UK: "Snoopers Charter"

[harrybarracuda]

'Snooper's Charter' Proposals Are Unveiled



Last Updated: 11:44AM 09/05/2012

Katie Stallard, media & technology correspondent

Controversial Government proposals to increase digital surveillance in Britain have been announced in the Queen's Speech.

The Home Office wants powers to monitor internet traffic, known as communications data, to keep track of serious criminals and terrorists.
But civil liberties campaigners have described the measures as a "Snooper's Charter" and a "dangerous" invasion of privacy.
Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, told Sky News: "We're really worried about these new plans for internet snooping, they represent a huge increase in the amount of surveillance government has that are really not appropriate.
"People need to be suspected before they're surveilled - that's how the law should work, but what the Government's saying is: 'Were going to treat you all as suspects, and ask you to trust us not to abuse that data.'
"These are very dangerous measures - they cross a line, they take us from targeting people that we suspect, to targeting everybody and really lowering the barriers of what the Government can find out about you without going through a court."
But criminal justice professionals say the proposals are about keeping pace with the changes in technology - to catch paedophiles and terrorists - not reading your Facebook status.
In a recent operation in Lincolnshire, for example, codenamed Operation Alpine, police found an industrial-sized computer server hidden inside a cottage, which was used in the distribution of millions of images of child sex abuse.
Using that data, four men were convicted in the UK, and the email trail led them to hundreds more suspects worldwide.
Jim Gamble, former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre CEOP, said: "What if we didn't have legislation that allowed us to keep up with the criminals, and in six years from now we weren't able to investigate rapists, child abusers or terrorists?
"People would be coming back and saying - what were you thinking of? Why didn't you put in the investment to make sure that you at least kept up with the criminal?"
The proposals would involve recording "communications data" - the digital fingerprint of who messaged who, when and where - not the actual content of the communication.
The Home Office says it is just an extension of existing powers to cover new technology, as more and more communication moves online, jeopardising the ability of police and security services to keep pace with criminals.
A recent estimate said 25% of requests for communications data by police and agencies could no longer be met.
But some have questioned the cost and the complexity of the operation this would involve.
Professor Peter Sommer, a digital forensics specialist who has acted as an expert witness in some of the country's biggest terrorism and paedophile trials, explained: "In the old-fashioned telephone, when you make a call, a physical connection is made between you and the person you are speaking to, via a series of switches.
"What makes the internet efficient is that you don't need all those direct lines, you just need one connection - all the information is put into what's called a packet and each packet will contain information about where it's coming from and where it's going to, and then the content of the packet.
"But separating the content from the communications data involves specialist hardware called 'deep packet inspection' as well as all the individual filters you'd need for all the different types of internet services, which will in turn need constantly updating, because as we all know - the internet is constantly changing - so there's a vast ongoing cost we have to contemplate."
The Home Office says it does have the technology to make this work, that the content of messages will not be accessed, and that these measures would only be used during criminal investigations, when they could be justified as "necessary and proportionate".
In other words, those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.
But civil liberties groups are less than convinced. They say this is a digital line that, once crossed, will give the Government unprecedented access to monitor the internet.

[harrybarracuda]

'Snooper's charter' removed from crime bill in last-minute coalition talks

Tracking of email, internet, Facebook and text use turned into stand-alone measure as ministers seek to speed bill's passage

• Alan Travis, home affairs editor
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 May 2012 12.35 BST

The plan to boost surveillance has been criticised by Liberal Democrats and the Tory libertarian right. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images





The bill to track everyone's email, Facebook, text and internet use has proved to be one of the most controversial within the coalition and has been slow-streamed in the government's legislative timetable after last-minute coalition talks.
The measure, which has been criticised by civil liberty campaigners as a "snooper's charter", has been taken out of a more general Home Office- and Ministry of Justice-sponsored crime and courts bill, which ministers need to get on to the statute book as fast as possible.
The decision to have a stand-alone bill follows Nick Clegg's insistence that it must be accompanied by the "strongest possible safeguards". These are expected to include oversight on a case-by-case basis by a surveillance commissioner, a review of existing measures to protect the security of everyone's data, and the publication of a privacy-impact statement.
Clegg has also promised that the internet-tracking proposal will not be "rammed through parliament", and that open parliamentary hearings will be held to examine draft clauses of the legislation. The proposal has also attracted sharp criticism from the Tory libertarian right, with the former shadow home secretary David Davis calling it an "unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary people".
The measure is expected to require internet service providers to retain and store for 12 months the 25% of "traffic data"– who sent an email, to whom, from where and at what time – that they currently do not keep for their own commercial billing purposes. Overseas-based internet companies, including Gmail and Hotmail, are currently excluded from the legal requirement to keep billing data for 12 months.
Security and police chiefs say such communications data has played a significant role in every major security service counter-terrorist investigation in the past decade. But the rapidly changing nature of internet use means that they can no longer track communications between terrorist or criminal suspects.
The monitoring data will be available to the police and security services only in "real time", in cases involving active terrorist plots, and in hostage or kidnapping situations where lives are at risk.
The bill will restrict access to the most sensitive types of data to the police, emergency services and intelligence agencies. However, local authorities, which were responsible for 1,800 out of the 500,000 requests for such data last year, will need the approval of a magistrate in future for such requests.
The separate crime and courts bill will set up the National Crime Agency from next April, speed up immigration appeals and strengthen the powers of UK Border Force officers.
It will also include proposals to introduce television cameras into courts, reform judicial appointments and allow magistrates sitting on their own to operate from community centres and police stations so that they can deal with low-level, uncontested cases within days or even hours of a suspect's arrest.

[Bettyboo]

They do it anyways. Orwell was right in 1948...

[Neo]

It's coming one way or another, what the UK needs is an undetectable underpant bomb type revelation to make it all seem necessary for the well being of the then hysterical population.

BTW.. Do terrorists advertise their intentions on FB and Twitter?, ..seems rather amateur to me.

[david44]

I read of a gas blast in Bangkok, revealed wicked muslim plot to serve a second Madras to inebriated TV voyeurs at Cup Finale

[harrybarracuda]

Oh fuck, Dave's been on the piss again.