How are people feeling lately about the draft UK legislation to monitor e-mails, phone calls and internet use?
I like this line: The government argues the law needs to keep pace with technological changes and
enable the security services to confront changing threats to the UK.
If truly the case, I would expect that the government should be able to come up with plans that would focus on threats to the UK, rather than a blanket monitoring of the entire country (fully understanding this point: laws date back to 2000 and they are not equipped to cover social media, Skype
and other methods of communication.)
I guess my cynicism comes from having friends who work for the Police looking at this data currently, receiving thousands of lines of phone call data (nearest transmission point, number called, duration, etc) from the mobile providers.
This legislation seems like it will produce massive amounts of data, rather than targetting people visiting website xyz, or dialing number x.
What would those safeguards look like to you? I do agree that having a surveillance regime which only related to traditional telecoms services is of limited use, and that covering new forms of communication is appropriate. The controls and balances under RIPA at the moment are too weak, to my mind, but this does not mean that there should not be a more efficient capability for law enforcement to gain access to equivalent material just in more modern services.
ReplyDelete(It's not quite the free for all that you seem to believe here, though - more safeguards would be desirable, but there are some already in place.)
This legislation appears to be following in the footsteps of the US Patriot Act. Realising there are safeguards in effect and the contents are only reachable by a search warrant. However, it's enough knowing that analysis will be occurring on the traffic at GCHQ in Cheltenham, to make me nervious.
ReplyDeleteI'd counter, can you think of any such legislation that similarly impacts such a broad population without cause?
ReplyDeleteI'd counter, can you think of any such legislation that similarly impacts such a broad population without cause?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "without cause" here? I see the existing data retention regime as being pretty much as intrusive, or the "voluntary" retentions by service providers under the Terrorism Act 2006. Extending the regime to cover online communications makes sense, in some ways — but perhaps better to question the need for data retention at all, or, at least, question whether it meets the test of proportionately.
(I'd also say that I reckon that the overall approach of copyright law today impacts more people without cause, too!)
I am not a fan of the data retention regime at all — I've a lot more sympathy for capability of interception, provided that there are sufficient safeguards.
I do struggle with the notion that traditional services must be subject to these laws, and new ones not — if there were to be the case, it would strike me as lacking logic...