Plans to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access the IP addresses used for communication in suspected crimes included in the Queen’s Speech on 8 May have reignited fears of a so-called “snoopers’ charter” among some civil rights groups.
In the speech, The Queen said: “In relation to the problem of matching internet protocol addresses, my Government will bring forward proposals to enable the protection of the public and the investigation of crime in cyberspace.”
The new proposals follow the withdrawal of the Communications Data Bill after opposition from the Deputy Prime Minister.
Writing in the online newsletter Public Service, Matthew D’Arcy said: “The Communications Data Bill was first announced during last year's Queen's Speech. Plans to store data on people's internet activity were pushed forward by Home Secretary Theresa May as necessary for law enforcement to keep pace with serious crime and terrorism in the digital age.
“But despite mounting pressure over the threat of privacy invasion and the bill seemingly being blocked after Nick Clegg sent it back to the drawing board, internet data measures have again emerged in this year's speech.”
The Government explained the proposal in a briefing note thus: “As the way in which we communicate changes, the data needed by the police is no longer always available. While they can, where necessary and proportionate to do so as part of a specific criminal investigation, identify who has made a telephone call (or sent an SMS text message), and when and where, they cannot always do the same for communications sent over the internet, such as email, internet telephony or instant messaging. This is because communications service providers do not retain all the relevant data.
“When communicating over the Internet, people are allocated an Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people. In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them.”
The new proposals have not been uniformly condemned by all civil rights activists.
Data rights pressure group The Open Rights Group said it was celebrating the removal of the original proposals from the speech.
Its executive director Jim Killock blogged: "This may still go beyond the basic principle of recording data for business purposes, and allowing lawful access to it when necessary, but is a long way from the original proposals for sweeping trawls for data, plus engines to analyse it.”
He posted a major caveat, however: “What will not go away is the fear of politicians of getting surveillance of criminals wrong. They usually prefer to cover their backs, which in this case means surveil everything, just in case."
Picture courtesy of www.freeimages.co.uk