not – it will soon aff ect everyone
and leave the society much worse off.
Everyone needs to pay attention and
insist on decent limits,” he said.
He accused Britain’s welfare sur-
veillance system of standing the
presumption of innocence on its head.
Everyone applying for a benefi t was
“screened for potential wrong doing in
a system of total surveillance ”.
Rick Burgess, an activist with Man-
chester Disabled People Against Cuts,
said fears that footage of members and
supporters demonstrating was being
passed from police to the DWP had had
a “chilling eff ect” on people’s willing-
ness to protest.
“ The idea that information the
police gather at protests could be
passed to the DWP for welfare fraud
investigations is Stasi-like.”
Fears have been heightened after
investigations by the disability activ-
ist John Pring. On his Disability News
Service website Pring allege d Greater
Manchester police ha d an agree-
ment with the DWP over shared
information.
Pring said that the GMP ha d admit-
ted to a “written agreement” between
the force and the DWP to shar e data
about benefi t claimants. He said a for-
mal agreement existed between GMP
and the department under the guise
of the Data Protection Act. Pring said
he had evidence of this via freedom
of information requests to the GMP.
“The worrying thing is we don’t
know exactly what they (the Greater
Manchester police) are sharing with
the department,” he added, pointing
out that no details had been released
by the GMP about what was in the
alleged agreement.
A spokesperson for the DWP
insisted there was “no formal agree-
ment with the police for this scenario ”.
“The department does not request
referrals from the police and there
is no obligation on either the police
or members of the public to provide
referrals. In the event we receive infor-
mation from the police, we consider it
on its merits.
“As is the case with any responsi-
ble government department, we stand
ready to assist the police in the event
they request information from us for
the purpose of crime prevention or
detection. This service is provided
under the Data Protection Act for the
purposes of preventing and detect-
ing crime.”
Greater Manchester police, how-
ever, confi rmed that “information is
shared between agencies under sec-
tion 29 of the Data Protection Act ”.
A GMP spokesperson said: “This is
not specifi c to protests at all – infor-
mation is shared with other agencies
as part of wider information sharing
for the prevention and investigation
of crime, of which it is offi cers’ lawful
duty to do so.”
‘The ever-more
intrusive surveillance
system ... will soon
aff ect everyone.
Everyone needs to
pay attention’
Philip Alston
UN rapporteur
p
UN rapporteur
Lewinsky joins producers of
TV drama on Clinton aff air
Gwilym Mumford
Monica Lewinsky is among the
producers on a new “true-crime” US
television series focusing on the Bill
Clinton sex scandal.
Titled Impeachment: American
Crime Story, the anthology drama will
recount the aff air between President
Clinton and the former White House
intern Lewinsky more than 20 years
ago, and the subsequent impeachment
proceedings called against him by the
US House of Representatives.
Beanie Feldstein, the star of the
US coming of age fi lm Booksmart,
will play Lewinsky, with Sarah Paul-
son as Linda Tripp, the civil servant
who secretly recorded phone calls the
22-year-old made about the aff air.
The series will premiere in Sep-
tember 2020 in the US, and is then
expected to air in the UK.
The previous two series of Ameri-
can Crime Story have been shown on
BBC Two as part of a syndication deal
with the US.
Impeachment has been adapted
by the US writer and producer Ryan
Murphy from Jeff rey Toobin’s book A
Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal
That Nearly Brought Down a President.
Murphy originally optioned the book
in 2017, but felt the project would be
“gross” without Lewinsky.
In a statement to Vanity Fair , she
said she had been hesitant , but was
swayed by the opportunity to “reclaim
my narrative”.
“People have been co-opting
and telling my part in this story for
decades,” Lewinsky said.
“This isn’t just a me problem.
Powerful people, often men, take
advantage of those subordinate to
them in myriad ways all the time .”
▲ Monica Lewinsky said she wanted
the chance to ‘reclaim my narrative’
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