Who’s afraid of a snooper’s charter? Ask Google

Forgive me, but let’s go straight in. Readers of a sensitive disposition look away, but there’s a serious reason for the exercise I suggest that those with access to Google might like to attempt. There’s a thing called the AdWords Keyword Tool. You can find it at adwords. google. co. uk/- key

wordtool. It is provided by Google for the benefit of online advertisers keen to select words or phrases they can use in order to catch as many Google searchers as possible in their net. So it will tell you how many people last month included in their search terms (say) “anti-wrinkle cream”: 22,200. But it is invaluable to anyone curious to know what Britons are Googling.

This column’s focus is the blocking of British government’s plans for a “snooper’s charter” by Britain’s deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. To get a sense of why I think that measure might silently disturb more citizens than our MPs may imagine, try some terms on Google’s Keyword Tool. Here are the numbers for UK searches including these expressions: crab lice: 2,400; haemorrhoids: 74,000; incontinence: 90,500; chlamydia: 135,000; vibrator: 135,000; X-videos: 500,000; masturbation: 550,000; gay porn: 1,000,000; porn: 37,200,000. These are the figures for only one month. Added up, the totals begin to approach the entire population of the UK, so it is to be hoped that there is a degree of overlap between groups of Google searchers. Ogle and Google, it seems, share millions of fans.

Though the blizzard of recorded data on the life of modern man may appear to make our culture more transparent than ever, there are dark areas in the way we behave that cannot easily be tracked. No more than we can understand how it was to live in the Dark Ages, will a future age be able to guess through studying our newspapers, or broadcast media how life was in the early 21st century.

Politicians need to bear in mind the submerged parts of their electorate’s psyche. As writer Saul Bellow remarked. “Public morals are a kind of no-man’s-land in which anyone may declare himself sheriff.” But this isn’t a no-man’s-land where people actually live. Politicians who think they can visit their electorate at home fail to understand that their voters too are only visiting. People live elsewhere. Just look at what they’re Googling.

Or, rather, don’t: not if you’re the police, the taxman, a newspaper reporter or the doctor, because people wouldn’t want you poking your nose in. It won’t usually be because their Web-browsing indicates anything criminal; it might be because they’re embarrassed; but whatever the cause, Nick Clegg did Conservative ministers a great favour last week when — quite unexpectedly — he blurted out on the radio that the coalition’s draft Communications Data Bill, which was to appear in next week’s Queen’s Speech, is “not going to happen — certainly not with Lib-Dems in government”.

Mr Clegg had woken up to what this bill would aim to do. Intended to give the police better access to private communications for the purposes of safeguarding national security and (for example) pursuing paedophiles, the measure would confer new powers (the first in a Western democracy to do so) to compel Internet companies to keep a record of every text, email, call and website address sent, made or visited by every individual in the UK. The content would not be recorded, only the identity of the individual and the site he visited or the contact texted or emailed. Data would be available to the police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the intelligence services and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

I have nothing useful to

The bill would confer new powers (the first in a Western democracy to do so) to compel Internet firms to keep a record of every text, email, call and website visited by every individual in the UK

contribute to the debate about whether our security apparatus really need this stuff; or whether anyone seriously intent on concealing their identity could do so by manufacturing a cod web identity. Alex Carlile, the Blair government’s independent reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation has entered a notably wan defence of the legislation (“It’s not a snooper’s charter, it’s a life-saver”) in the Daily Telegraph.

I’m ill-qualified to contest Carlile’s case. I observe only that at the time I was reading his column there were 99 responses in the online comment section beneath it. Four claimed to agree with him, though one thought the state should psychologically profile every citizen, and may have been sarcastic. Two weren’t sure. Ninety three of the 99 were opposed. Telegraph readers are not a libertarian bunch, so this may be significant.

Home secretary Theresa May and her colleagues are perhaps lucky that although there have been rumblings about the “snooper’s charter”, the national debate had not really taken off before Mr Clegg scuppered the whole thing. Possibly the debate never would have taken off, and the bill would have passed into law. But if my hunches are right, a surprisingly large number of voters would have liked the Conservative-led government just a little bit less as a result. And they wouldn’t have said why.

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