Press reports of late in the national media have appeared to confirm that the coalition Government has revived plans to extend the collection and storage of communications data – the records of e-mail, text and phone calls – for the entire population.
What pro-civil liberties and Human Rights group Liberty terms the “ominously titled” Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) was shelved by the Labour Government back in 2009 following a fierce backlash against a 2009 Home Office consultation (to which Liberty responded.
Upon taking office, the coalition Government promised to “end the storage of Internet and e-mail records without good reason”. However, instead of reversing already problematic powers that allow for mass surveillance, Liberty is worried the Government is now apparently planning to go further.
Problems with the coalition’s proposals
As far as Liberty’s concerned there are “several problems” with the Government’s stated proposals.
- Vast data collection will turn “a nation of citizens into a nation of suspects” – everyone will be affected, irrespective of any suspicion, just in case the information may prove useful one day.
- ‘Communications data’ can build a very intimate picture of someone’s personal life, including which websites they browse, whom they call on a regular basis and from where, when and for how long they do so.
- Government is seeking to justify such powers on the basis of fighting terrorism and other serious crime, but Liberty states: “Under RIPA, access to the information will be granted to all local authorities and hundreds of other public bodies for a wide range of purposes that have nothing to do with crime-fighting.”
- ‘Blanket’ surveillance of everyone in the UK will inevitably lead to discrimination. “Experience teaches us that amassing large databases of personal information invites data mining’, according to Liberty. In other words: “Fishing expeditions based on clumsy stereotypes rather than reasonable suspicion of individual wrongdoing.”
Liberty understands that the only way to achieve what is proposed is by physically intercepting all communications, in turn requiring Internet Service Providers to install ‘Black Box’ Deep Packet Inspection software. This means that the proposed legislation would allow the building of a technical infrastructure for the blanket interception of all communications.
It has also been reported that the Government is planning to rush towards legislation in the forthcoming Queen’s Speech on 9 May. Liberty will be campaigning and lobbying against these plans, warning that “the terrifying aspirations of a group of Whitehall technocrats cannot be allowed to trump the personal privacy of law-abiding Britons”.
On the official Liberty website, press officer Ian McDonald comments: “Whomever is in Government, the grand snooping ambitions of security agencies don’t change. There is an element of whoever you vote for, the Empire strikes back. The coalition agreement explicitly promised to ‘end unnecessary data retention’ and restore our civil liberties. Do they still believe it? At the very least we need less secret briefing and more public consultation if this promise is to be abandoned.”
Where does the Government stand at present?
In a video interview with the BBC, deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has talked of “myths and scaremongering” in the national media when it comes to this issue.
According to the Liberal Democrat’s leader, legislation designed to ramp up monitoring of e-mails and web use “will not be rammed through Parliament” while any proposals to legislatory reform will be published in the first instance to allow a detailed debate.
In essence, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are currently obligated to keep details of users’ web access, e-mail and Internet phone calls for 12 months under an EU directive stemming from 2009. Although the content of the calls is not kept, the sender, recipient, time of communication and geographical location does have to be recorded.
The proposed new law – which the Home Office says will be brought in “as soon as parliamentary time allows” – would extend those requirements to social networking sites and Internet phone services like Skype.
Clegg told the BBC people should wait to see the full proposals before judging them, and has insisted that the content of any communications would still only be accessible with a warrant.
“Any measures will be proportionate,” insisted the deputy Prime Minister. “They will not sacrifice people’s civil liberties. We will not create a new Government database and we will not give police new powers to look into people’s e-mails.”
In tandem with noises from the Home Office, Clegg has stressed more than once that safeguards for privacy and civil liberties are “absolutely guaranteed”. He stated: “Let’s be clear, we aren’t simply going to ram some legislation through Parliament. We will make sure our proposals are published in draft. People can look at them and people can debate them because there’s a legitimate debate to be had here.”
View from the Equality and Human Rights Commission
Like Liberty, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has also responded to the statements from central Government.
On its official website, a spokesperson says: “The Government’s e-mail and web monitoring plans would potentially be incompatible with the right to privacy of many ordinary people in the UK. The Commission’s own research last year into information privacy concluded that there was a lack of proper regulatory oversight and too much conflicting legislation, all of which fails to provide adequate protection for citizens and their private information.”
The spokesperson continues: “We found that the way in which the Government and its agencies collect, use and store personal data is not respecting people’s right to privacy. However, because of the complexity of the current laws obligations are unclear and authorities may be unaware they are breaking the law. These issues need to be properly addressed rather than introducing new proposals which further reduce people’s rights to privacy.”
An official statement issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office reads: “The Information Commissioner’s role in this Home Office project, both under this Government and the last, has been to press for the necessary limitations and safeguards to mitigate the impact on citizens’ privacy. We will continue to seek assurances, including the implementation of the results of a thorough Privacy Impact Assessment. Ultimately, the decision as to whether to proceed with the project is one which has to be taken by Parliament.”
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