The Home Office strikes again, this time with a new draft 'Communications Data Bill', targeted at making the tracking of online criminals easier through unlimited secret requests to ISPs to retain data and ensure its integrity for use in court.
However, the new bill is wide in scope and doesn't implement enough safeguards and limitations to satisfy scrutiny comities.
Nick Clegg was one of the first to break coalition unification and suggest that the party needed to return to the drawing board to redress the bill's balance, which had "a number of serious criticisms - not least on scope, proportionality, cost, checks and balances and the need for much wider consultation," though Mr Clegg and the scrutiny comities themselves both agreed that a new law was ultimately needed.
So what exactly does the current bill propose to bring as it now stands?
- Extend data retention requirements to up to 12 months
- Storage of details relating to social media, webmail, voice calls (including within games) and e-mails
- Stored data would include the time, duration, originator, recipient and the location of the device at the time
- It would include the content of messages were a warrant to be gained
So what's the problem?
There's scope in the bill to go beyond the kind of call logging we see today with mobile phones. There's little attempt to define exactly what categories or types of data are accessible and whilst it will not be freely accessible, content itself, that goes beyond transaction logging, will be available with court order.
What's perhaps most scary is that details can be freely accessed by law enforcement or even HM Revenue and Customs if they claim to be investigating an offence. The home secretary is attempting to sell the bill as a means to capture paedophiles and terrorists, however is bundling-in access to organisations that deal with very different kinds of crime.
There's a legitimate fear that the combination of data in the modern 'always-connected' world could leave your location always known; you wouldn't want to find yourself on the bad-side of a corrupt copper or a skilled hacker.
"This legislation is vital to help catch paedophiles, terrorists and other serious criminals and we are pleased both scrutiny committees have recognised the need for new laws ... We have now considered the committees' recommendations carefully and we will accept the substance of them all. But there can be no delay to this legislation. It is needed by law enforcement agencies now." stated a Home Office spokesman.
We would suggest that the Home Office not present such a ridiculous bill in the first place if passing new laws with haste is its goal.
