Monday, April 5, saw the final stage of the transposition of EU Directive 2006/24/EC. It passed into U.K. law via statutory instrument.
Exciting stuff indeed, although "statutory instrument" sounds rather painful.
What it actually means is that a European law is now in force in the U.K. that compels ISPs to keep records of all our emails and VoIP calls for 12 months, accessible on demand by the powers that be whenever they fancy a peek, and all passed without debate in either chamber of our Parliament.
It's part of the continuing War on Terror, you understand. Then again, make that the war on organised crime, obesity, underage drinking, light bulbs, whatever... It really is a bit confusing who we are at war with at the moment; there are lots of targets -- and that's without recourse to an atlas.
Telephone companies have already been legally obliged to keep records of whom we called from where since 2007, so this latest move apparently closes the loop by now covering communication on the Internet. Check out the wording: "Regulations will make the retention of communications data relating to internet access, internet e-mail and internet telephony, as well as mobile and fixed line telephony, mandatory rather than voluntary."
The "communications data" to be retained includes:
- The user ID that identifies you to your ISP, as well as your telephone number and the IP address of your computer
- The name and address of the Internet subscriber that is responsible for that telephone number and IP address
- The details -- such as user ID, telephone number, or address -- of anybody you contact through email or by using an Internet telephony service such as Skype
- The details of any time you go online, as well as specific details of any time you log into an email service or Internet telephony system.
It's important to note that, for the moment, the actual content of communication is not stored, just the "who, where, and when."
At first glance, not all of this is untoward. After all, telephone records are essential for accurate billing, and given that email is almost the de facto means of communication, and e-commerce continues to inexorably increase, data retention by companies has become a vital process.
But -- and it is possibly a big, £12 billion "but" -- there is intense speculation that this latest law is the first step in a plan to centralize the private electronic communications traffic data of the entire U.K. population in a single database managed by the government.
This will include tracking entries on social networking sites, such as Facebook, which escaped inclusion in the latest legislation, probably because the "phenomenon" didn't exist when they first thought all this up.
We will have to see exactly what the government has in mind when the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP) finalizes the draft Communications Data Bill and it is brought before Parliament. We'll be following its progress here.
Meanwhile, it is telling that the recently retired Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, said late last year in an interview with The Guardian: "This database would be an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information. It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls."
This from the man who ran the Crown Prosecution Service, one of the very entities to which the government claims this legislation will be critical.
No doubt an Internet Tsar will be appointed to oversee things. We like Tsars over here (you may know them as Czars) -- must be something to do with being a monarchy. They're a bit like government ministers but unelected, unaccountable, and alleged experts in their respective fields.
So that'll be alright then.
— James Lambie is the Producer/Director of the online documentary series "Web Wide World" on Internet Evolution.
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Email This
TWEET THIS
