UK's Snooper's Charter Hands Over Access To User Data To Several Non-Law Enforcement Agencies
from the ALL-ACCESS-PASS dept
The UK's "Snooper's Charter" was already terrible. The draft bill, finally released earlier this month, confirmed the UK government would be mandating encryption backdoors and requiring the retention of citizens' web browsing history. On top of that, the bill confirmed dragnet surveillance by UK agencies was already in place (unbeknownst to its "oversight") and, in fact, is looking to legalize the snooping after the fact.
The Investigatory Powers Act, as can be inferred by its name, would obviously allow any number of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to access the data and communications retained by ISPs. But it's not just GCHQ, M16 and various police forces being granted access to UK internet users' web browsing history. As Joseph Cox at Motherboard points out, it's also several agencies with seemingly no need for additional access to communications data.
On page 210 of the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, a planned piece of UK surveillance legislation that was announced earlier this month, is a table of “relevant public authorities.” These authorities would “have the power to obtain communications data,” according to a briefing paper on the Bill.Despite the parade of child-murdering, drug-dealing, criminal-masterminding horrors that serve as slightly-less-dry interludes to the bill's text, access to "all" retained data will be provided to a long list of mundane regulatory agencies, presumably for the sake of the children.
As you might expect, the list includes various police forces, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the UK's signals intelligence agency GCHQ, and the Ministry of Defence. However, it also includes agencies such as the Department of Health, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Department for Transport, whose need for such surveillance data is less obviously clear.
Most of these agencies are granted access to all "communications data." The justification for this is laid out in the table starting on page 210 of the pdf, with most of these agencies utilizing Section 46(7)(b) ("for the purpose of preventing or detecting a crime or of preventing disorder").
- Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs
- Department for Transport
- Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland
- A fire and rescue authority under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004
- Food Standards Agency
- Gambling Commission
- Gangmasters Licensing Authority
- Health and Safety Executive
- National Health Service Business Services Authority
- Duty Manager of Ambulance Trust Control Rooms
- Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust
- Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board
But the bill contains several other justifications for the obtaining of user data, not all of which seem severe enough to warrant special legislation -- like "collecting any tax, duty, levy or other imposition" or "exercising functions relating to financial stability."
Not exactly the terrorist-hunting, child kidnapper-finding wonderbill it's being depicted as -- often in its own pages. Worse, the stuff authorized here is already in place and has already been used. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group:
“This is already happening under RIPA—there were around half a million data requests made last year. Many of these were by the police but also by organisations such as Royal Mail, the Department of Work and Pensions, and local authorities.” RIPA, or the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, is another controversial piece of UK surveillance legislation.In other words, the new bill is codification redundancy. The UK government is hoping to ensure the snooping it's been doing for years, via a variety of agencies, will be solidly in place for years to come.
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Filed Under: investigatory powers bill, ipbill, law enforcement, regulations, snooper's charter, theresa may, uk
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Re:
if we built a skynet/big brother system, we better start using it?
don`t we?
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Middle managers have a mind-set that says they have to make their mark. Even if the thing they are responsible for is working fine, they cannot leave well alone. They have to be seen to "make improvements". If you are a manager in the middle of an organisation such as the NSA or GCHQ, how do you go about this? How do you differentiate yourself from your predecessor? The answer is simple, you make changes. Even if they're not necessary. Increasing the scope is popular. If before you did x & y, go on to do x, y & z.
In any normal organisation this would be limited by someone in accounts who would say "let's not do z because it's too expensive". Even in government. Budgets are managed all the time. In the security services however, there's a problem, budgets are kind of guaranteed. It requires courage to say "let's not do z" because the instant the next tragedy occurs, anyone with an agenda will come crawling out of the woodwork looking for blood. And heads will roll.
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Department for Work and Pensions
Not to say that the whole bill isn't ridiculous, but within the remit of investigating criminal activity, the DWP do have a legitimate cause to access data which can help with this, and the internet generally has resulted in at least some benefit cheats being caught without needing these powers.
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Re: Department for Work and Pensions
If they believe that someone's filing bogus claims, they can investigate that one person, they don't need to be able to sort through everyone's data to do their job.
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Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
Feature! I'm surprised not to see the BBC on the list as they expend a lot of costly effort trying to sort out watchers vs. non-watchers. I'm sure they'll eventually be added, along with all the performance rights orgs who need this data to protect Imaginary Property rightsholders.
"Mission creep" is the term for this. We used to joke about the phenomenon of every program eventually gaining the ability to send email. Same with gov't programs, but in a manner leading towards totalitarianism instead.
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Re: Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
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Many did. However, it wasn't an actual word you'd find in a dictionary then. I've never seen the point in using unnecessary extraneous characters so even if I'm a Canuck, I prefer favor over favour (& etc). The British al-yoo-min-i-um cured me of that foolishness.
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Then Gutenberg printed his Bible.
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Pedantry is generally frowned upon, for good reason. Correctness is good. Minutia isn't. Hence, the well deserved reputation of "Grammar Nazis."
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Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
Very well put
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Re: Department for Work and Pensions
there is plenty of books on how this all human cattle management makes sense
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Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
or drinking the water, or breathing the air?
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Re: Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
In general, most people don't take well to insults and condescending words from others, so unless you're just ranting for the fun of it, might want to use some different words when describing others, whether in general or specifically.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
sheeple are trained to reject foreign ideas;
they are disabled and cannot entertain a thought without rejecting it.
thence everything you post in techdirt is kind of "just ranting for the fun of it"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
I've spent more than a little time in numerous discussions on TD, even when I knew, or strongly suspected, that it wouldn't do anything to change the mind of the person I was responding to at the time. Why? Because I wasn't doing it for their sake, I was doing it for the sake of those that might read what I wrote, and who might be a bit more willing to consider things, even if they ended up disagreeing with me. If your comment can get someone to think about something, to question it and come to a more informed decision, even if it's the same one as before but with a bit more thought put into it, then that's awesome, and well worth the effort.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
No. If you want to do practical politics, then you must be brutally manipulative. You want to get as many people as possible agreeing with you, as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Or, if they do not exactly agree with you —most likely because they do not comprehend you— then at least they vote for your awesomeness. Practical politics is about getting what your side wants. Getting it.
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Re: Department for Work and Pensions
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/depressed-woman-loses-benefits-over-facebook-photos-1 .861843
But then the UK routinely slashes benefits to people who need them meanwhile no one is after the tax cheats who owe millions. I mean you had the gall to not show up at the appointed time for your meeting, the fact you went to your wifes funeral instead is no excuse for not turning up when we demand you turn up, benefits cut back for you slacker.
There are ways to give investigative powers without scooping up everything. It does appear the money would have been better spent training those civil servants in the idea that those who require their help are not all subhuman and worthy of contempt. Giving petty dictators the ability to sift everyones info totally won't lead to more people being cut off for crappy reasons or more of those in need ending up dead or hospitalized.... wanna buy a bridge in brooklyn?
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Re: Department for Work and Pensions
In that case they should have been happy to promote this type of thing as the purpose of the act instead of hiding it behind terrorism.
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Re: Re: Department for Work and Pensions
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All of the little people should just accept we will have total awareness into their lives, while we deny them to means to keep us honest... because we are the good guys "trust us".
We let them take an inch, and we finally caught up to them the miles ahead they ran... now they want to get a marathon ahead. Pity they don't seem to think that angering the masses will end poorly for them.
There is a 5th every month. Seems like a good day to put the fear of the people back into them. Take back what they used fear to steal, or accept the party line and repeat how everything is fine while walking across a scorched plain.
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That phrase "preventing disorder" is all the excuse they need to do pretty much anything.
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That means, they were breaking the law. They were illegally intercepting the peoples communications. If I were to so much as record a conversation, a conversation I'm a participant in, I could be charged with wire tapping laws. They were stealing everyone's internet AND phone data! Lets see some prosecution of these law breakers!
How in the hell do they expect the people to follow the law when the people creating the law, are blatantly breaking it. Then passing laws after the fact to cover their illegal activity? I'm getting really fucking sick of these double standards.
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Royal Mail
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Re: Royal Mail
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You cost one of your betters money by saying bad things about their crap product, you will be sued.
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Re: Re: Royal Mail
Bring it on! Dog food tasted better.
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Re: Royal Mail
There is a small silver lining here; the UK's Information Commissioner (once upon a time the Data Protection Registrar) does have an actual spine.
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Thanks
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It seems they were wrong - the Nazis are all in the UK now.
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you mean project paper clip right?
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very clever indeed
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Liability
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Re: Liability
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Maybe
At that point, the rest of it stands as legal and they have won.
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Re: Maybe
It works for other stuff, I certainly wouldn't put it past them to try it here, though at the same time I'd say it's even odds that they truly are trying to increase the general spying and dissemination of data as much as they seem to be, given how brazen they've been in the past on the matter.
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Re: Re: Maybe
Fear or predictability, i dont know..........like you say, theirs not much i wouldnt put it past them now
We are heading down a dark road with no end in sight
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Yes you can. Democracy is gov't open sourced, after all. It's not like that proprietary shit we put up with from kings and queens (and numerous religious tyrants) a few centuries ago.
Give it your best shot. Fire away. Not that I'm advocating violence or anything, but whatever floats your boat ...
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Generally speaking, neither do I. On the other hand, it does have the single virtue of being the only thing that certain sorts of predators understand, and we'd be foolish (or lunch) if we didn't at least have it in the toolbox and are willing to use it when necessary. On the third hand, pointing a weapon at a predator is not the same as assaulting that predator. Warnings or threats can often eliminate the need to actually carry through.
When the wolves become convinced that the only thing protecting the sheep is a shepherd with a stick, it's time to show them what that stick (or rifle) can do. I'm growing very tired of this always being on the lookout for these predators. Perhaps they need to be culled. If not now, the way they're going that time will eventually arrive.
So, we need to demand of our representatives that we need a law that would stop them from coming back. The law's broken (and worthless) if all it takes to defeat it is perseverence.
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as disgusted as i get over here, i console myself from time to time by realizing i'm where we use z's, not s's. christ, i'd hate to be there.
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Airstrip One
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Human race, victims of its own creations
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I question their moral ethics, frightens and angers me, when i see some of the things they believe they have a right too
The old ways are dying......and the chosen one is on vacation :)
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Methinks you have the wrong thread; the snoopers charter has been on the books for quite some time now.
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Quoted: Unknown
2098
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Can't get more Orwellian that that...
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