UK MPs Campaign For Internet Privacy

WIAKywbfatw writes "The BBC is reporting that the All Party Internet Group (APIG), a committee of UK MPs has criticised the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act (ATCS) that was pushed through by the British government following the September 11 attacks in the US. As well as a host of other measures aimed at curbing terrorist activities, the ATCS required ISPs to keep customer data for up to six years, which the police have now admitted is illegal, as it contrevenes the Human Rights Act. The APIG is suggesting that data retention be discarded in favour of data preservation, essentially a snap-shot of internet traffic at the time of any future terrorist attacks. Certainly seems like a move to be applauded."

Comments

Human Bandwidth Issues

[nano2nd]

Privacy issues aside, the concept of gathering as much information as possible in an attempt to gain intelligence to prevent acts of terrorism is fundamentally flawed.

Post 9/11, it transpired that we, the supposed forces of good, had intercepted messages between "them", the forces of bad, that would have tipped us of. The trouble was that by the time the messages had been processed, decoded, translated, it was 9/12.

Put simply, we can gather the data, and we do. But we don't have the necessary "human bandwidth" to turn it into usable information within a reasonable timeframe.

Re:Human Bandwidth Issues

[Alrescha]

" I really doubt if the 9/11 thugs sent a message it would ONLY be on the morning they left."

That's not what he said.

With our previous monitoring, we had already intercepted communications between these people. We were unable to interpret these messages in time to be useful. Collecting even *more* data does not help this problem.

A.