The March of the Surveillance State

Alex Massie

Tuesday, 10th November 2009

Good grief:

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer's personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting.

Despite widespread opposition over Britain's growing surveillance society, 653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a massive Government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns. [Emphasis added to note the gallows hilarity of this.]

...The new law will increase the amount of personal data which can be accessed by officials through the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which is supposed to be used for combatting terrorism..

The latest figures on the use of the RIPA legislation by public bodies, show that state bodies including town halls made 519,260 requests last year - one every minute - to spy on the phone records and email accounts of members of the public.

The number of requests has risen by 44 per cent in two years to a rate of 1,422 new cases every day, leading to claims of an abuse of using the powers for trivial matters such as littering and dog fouling.

Really, assuming the Telegraph report is accurate, it's hard to know where to begin with this sort of thing because, of course, there's no end to it even though, natch, there's ample evidence that existing powers are misused every single day.

Not the least of the tests facing a putative Conservative government is the extent to which they roll-back this sort of thing. They sometimes talk quite a good game but one cannot quite shrug off the suspicion, unworthy as it may be, that they may find these laws rather useful once they're in power. Chris Grayling, rightly, warns about "mission creep" now, but what will he do in government?

Filed under: Britain (283 more articles) , Civil liberties (9 more articles) , Labour (371 more articles) , Terrorism (84 more articles)

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Nicholas

November 10th, 2009 9:45am Report this comment

A good post Alex and the niggling worry that the Tories are not as enthusiastic about rolling all this back (as they should be) is well noted.

There is plenty of evidence for "mission creep" in the anti-terror laws already in force (the police having difficulties with policing the photography ban for example) and the definition of "extremist" seems to be worryingly elastic in government and police minds, becoming almost conflated with "protestor". It is long since past the point of being the thin end of a wedge and the news is almost daily reporting stories of state officials exceeding or abusing their powers or wasting public money on the most ridiculous arrests, investigations and prosecutions - as if there are not enough real criminal problems for them to deal with.

This amount of bureaucratic surveillance and cross-referencing is very resonant of East Germany (whatever the paranoia accusing naysayers naysay) and is just far too broad to be supervised responsibily or with the necessary checks and balances being effective. It is intrusion en masse, a broad brush and lazy imposition of power "because they can" and it needs to be challenged and pushed back or more will follow.

Fergus Pickering

November 10th, 2009 9:50am Report this comment

Heavens! Does this mean my visits to Thai ladyboy sites will become common knowledge?

Anne Wotana Kaye

November 10th, 2009 10:39am Report this comment

These moves are not against terrorism. Why should they be when Nu Labour is an active supporter of everything against the western, civilised way of life which was once the norm in this country? Neighbours being actively encouraged to report on others, notices in public transport urging people to "grass" on benefit frauds, sneaks scrambling through the rubbish bins, the list goes on. Without being paranoid, I imagine these blogs are being recorded and scrutinised in some official office. Hitler and Stalin must be laughing their heads off in whichever hell they have been sent to. Somehow, I don't think Cameron will have either the balls or the inclination to stop the rot if he gets in.

TomTom

November 10th, 2009 10:50am Report this comment

As Britain gets the media and communications freedoms of China it will no doubt trumpet the successes of the economy and parading happy citizens. It is wonderful to see Britain taking a leading role inside the EU insisting these "progressive" policies become EU-wide and seamless.

How easily Parliament was coopted into The Project: The Internal Coup

Sir Graphus

November 10th, 2009 10:51am Report this comment

Yes Fergus, it does. And if a relatively minor council official is able to find this out, he can sell the info to someone who might accept a payment in return for not telling your wife. This is one problem. Not that I approve of you visiting Thai ladyboy sites, but the state shouldn’t be the facilitator of blackmail, all the same.

Moreover, the state will have the ability to know who is visiting sites that they don’t really like; for example, civil rights blogs and the like. They could then give those people a good sweating over their tax returns. Normally I am prone to have a good laugh at the conspiracy nutters, but vast power for the state to harrass its opponents is given by this new law.

Diversity

November 10th, 2009 7:53pm Report this comment

The Independent's reports, first some time ago that this nonsense was on the governemnt's agenda; and today that it is being kicked into the long grass, appear to be rather more accurate, timely and relevant.