PowerPoint presentation to ISPs (mobile telephone and internet records)

Dear Sir or Madam,

in the House of Lords, on Monday, November 17th, the noble Lord,
Lord Avebury, asked a supplementary question to the Parliamentary
Under-Secretary of State (Lord West of Spithead) during the
question titled "Privacy: Mobile Telephone and Internet Records".
Lord Avebury said, in the relevant excerpt:

"Will the Minister please provide a copy of the PowerPoint
presentation given two weeks ago to ISPs describing this proposal
in greater detail, since he appears not to want to tell your
Lordships about it?"

(Lords Hansard, Volume No. 705, Part No. 159, Column 920)

Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information legislation, I
would like to request access to this PowerPoint presentation
described by Lord Avebury. Obviously, I would like to request an
electronic copy.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Bimmler

Dear J Fanshaw,

many thanks for your email, I look forward to hearing from you as
soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

M Bimmler

Dear Mr Fanshaw,

many thanks for your detailed reply which I have read with
interest. Although I acknowledge that you have seriously considered
my request, I can unfortunately not agree with your conclusions and
must therefore respectfully ask for an internal review to be
carried out.

I specifically raise the following points of objection:

1) Regarding the 35 (1) (a) exemption:

- I do not accept that disclosure of the persons or parties who
were consulted on this could be prejudicial in any way or hinder
the formulation of government policy. It is standard practice for a
transparent government to inform on whom it discusses with and I do
not see how one can reasonably conclude that anyone should be "less
likely to engage" just because the very fact that they are being
consulted is public.

- I wish to emphasise that these discussions have not been held in
a "private space", which would be possibly an accurate description
of a discussion that has taken place in a single government office
or inside one working group. Rather, the government has
deliberately chosen to consult a specific subset of stake-holders
in this matter and to share information with them.

- As an aside, I note that I have only requested access to the
presentation that has been given by a Government representative. I
have never requested and do not request access to records of
opinions/statements by representatives of the ISPs. Any
consideration, that people *outside of government* would not freely
share their opinion anymore if it risks to be published is
therefore completely moot (quoting your reply: "Those outside of
Government who may be involved in discussions about policy would
also be less likely to engage if they believed that their views
would be made public.").

- The Government has sent a delegate to this meeting with a
PowerPoint presentation - I conclude from this that the formulation
of government policy has already been developed to a quite far
stage, namely to the stage that a consolidated opinion of the
Government is being disclosed to third parties. To put it in other
words: Already the decision which "speculative options and
alternatives and ranges of measures" are to be included in the
presentation and which ideas are to be completely excluded from the
start is a decision that flows from a developed government policy.
I do not believe that one can reasonably conclude that the
Government will be less "candid" in laying upon the table a range
of options worthy of in-depth consideration, if it needs to publish
them. As a matter of fact, I'd be rather worried if the Government
considered some of its ideas too "blunt" for the public to consider
them.

- Unfortunately, you have not provided me with any information on
the structure (as opposed to the content) of the presentation,
which makes it rather difficult for me to further comment on it.

- Last but not least, as long as no binding date has been set for
the publication of the consultation paper, I do not believe that
this aspect can be seen as serious contribution towards the public
interest.

2) Regarding the 24 (1) exemption

- I note that you have not included a certificate signed by a
Minister of the Crown as suggested in section 24 (3), which would
be conclusive evidence of the applicability of the exemption.

- As outlined at length above, I do not accept the view that
disclosure of the requested presentation would hinder the
formulation and open discussion of policy. I also do not believe,
that the options and solutions considered would be thus limited in
any way, on the contrary, I believe that an informed public, a
pubic that is also aware of the means that are technically possible
at all, can suggest itself some novel ideas and comment more
accurately on the limits and benefits of the methods under
consideration. Judging from recent experience, I am quite sure that
some members of the public are quite 'candid' in their opinions
which they will be more than glad to share.
From this follows, that the discussion and the affiliated
decision-making will not necessarily be poorer in any way, rather,
it will be stimulated by outside (and hopefully innovative) views
and will have the advantage of wider participation. This, in turn,
will obviously result in a more helpful system and thus advance
national security.

I look forward to your response, would be grateful for a short
acknowledgement of my review request and remain at your disposal to
discuss these questions by email or phone.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler