New 'Snooping' Law 'Needed To Keep UK Safe'

Emergency Data Retention Laws 'Deeply Worrying'

Updated: 2:59pm UK, Thursday 10 July 2014

By Tom Cheshire, Technology Correspondent

David Cameron assures us that the new emergency surveillance laws are being introduced merely to "maintain" existing powers.

Except that the European Court of Justice declared back in April those very powers are illegal, and "interfere" with citizens' fundamental right to privacy.

The UK has been told its snooping powers are now illegal. So now it's simply changing the law to make them legal.

The Government is at pains to point out that no content can be accessed without a warrant, just metadata - which is data about communications.

Metadata is extraordinarily powerful, though. The Government can tell who I called, when I called them, and for how long.

And with smartphones constantly tracking location data, they can know your exact movements for the last year.

According to the ECJ, this data allows "very precise conclusions concerning private lives" - including where you live, where you move, your social relationships and your social environments.

This is exactly why they removed the Data Retention Directive.

They decided that the blanket surveillance of citizens is unacceptable.

The Government needs these powers to investigate terrorists, paedophiles and criminals.

Apparently they are finding new ways to communicate with each other - a veritable League of Evil.

Except that we have seen how local councils have abused surveillance powers to catch people putting their rubbish out on the wrong day.

Organisations like the Royal Mail even had access to the phone records of every citizen in the UK for the last year.

New oversight is promised to prevent this sort of abuse. But local government and Government departments will still be able to access this data.

We are also promised a wide ranging review of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

That should be welcomed, but from Theresa May's answers in the House of Commons, it sounds like it's as much about extending the powers of security services as it is creating accountability.

And then there's the framing of this as emergency legislation, rushed through Parliament.

We may well be approaching a cliff edge, as David Cameron says, when companies start to delete stored data useful to investigations.

But we have known we were approaching this particular cliff edge for three months, when the ECJ made its decision. As David Davis noted, this is a very predictable sort of emergency.

When such fundamental rights are at stake, the public deserve a proper debate, rather than all parties secretly joining agreeing to rush laws through.

Much will depend on what's in the Bill itself - a draft version of the Bill is being published today.

But this legislation, both what it enables and how it's been presented, is deeply worrying for those who value privacy and individual freedom.

Having looked through the draft law and its explanatory notes - recently published - there are a couple of further points.

First, buried in Paragraph 43 of the notes are the purposes for which communications data can be looked at.

Along with interests of national security, and in preventing crime, there is this: "For the purpose of assessing or collecting any tax, duty, levy or other imposition, contribution or charge payable to a government department."

That seems pretty broad – not just collecting, but assessing, and by any government department. Yikes.

Second, as David Meyer notes over at Gigaom, the UK government can ask foreign companies for data outside the UK, about activities conducted outside the UK.

If anything , it looks like this emergency legislation is expanding powers, rather than merely restoring them.

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