UK Government Expands Spying Powers

An anonymous submitter provides the best write-up of this story: "Today's front page story of The Guardian covers an attempt by the UK government to expand the number of organisations entitled to demand communications data under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). Previously only Customs and Excise, the Inland Revenue, various law enforcement bodies and intelligence agencies were able to demand this information. The list of agencies proposed in the new Draft Statutory Instrument authorises practically everyone from local councils to the Food Standards Agency to demand traffic data. Traffic data includes almost all information attached to a communication apart from the contents of the communication itself. The location of your mobile phone, for example. Who you called on it and who's called you. The URLs you've visited or IP addresses of people who've visited your server... and the list goes on. The two o'clock update has a quote from the PM's spokesman reassuring us how safe we're all going to be once the Department of Work and Pensions can check our phone records. There's also an editorial piece to emphasise that this is a Bad Thing."

Comments

You're not that special?

[isotope23]

Ummm generally I belive in mind over matter,

The government doesn't mind what you do if you don't matter. However if you do something outrageous, say protest some inane policy or attend a rally etc YOU WILL begin to matter.

In the US, the FBI started watching, taking pictures and keeping a file on the SCA for godsakes! For those who don't know, these are the re-inactment types who dress in armor and play at knighthood.

Why watch them you ask? Apparently because they had a "king" and so might wish to topple the government for a monarchy.

But what you said is true, you will probably never get touched as long as you STAY WITHIN the approved thought/consumption patterns and do nothing to attract attention.

UKGov currently embroiled in 'dig-for-dirt' emails

[mccalli]

Just to emphasise why people should oppose this, a reminder of the UK goverment's latest spin-doctor scandal.

Survivors of the Paddington rail disaster have recently discovered that the Department of Transport was digging into their private life. The intent was to find out their political affilitations and use these to discredit them. The reason? They were critical of a government minister, the legendarily poor Steven Byers.

In other words, being critical of government policy was enough to start an investigation into their private lives. This is causing a small scandal here at present, a scandal which really should be much larger and probably only isn't because we're so used to such poor standards from our politicians.

Cheers,
Ian