Extent of UK snooping revealed

Officials in the UK are routinely demanding huge quantities of 
information about what people do online and who they call, say 
privacy experts.  

05/17/03 (BBC News) Police and other officials are making around 
a million requests for access to data held by net and telephone 
companies each year, according to figures compiled from the 
government, legal experts and the internet industry.  

The findings were announced at a public debate into government 
proposals to widen powers for internet snooping held in London 
this week.  

But a Home Office spokesman disputed the figures, telling BBC 
News Online it estimated that the number of requests were half 
that suggested.  

The requests include telephone billing data, e-mail logs and customer 
details, which privacy experts estimate could amount to a billion 
individual items of data, ranging from credit card numbers to numbers 
dialled.  

Controversial Act

GOVERNMENT SNOOPING
Custom & Excise: 18,940 requests Jan-Mar 2000
Metropolitan Police: 127,000 requests 2001
Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency: 54,000 requests per year
Financial Services Authority: 100 requests per year
DTI Companies Investigation Branch: 200 requests per year
Radio Communications Agency: 400 requests per year
Source: Foundation for Information Policy Research

The police are not the only ones demanding data for criminal 
investigations.  

Government departments such as Custom and Excise, the Scottish 
Drug Enforcement Agency and the Financial Services Authority are 
also routinely requesting information on internet and mobile phone 
customers.  

Despite the number of requests already made for communication data, 
the government is keen to extend the number of public authorities 
that have access to such information.  

It has brought all the legislation that allows access to data together 
under the umbrella of the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers Act.  

The controversial act has been passed through parliament. But much 
of it is yet to be implemented and the Home Office is in the process 
of consulting industry on some of the stickier issues.  

Police friendly

The net industry and the government cannot agree on issues such as 
how long companies should be forced to retain data, with suggestions 
ranging from six months to seven years.  

Running parallel to this is the issue of how much the plans for snooping 
will cost internet firms.  

The government has been reluctant to put a figure on it but Home Office 
representative Simon Watkin said that figures suggesting that ISPs 
would be massively out of pocket have been exaggerated.  

"It will cost fractions of pennies per user session to retain data," he 
added.  

And a Home Office spokesman, responding to the release of the figures 
said it had recently made new proposals to reverse the amount of data 
which public bodies can request and to lay it open to more scrutiny.  

"Our proposals defend the privacy of the citizen whilst ensuring crimes 
are investigated and the law of the land is upheld," said a Home Office 
statement.  

Internet experts have questioned just how easy the process of storing 
data would be.  

"There is an assumption that all data is logged but masses of it flies 
past and no-one grabs hold of it," said Roland Perry of the London 
Internet Exchange, the crossing point for most of the UK's net data.  

Storing of data must be in accordance to service provider's business 
needs he added.  

"Being friendly to police is not a good enough business purpose," he 
said.  

Keeping public informed

"It will need courts to buy into the argument that today's world is 
sufficiently different to that of 30 years ago and for judges to become 
advocates in a new future of privacy law Dan Cooper, lawyer  

For customers who may unwittingly end up on police databases, cost is 
not the issue said the debate organiser Simon Davies, head of the lobby 
group, Privacy International.  

"It is not a cost issue as far as the consumer is concerned. The Home 
Office is saying it has the legal right to retain and access data and 
that has no basis in law," he said.  

"The government can't just say we have the intent to prevent crime 
so therefore we can do more or less what we like," he added.  

Lawyers who spoke at the debate said that the government's claim 
on retaining data contradicted the European Human Rights Act which 
states that there must be a good reason to interfere with personal 
data.  

"It will be eminently challengeable under current jurisprudence and 
will require fundamental changes in the way judges look at the law," 
said Dan Cooper, lawyer with law firm Covington & Burling.  

Judges were unlikely to be happy in this new role, he said. 

"It will need courts to buy into the argument that today's world 
is sufficiently different to that of 30 years ago and for judges 
to become advocates in a new future of privacy law," he said.  

One audience member asked the Home Office if it was prepared to 
inform customers every time a piece of their data had been accessed.  

"We don't think people would want to know every time their data had 
been accessed. In some cases it could be because of a 10 second 
wrong number," said Mr Watkin.  

The overwhelming majority of the audience indicated that they would 
wish to be informed and Mr Watkin conceded that the government would 
consider the idea as part of its consultation.  

Privacy International has launched a 'Know Your Data' campaign which 
calls on UK consumers to demand access to the records held on them 
by phone and internet firms.  

Story from BBC NEWS:

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Source: Information Clearinghouse ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3420.htm


Cheers, Steve..

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