News from the New Party

Big Brother: stupid but persistent

Big Brother may be stupid, but he is also persistent:

The Brown government is considering a central database of all UK communications data including times and durations of phone calls, emails and internet access for every British citizen.

The draft bill is still being considered by ministers and a Home Office spokeswoman told us no decision had yet been reached.

The spokeswoman told The Register: "Ministers have made no decision on whether a central database will be included in that draft bill." She refused to compare the proposed legislation to Ripa, as it is still only a proposal.

Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act passed in 2000 and the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001, companies like telcos and internet service providers already have to keep this information in case it is needed by a police or security service investigation.

It appears what is different now is that this information will be actively collected and stored in one place by the government. Reports on the proposals suggest authorities will still need to go to the courts to gain access to the database. However, such a massive amount of data will be ripe for speculative data-mining and fishing techniques, rather than more targeted searches.

More to the point, given this government's gross incompetence in safeguarding any of our data, having all our comms info in one place has to be a major concern.

Under Ripa police or other authorities like local councils can approach service providers and demand access to anyone's communications data.

The Assistant Information Commissioner, Jonathan Bamford, said: "If the intention is to bring all mobile and internet records together under one system, this would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the state to hold every UK citizen's phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable..."

 

People get used to living with threats. They did during the IRA bombings, and they have now. It may be hard for the government to accept this, since they may be blamed for not doing enough to prevent the next atrocity, but it is time that the government noticed that the public (from Daily Mail readers to Guardian readers) has started to settle on what they consider an acceptable risk of terrorism, and an acceptable price to achieve that level of risk.

While we would not necessarily agree with this, it is reasonable to ask just how useful some of these schemes really are in the fight against terrorism.  As noted before, the government already has access this kind of information under the Regulation if Investigatory Powers Act (2000).  What else is gained by keeping all of this information in a single database, if a court order is still to be required to gain access to the data?  The suspicion has to be that this is surveillance for the sake of surveillance - an infringement of civil liberties that serves no purpose.  It should therefore be opposed.