The Governments plans are to hugely step up surveillance of the internet.David Cameron's government first published its intentions to snoop on the net back in November 2010 and they are no more than rebranding of New Labour's "Interception Modernisation Programme", which has already been rejected by Government once before, notably by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat party that are in power now.
It is reported that the Home Office said at that it hoped to implement "key proposals for the storage and acquisition of internet and e-mail records". It is planned that these proposals could be in place by June 2015 while it was noted that legislation could be brought in "if necessary". The Home Secretary Theresa May Has made it the Labour government's shelved Interception Modernisation Programme was coming back to life but rebranded.
Now called CONTEST the legislation has been modernised to take into account of new technology. The original proposals where to allow GCHQ to help security services monitor difficult-to-tap tech such as peer-to-peer communications.They were stalled until after the election in 2010 following criticism from civil liberties groups in the UK and by the parties in opposition to the Government of the time. It would seem now they have been strengthened and the current Government plans to push them through.
The new purposed legislation now includes tackling perceived threats from encryption and other technologies which have increasingly made it difficult even for government agencies to intercept voice and text mobile communications. This isn't something new with Governments of the past trying to basically outlaw encryption in emails twenty years ago so they could easily tap peoples personal communications. This time the Government will be planning to play their trump card, terrorism and we are sure pedophile argument appear in the press.
Under the CONTEST legislation, the so called Spooks, will not need a warrant to know who communicates with whom and when they do so, this allows large scale data-mining and analysis. It is known that this kind hands-off interception, without the contents of messages being disclosed, can tell spooks a lot It will allow them to know who individual people are taking to, what individual people are looking at and doing on the internet, who they send texts to etc. It is snoopers bill.
Until the Government force this bill through, which they will, gathering such information was llegal without a warrant targeting a specific individual. This allowed police as well as Government agencies to gain the information requested through the proper channels after their request in a court of law. Under the new legislation they can have the access to the same information without any kind of warrant and in real time.
With a Government committed to saving every penny and cutting public sector services at the stroke of a pen this new legislation will cost billions of pounds to implement just because of the cost of the equipment that will need to be installed to do the real time monitoring. At the moment it is unclear how much of the money will come from Government and how much from the Internet Service Providers, who under European Union Laws already keep extensive information that can be sort by the Police and Security Forces on the production of a warrant.
What we are talking about is the Government being able to incept and monitor not only emails, but Facebook posts, Twitter Posts, Calls, Texts, Communications during video games. Anything you do online or over any kind of data network with no real checks in law to stop them doing it. It is George Orwell's 1984 of the future but implemented in 2012. It has the potential to become the means to implement the thought police.
Let us be clear about this it is, as Civil liberties campaigner Guy Herbert said It is not very far from a bug in every living room that can be turned on and turned off at official whim. Whatever you are doing online, whoever you are in contact with, you will never know when you are being watched. And nobody else will either, because none of it will need a warrant.". That is the problem if this goes though without checks who knows what will come next.
We should all be alarmed at what the Government is trying to do. Freedom of speech and association are fundamental to a free society as long as they are within the law. At the moment there are laws in place to make sure these rights are in place and not abused. These are kept in check by a legal system that protects people privacy and those fundamental rights. We need to defend those laws and rights and not see them watered down.
In a free state we don't need these controls. We should be allowed to do as we please as long as we stay within the law and we shouldn't be monitored day to day by the state without valid reason. This sort of legislation is a breach of my fundamental human right of privacy.
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