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UK To Track All Browsing, Email, and Phone Calls

Posted by samzenpus on from the that-about-covers-it dept.

Sara Chan writes "The UK government plans to introduce legislation that will allow the police to track every phone call, email, text message and website visit made by the public. The information will include who is contacting whom, when and where and which websites are visited, but not the content of the conversations or messages. Every communications provider will be required to store the information for at least a year."

7 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Senationalist headline by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about: *Proposal* in UK To Track All Browsing, Email, and Phone Calls?

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Senationalist headline by cappp · · Score: 4, Informative
      Isn't this already the law? At least, so far as preserving records is concerned. The EU Directive 2006/24/EC pretty much made it a requirement that states retain records of everything being done.

      Member States shall adopt measures to ensure that the data specified in Article 5 of this Directive are retained in accordance with the provisions thereof, to the extent that those data are generated or processed by providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of a public communications network within their jurisdiction in the process of supplying the communications services concerned.

      Article 5
      Categories of data to be retained
      (2) concerning Internet access, Internet e-mail and Internet telephony

      Further, the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 in the UK facilitated the state's power to do just that.

      So I'm just wondering what the difference being proposed is? If the proposal headling is sensational then surely the responce to it is to given the existance of legislation already? Is it the real-time tracking thats at issue? The Telegraph article only included

      We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.

    2. Re:Senationalist headline by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Informative

      The last time I saw a proposal like that (specific wording was a pledge to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason") was a few months back. It came from the very same coalition government who are proposing this surveillance.

      To be honest I'm actually disappointed. I didn't have especially high hopes, but I was expecting a little better than this.

  2. Didn't we decide we don't want this by 91degrees · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hey, guys - we voted against the other lot for this reason. Ah well. Hopefully the libs will decide to stick to one of their election promises and vote against this. If they don't then there's quite frankly no point in having the coalition in the first place.

  3. Re:Encrypte Everything by dotKuro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Encryption of your files is worthless when you can be arrested for failing to give up passwords as per the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. (Which would be more accurately named the Irregulation of Investigatory Powers Act, as it pretty much declares open season on those under suspicion.)

  4. Nothing new by bart416 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Most mobile phone operators already keep statistics on who you call when (they need it for billing information in case somebody doesn't agree with their bill) and emergency services are capable of pinning down the location of mobile phones in less than a minute. And ISPs are already required to keep quite some information as well by EU regulations. So I'm not really sure this will change anything. Except provide a legal framework to (ab)use this information.

  5. Re:Encrypte Everything by Xest · · Score: 4, Informative

    No they can't.

    As I pointed out last time RIPA came up, it's much more like a search warrant.

    See my post here explaining it in more detail and my followup responses which explains, and provides links to the relevant legislation straight from the horses mouth:

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1809504&cid=33806568

    RIPA is an awful piece of legislation and has no place in a modern democracy, however there are many myths about it like that which you have stated which are simply just fantasy. RIPA is bad, but it's not quite that bad. It needs to be withdrawn from the books either way, but let's not over-dramatise the issue, else legitimate calls for it's removal based on legitimate concerns will just get lost amongst the madness.