My Lords, I will follow up the noble Lord’s point about what the public sign up to in the private sector—of course, the private sector has lobbied against part of the Bill because it has a vested commercial interest. If you sign up to PayPal, you have signed up to 36,275 words of terms and conditions. Who reads them? “Hamlet” is 30,066 words. If you sign up to Apple iTunes, you are signing up to 19,972 words of conditions; longer than “Macbeth” at 18,110 words. It goes on: Facebook’s has 11,195 words. You tick the box—that is all you do—and give these companies access to your information. These companies would never have been able to start in other societies without the rule of law—we all know that. They can only operate in open, democratic societies. You sign away all kinds of things. We know there was a test at one time when someone changed the terms and conditions to an agreement to give away their firstborn and people ticked the boxes, because they did not read them.
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I was more concerned during my time on the RUSI surveillance panel. The private sector amassed information, even though there was a legitimacy to it, because people had given it to them. They give the Government information as well—driving licences and everything else—but the fact is that we can regulate and control what the Government do much better than we can regulate and control what the private sector does, which is exactly the point the noble Lord was making.