The government has unveiled plans to radically alter its powers to intercept communications in the UK. The new legislation would allow it to monitor the phone calls, mails, texts and website visits, including social media interactions, of every person in the UK.
The Home Office said the changes are vital in order to tackle crime and terrorism.
The new laws would mean the government could collect data such as who an individual is in contact with and for how long and how often and what websites they visit without the need for a warrant. A court-issued warrant would still be needed in order to accesses the content of these communications.
However, the plans have been met with near-universal condemnation. CBR looks at the reaction.
The Home Office
It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public.
We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data as technology changes. Communications data includes time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address. It does not include the content of any phone call or email and it is not the intention of government to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications.
Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch
[This is] an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran. This is an absolute attack on privacy online and it is far from clear this will actually improve public safety, while adding significant costs to internet businesses.
David Davis, Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden
What they haven’t explained is why they intent to eavesdrop on all of us without a warrant, which is what used to happen.
Historically governments have been kept out of our private lives. Our freedom and privacy has been protected by using the courts [to get approval to access communications]. You shouldn’t go beyond that in a decent, civilised society but that is what is being proposed. This is an unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary innocent people.
Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group
Of course the security services should be able to get a warrant to monitor genuine suspects, but blanket collection, without suspicion, or powers to compel companies to hand over data on the say-so of a police officer would be very wrong.
The saga of complicity between senior police officers and Murdoch’s journalists should tell us how vulnerable people’s privacy can be. The government should stand by the commitments both parties made before the election to protect our privacy.
Kathryn Wynn, senior associate at Pinsent Masons
On the privacy side little has changed as ISPs and carriers are already required to give GCHQ access to information on request. What’s new is that this legislation means it could be demanded in real-time, rather than simply asking for historic data. Whether this is feasible or not depends on whether there is the technology available to deliver that information quickly – otherwise ISPs will struggle to comply through no fault of their own.
Given the enormous number of transactions involved there’s also the danger that GCHQ will suffer from information overload, trying to sift through millions of calls, emails, texts and web visits to find what they are looking for in real-time, rather than analysing patterns in historic data instead.
Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, writing on Twitter
I’ve formally asked HASC to call Home Secretary & Head of Counter-Terror to give public evidence about communications data proposals.
Just spoke to Keith Vaz, who Chairs Home Affairs Select C’ttee. He agrees we should call Home Sec and OSCT head in to give evidence ASAP. I obviously dislike whole concept of centralised databases of communications data – and don’t always trust the security services claims!
