Paddy Ashdown, the MP for Yeovil, is leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and speaks for it on cyberaffairs. Of the three politicians interviewed this month he seemed the most genuinely enthusiastic and undogmatic. It's possible that his open-mindedness may have some relationship to his distance from office. Note the interesting view on encryption - that under certain circumstances the state should be allowed to break it if it can, but not be given any help.
Wired: What's liberal democrat policy for censoring the Net?
Ashdown: The Net is designed to be an anarchic system; that's its joy, that in many ways is its contribution. It's one of those institutions which seems to be pointing the way to the future, which is not about nation states, it's about internationalism. But that brings with it a number of problems which we haven't yet thought through. How you treat censorship is just one of them. I do not believe, I'm afraid to say, that we can accept total unbridled anarchy. Unbridled dissemination of propaganda that is designed to destabilise, undermine morals, or encourage the growth of terrorist organisations is going to prove unacceptable, so we are going to have to find some means to tackle this. I don't have one. Neither have the Lib Dems. I think we will have to establish internationally accepted standards.
Is the information superhighway something to which everyone should have access?
One of the principals government should be setting is universal access. What's happening now is very dangerous cherry-picking, and one of the consequences is a new kind of poverty developing in this country: there will be an information-rich society and an information-poor society. Those areas which can benefit most, particularly the isolated rural areas, are going to be the last done. And that will have a destabilising structural effect on society.
How can the Net be used as a political medium?
Do you know what the Duke of Wellington said, when he saw the first train? "I am against these things. They will enable the damned people to get about." Just at the moment when our democracy is creaking to a halt, when the 19th-century version of democracy introduced by the train and the new mobility of the working classes in Britain is now manifestly proving incapable, we are going to be able to inform people more and enable them to have more of a direct say in policy making. For example, I can see a much wider use of referenda in local government. If a town decides to have a bungaloid outcrop with 1,000 new bungalows on its outskirts, the town should be consulted on that. It is, after all, the citizens' town, not the local government's town.
Anything else?
The 1996-7 election could be the first email/Internet election. We will have to respond to a new means of communication with its own language and desires, its own needs. I don't say it'll change the election yet, but I think it's going to increasingly impact on democracy.
Hansard must be free on the Internet. Absolutely. It is your democratic right. I just detest the atmosphere of this place [the House of Commons], that we are here to hand things out to you as goodies. There's absolutely no reason why someone shouldn't fill in their benefit forms by email. It would save a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money. And I see no reason why tax returns shouldn't be done via email, provided you have some coding system so that the Inland Revenue knows it's you that's filled it in, and that shouldn't be impossible to do.
Do we need a freedom of information act?
Of course we do. It is monstrous that we haven't got one. We are the most secretive of all the western so-called free democracies. My rule of thumb is that where the state holds basic information on an individual, that information is the individual's property on loan to the state. The state can use it and the individual is entitled to demand it back at any time. And there's no way MPs can do their job properly and hold the state to account unless there is a freedom of information act. A freedom of information act is essential to a free democracy.
What's your position on encryption?
I really don't think you can or you should stop it. I've never believed this business that all encryption codes must be breakable by the intelligence services. That's nonsense - if the state is clever enough it'll just have to crack 'em itself. As far as I'm concerned, encryption is part of secret communication. You might as well say that the state has a right to look in every letter, which it doesn't. It has a right to look in certain letters if it goes through the proper democratic procedures, and I wouldn't want to take that away; there are circumstances when that's appropriate, providing it's properly, democratically accountable.
What's your position on ID cards?
I actually think in ten or twenty years' time we'll all have ID cards because we'll choose to have them. If someone wants to offer the facility of an ID smartcard that people choose to use because it enables them to lead a simpler life, that's up to them. But it should never, ever be a mandatory requirement; that is a direct infringement of civil liberties.
Would you set limits on any other types of government information gathering?
There are two ways the information technology revolution can go. The first way is to allow the state to have access to all the people it controls all the time, and that's the way politicians will want it to go; it makes their job easier, even if it's not done for nefarious purposes. The other way to go is to make the new technologies - all the information in the known world - accessible on a universal access basis. It is the second of those routes which is the only safe route to go.