Britain to Rush through Emergency Surveillance Law

It looks like Labour will accept the bill on the basis that it will do nothing else than restore what was the law before the EU Court of Justice decided a few months ago that the directive on privacy retention is an invasion of privacy. In response, the opposition demanded that ministers launch a review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which is deemed being the source of excessive surveillance by the security agencies.

The expectations are that the bill will be passed through the Commons in a few days, but many agree that it is no good to pass the law on Thursday when few MPs are likely to be present.

The industry observers explain that the British government is in a hurry because a high court challenged its collection and retention of personal information from ISPs and mobile broadband providers, in spite of the EU ruling. Now the country urgently needs a new law, which will be introduced either as an independent bill or as amendments to the crime bill now going through Parliament.

The critics say that a key decision about how people’s personal data is stored will end up being made by a stitch-up behind closed doors and clouded in secrecy. The chances are that none of the MPs have even read this bill. They point out at the very fact that the government is considering this form of action – according to critics’ opinion, this means that the few people on the Liberal Democrat and Labour front benches who have seen the bill are believed to be complicit.

According to the decision of the European Court of Justice, the routine collection of location and traffic information about phone calls, texts, emails and use of the web, as well as its retention for up to two years endangers the individual’s privacy.

The judges compiled a list of principles to be met by new legislation in order to comply with human rights law – for example, restricting data retention and limiting its periods to “strictly necessary” ones, whatever it means. However, the human rights outfits suspect that the government will simply continue its “privatized snooping”. They claim that it’s a basic principle of a free society that regular citizens are not monitored. Meanwhile, the data retention laws employed in the European Union literally privatized snooping – the companies were simply paid by the governments to collect data and retain it for a year.