The Government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review, yesterday introduced powers to ensure that every ISP provides at least one years data to be stored for it’s users: the review proposes the following:
“We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.
“This programme is required to keep up with changing technology and to maintain capabilities that are vital to the work these agencies do to protect the public.
“Communications data provides evidence in court to secure convictions of those engaged in activities that cause serious harm. It has played a role in every major Security Service counterterrorism operation and in 95 per cent of all serious organised crime investigations.
“We will legislate to put in place the necessary regulations and safeguards to ensure that our response to this technology challenge is compatible with the Government’s approach to information storage and civil liberties.”
Isabella Sankey, of Liberty (Policy director), said: “One of the early and welcome promises of the new Government was to ‘end the blanket storage of internet and email records’.
“Any move to amass more of our sensitive data and increase powers for processing would amount to a significant U-turn. The terrifying ambitions of a group of senior Whitehall technocrats must not trump the personal privacy of law abiding Britons.”
Guy Herbert, general secretary of the No2ID campaign group, said: “We should not be surprised that the interests of bureaucratic empires outrank liberty.
“It is disappointing that the new ministers seem to be continuing their predecessors’ tradition of credulousness.”
Source of News: Tom Whitehead (Home Affairs Editor) Daily Telegraph 20-10-2010