Theresa May Named UK's Internet Villain of the Year

An anonymous reader writes with news that Theresa May, the UK's Secretary of State for the Home Department, has been named the UK internet industry's villain of the year. She won this dubious honor for pushing the UK's controversial "snooper's charter" legislation, which would require ISPs to retain massive amounts of data regarding their subscribers for no less than a year. May championed the legislation without consulting the internet industry.

Conversely, "The MPs Tom Watson and David Davis were jointly named internet hero for their legal action against the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act. 'Surveillance has dominated both the hero and villain shortlists for number of years, and it was felt Davis and Watson were some of the best informed politicians on the subject,' the ISPA said."

Comments

Re:I'm surprised

[Teun]

Uhh, Cameron himself said he wants to scrap the European Human Rights Act.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
This European Convention on Human Rights has nothing to do with the European Union and pre-dates it by decades. Its institutions and courts are completely separate.

The Act covers all the rights included in the European Convention.

These rights are: Right to life, right not to be tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment, right not to be held as a slave, right to liberty and security of the person, right to a fair trial, right not be retrospectively convicted for a crime, right to a private and family life, right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, right to freedom of expression, right to freedom of assembly and association, right to marriage, right to an effective remedy, right not to be discriminated against, the right to the peaceful enjoyment of one’s property, and the right to an education.

The European Convention on Human Rights was the brainchild of Conservative Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.
Its chief author was the right-wing Scottish Conservative lawyer Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.
Churchill needs no further introduction. Maxwell Fyfe is otherwise known in history for his forensic cross-examination of Goering at the Nuremberg trials, and for declining to intervene (when Home Secretary) in the hanging of Derek Bentley in 1953.
It is surely one of the most bizarre turns in politics that it is right-wing Conservatives who now oppose a treaty which their direct political predecessors created. There is nothing left-wing, excessively liberal, wet (or whatever) about freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom from government expropriation of private property, the right to due legal process and all the rest of the treaty.

Freedom from state oppression is not an exclusively, or primarily, left wing credo.

Doing away with this 'horrible' act will in my view fit nicely with the ideas Mrs. May is voicing in the name of the Cameron government.