By Daniel Tester
Data gathered via the UK government’s Prevent strategy is accessible to other government bodies including intelligence agencies, the UK Border Force, UK Visas and Immigration and HMRC, an NGO report has warned.
Using freedom of information requests, the report from the NGO Rights and Security International (RSI) has also stated that Prevent data may be held for up to one-hundred years, despite official suggestions that the data is only accessible on police databases temporarily.
The Prevent strategy is a UK government counter-terror programme launched in 2005 by the Blair government. According to government websites, it aims to ‘stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism’ via processes of ‘safeguarding’ and ‘support,’ principally aimed at young people.
The strategy was expanded by the Cameron-Clegg government in 2015 to include the Prevent Duty, which requires public sector workers such as doctors, teachers and university lecturers to report potential signs of terrorist radicalisation and the ‘ideological causes of terrorism’.
63% of official referrals to Prevent are aged 20 or under, according to the most recent government statistics.
Prevent has long faced scrutiny from rights groups for its disproportionate focus on Muslims, which critics say is enabled by the Duty's description of extremism as showing 'opposition to fundamental British values'.
Recent instances of students being referred to Prevent include the case of Tuğba İyigün, a Turkish student at the University of York who was referred to Prevent for tweeting 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'.
'The Prevent initiative has always had its critics, and for good reasons,' said Matthew Guest, Professor of Sociology of Religion at Durham University, and co-author of the academic book 'Islam on Campus: Contested Identities and the Cultures of Higher Education in Britain'.
'Its dependence on referrals by ordinary members of the public enables common prejudices to inform the process whereby people are identified as at risk of radicalisation. Research has shown how this has led to the stigmatisation of people of colour, Muslims in particular, and referrals are often founded on misunderstandings and low levels of religious literacy among those working in public organisations,' he continued.
This report brings into further question the safeguarding premises of Prevent. Jacob Smith, who leads RSI’s Freedom of Expression and Belief programme and authored the report, said:
‘This investigation confirms what communities and parents in Britain have long feared: Prevent is not a safeguarding programme, but rather is a way for the police to create secret dossiers of information about people – particularly children.’
A “spider’s-web”
While information submitted by public sector workers is initially stored on dedicated Prevent databases, RSI's report says that this data 'does not stay under lock and key,' but is in fact duplicated to a 'spider's web' of police databases, including the Police National Database and the Police National Computer.
As information stored on these databases is accessible to other government departments, this means that Prevent data, ostensibly gathered for safeguarding purposes, is accessible to wide range of state agencies, such as MI5, MI6, the Home Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
This information may include 'mobile phone location records' and 'phone data downloads', the report says.
The report also reveals that this includes not only official referrals to the Prevent programme but also 'potential referrals': cases where a public-sector worker or member of the public has come to the police for advice about an individual, but no formal referral has been made.
This contradicts government claims that only formal referrals are stored on Prevent databases.
Campaigners fear that since the data of ‘potential referrals’ is being ‘hoarded’ on Prevent databases, and is therefore accessible to government bodies such as Home Office, it may be used to inform impactful decisions such as immigration applications.
No consent
Government line on Prevent maintains that the programme involves the consent of individuals referred to it, as UK data protection laws only allow for the gathering, storage and sharing of an individual’s data if that individual has consented in a ‘free, voluntary and informed’ manner.
Referral to Channel – the programme of Prevent that involves mentoring and support services – officially does require the consent of the referred individual.
However, this report reveals that cases where individuals do not consent to Channel, or cases where police do not wish to seek the individual’s consent, may be redirected to an alternative scheme called a Police-led Partnership (PLP). Unlike Channel, PLPs do not purport to be safeguarding schemes, instead serving strictly policing purposes.
Besides sidestepping consent obligations, redirection of cases to PLPs also opens the possibility that Prevent data may be shared with foreign governments via the National Crime Agency (NCA), who sit as a partner agency on PLP panels.
This is because the NCA, according to its website, serves to 'facilitate cooperation with international law enforcement' via the network of 'international liaison officers' the agency deploys worldwide.
Breaching human rights
Rights and Security International say that their report confirms human rights concerns surrounding Prevent.
‘The widespread data-sharing and hoarding we have uncovered violates the Human Rights Act, and the government is obligated to end this law-breaking,’ Smith said.
Rights and Security International previously uncovered the police's sloppy handling of Prevent data on the protected characteristics of referrals: police were collecting data on the ethnicity of referrals, but not nearly enough to make an equality impact assessment, failing to record ethnicity in nearly two thirds of cases.
Accordingly, Smith says ‘the government’s data collection processes are so poor that it cannot know whether police and other Prevent practitioners are engaging in discrimination.’
Professor Guest added: 'If Prevent is to be retained in any form, the UK government needs to ensure referrals are accompanied by the collection of key demographic data, including the ethnicity and religion of those referred and who proceed to the Channel programme,'
'That way, if Prevent is accused of reinforcing prejudice against particular groups in British society, this can be properly investigated. Otherwise, Prevent will not be appropriately accountable.'