UK ISPs to become Government internet spies on population

[Simon_Gardner]

Plan to monitor all internet use

By Dominic Casciani
BBC News home affairs reporter
Page last updated at 13:50 GMT, Monday, 27 April 2009

Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics.

The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services.

The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites.

The Tories said the Home Office had “buckled under Conservative pressure” in deciding against a giant database.

Announcing a consultation on a new strategy for communications data and its use in law enforcement, Jacqui Smith said there would be no single government-run database.

But she also said that “doing nothing” in the face of a communications revolution was not an option.

The Home Office will instead ask communications companies - from internet service providers to mobile phone networks - to extend the range of information they currently hold on their subscribers and organise it so that it can be better used by the police, MI5 and other public bodies investigating crime and terrorism.

Ministers say they estimate the project will cost £2bn to set up, which includes some compensation to the communications industry for the work it may be asked to do.

“Communications data is an essential tool for law enforcement agencies to track murderers, paedophiles, save lives and tackle crime,” Ms Smith said.

“Advances in communications mean that there are ever more sophisticated ways to communicate and we need to ensure that we keep up with the technology being used by those who seek to do us harm.

“It is essential that the police and other crime fighting agencies have the tools they need to do their job, However to be clear, there are absolutely no plans for a single central store.”

‘Contact not content’

Communication service providers (CSPs) will be asked to record internet contacts between people, but not the content, similar to the existing arrangements to log telephone contacts.

But, recognising that the internet has changed the way people talk, the CSPs will also be asked to record some third party data or information partly based overseas, such as visits to an online chatroom and social network sites like Facebook or Twitter.

Security services could then seek to examine this data along with information which links it to specific devices, such as a mobile phone, home computer or other device, as part of investigations into criminal suspects.

The plan expands a voluntary arrangement under which CSPs allow security services to access some data which they already hold.

The security services already deploy advanced techniques to monitor telephone conversations or intercept other communications, but this is not used in criminal trials.

Ms Smith said that while the new system could record a visit to a social network, it would not record personal and private information such as photos or messages posted to a page.

”What we are talking about is who is at one end [of a communication] and who is at the other - and how they are communicating,“ she said.

Existing legal safeguards under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act would continue to apply. Requests to see the data would require top level authorisation within a public body such as a police force. The Home Office is running a separate consultation on limiting the number of public authorities that can access sensitive information or carry out covert surveillance.

‘Orwellian’

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: ”I am pleased that the Government has climbed down from the Big Brother plan for a centralised database of all our emails and phone calls.

“However, any legislation that requires individual communications providers to keep data on who called whom and when will need strong safeguards on access.

“It is simply not that easy to separate the bare details of a call from its content. What if a leading business person is ringing Alcoholics Anonymous, or a politician’s partner is arranging to hire a porn video?

“There has to be a careful balance between investigative powers and the right to privacy.”

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: “The big problem is that the government has built a culture of surveillance which goes far beyond counter terrorism and serious crime. Too many parts of Government have too many powers to snoop on innocent people and that’s really got to change.

“It is good that the home secretary appears to have listened to Conservative warnings about big brother databases. Now that she has finally admitted that the public don’t want their details held by the State in one place, perhaps she will look at other areas in which the Government is trying to do precisely that.”

Guy Herbert of campaign group NO2ID said: “Just a week after the home secretary announced a public consultation on some trivial trimming of local authority surveillance, we have this: a proposal for powers more intrusive than any police state in history.

“Ministers are making a distinction between content and communications data into sound-bite of the year. But it is spurious.

“Officials from dozens of departments and quangos could know what you read online, and who all your friends are, who you emailed, when, and where you were when you did so - all without a warrant.”

The consultation runs until 20 July 2009.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8020039.stm

[Wiðercora]

Good god they just won't let up!

[Simon_Gardner]

Why we need to collect email data
Provided safeguards are met, we need to use communications data to protect the public

John Reid
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 April 2009 20.30 BST

In May 2007, Sana Ali was murdered. She was 17 years old, and 10 weeks pregnant.

At first, the police arrested her husband and a 16 year old boy, but both were later released on bail. At the trial, communications data helped to implicate Sana Ali’s real murderer – Mr Ali’s mistress, who was jailed for life with a minimum term of 14 years. Communications data also helped to support the husband’s case that he was not at their home when the murder took place.

This is just one example of a case from my time as home secretary which convinced me of the importance of using communications data to protect the public, support the innocent and convict the guilty.

This data does not include the content of a call or email, but the vital information about who is being communicated with, as well as the time and location when the call or email took place.

Used in the right way, and subject to important safeguards to protect individuals’ right to privacy, communications data can play a critical role in keeping all of us safe.

It can help investigators to identify suspects and the circles they move in. It can give clues to solve life-threatening situations, such as kidnaps or hostages. It can assist the emergency services in locating vulnerable people. And it is critical to protecting our national security against the threat of terrorism.

As the Government consultation published today sets out, maintaining this essential capability will become more complex in the future in the face of technological change. Continuing effectiveness requires continual modernisation.

The UK’s communications industry is one of the most dynamic in the world and the days of the fixed landline telephone, connected by one service provider are long gone. Today, people choose to email, often using a number of different names and email addresses; they text, join social networking sites under various guises, speak over the internet and their options and usage grow month by month. In addition every single message may pass through five or so network providers on route to its recipient. Modern communication, like modern life, gets more complex.

Moreover, in the future, there may be less commercial incentive for service providers to store this data and many more of them may be based offshore. Yet without this data, the intelligence and security agencies’ ability to protect the public from serious crime, will seriously diminish.

It is clear to me that the way in which we collect communications data needs to change so that law enforcement agencies can continue to do their job; to tackle serious crime and gather evidence to fight terrorism and prosecute criminals.

Of course there must continue to be stringent safeguards to control how communications data can be obtained. Provided these safeguards are met, we can continue to strike the right balance between privacy and security. And we can then continue to maintain a capability that allows us to save lives, help convict the guilty and protect the innocent.

• John Reid is a Labour MP and former home secretary

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/apr/27/surveillance-data-protection

[freiheit]

Yuck. Governments just keep going further and further with this stuff. Where will it stop?

[Wiðercora]

What if I don't care if I get blown up by a terrorist? Can I have my privacy back, please?

[ficklefiend]

WTF?

p.s- exactly how many murderers do they estimate send the details of their exploits via email?

[Simon_Gardner]

Access all areas on email and internet data
Now the home secretary wants private telecoms companies and internet service providers do the government’s dirty work

Henry Porter’s “freedom” Blog

The confirmation today by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, that the government intends to go ahead with plans to grant itself unchecked and unscrutinised access to all our communications data must draw a battle line for all civil liberties groups and everyone who cares for the future of freedom and privacy in the United Kingdom.

On the surface, the statement from the Home Office may appear to offer some withdrawal from the data silo – containing all communications data – proposed in the Queen’s speech. However in effect the state will still grant itself total freedom to see whom we are contacting, when and where. The only difference is that civil servants will demand that private telecoms companies and internet service providers do their dirty work for them. They will retain our data so that it may be trawled by tens of thousands of people employed by the state.

Who knows what conclusions will be drawn from innocent web searches, phonecalls and emails? Who dares to predict the kinds of abuse by the government, which is already tracking legitimate protesters in real time with automatic number recognition camera network cameras and infiltrating environmental groups with informers and spies?

This outsourcing of the state’s data collection is the government’s response to the era of austerity – in a similar move it will require travel agencies and tour companies to collect 53 pieces of information for the e-Borders scheme when we travel abroad. We should not be lulled into seeing this as change in the government’s goal of knowing everything about every one of us. The civil servants behind the scheme have a very long horizon indeed – an agenda that is designed to survive cuts in public spending and any change of government.

They will argue the urgent necessity of the case with force and plausibility to inexperienced Conservative ministers, as they have done to the co-operative second raters in the present government. I pray that a future government will have the gumption, sense of history and political values to resist these arguments and to listen instead to the former director of public prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald, who said: “This database would be an unimaginable hell house of personal private information. It would be a complete read-out of every citizen’s life in the most intimate and demeaning detail.” The data silo may have been canned but the violation continues.

If we had not been so ground down by Labour’s war on liberty and privacy there would certainly be an outcry at this disgraceful proposal. Ministers say that we are merely complying with European demands for greater access to communications but what they do not explain is that they lobbied Europe for these very measures.

Their effect is well described by campaign group NO2ID’s general secretary, Guy Herbert, who said: “Officials from dozens of departments and quangos could know what you read online, and who all your friends are, who you emailed, when, and where you were when you did so – all without a warrant. Tracking your every move is more efficiently creepy than reading your letters.” Think of the abuses that have been allowed under the extension of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and you know we may come to regret it if we do not stand up to the government now.

Meanwhile I leave you with this thought which began a piece in the Daily Telegraph.

Your moves are monitored by your bus tickets. There are CCTV cameras on every building and computer chips on the rubbish bin and they can tell a lot about your life by studying your rubbish...Security has got absurd

As the paper reveals, the Russian journalist Irada Zeinalova wasn’t talking about Putin’s Russia. She wasn’t even talking about life in the former Soviet Union. She was talking about today in Britain where she has been based for several years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/apr/27/email-internet-privacy

[Xaeryx]

I2P
Tor
Encrypted VPN
SSH tunnel

Now if I was able to come up with four easy ways of getting round Jacqui Smith's authoritarian bullshit, what does that say about the criminals and terrorists who do everything they can to keep their internet traffic private and encrypted?

[Ex~]

Fucking disgusting.

[Mishakal]

Why we need to collect email data
Provided safeguards are met, we need to use communications data to protect the public

John Reid
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 April 2009 20.30 BST

In May 2007, Sana Ali was murdered. She was 17 years old, and 10 weeks pregnant.

At first, the police arrested her husband and a 16 year old boy, but both were later released on bail. At the trial, communications data helped to implicate Sana Ali’s real murderer – Mr Ali’s mistress, who was jailed for life with a minimum term of 14 years. Communications data also helped to support the husband’s case that he was not at their home when the murder took place.

This is just one example of a case from my time as home secretary which convinced me of the importance of using communications data to protect the public, support the innocent and convict the guilty.

This data does not include the content of a call or email, but the vital information about who is being communicated with, as well as the time and location when the call or email took place.

Used in the right way, and subject to important safeguards to protect individuals’ right to privacy, communications data can play a critical role in keeping all of us safe.

It can help investigators to identify suspects and the circles they move in. It can give clues to solve life-threatening situations, such as kidnaps or hostages. It can assist the emergency services in locating vulnerable people. And it is critical to protecting our national security against the threat of terrorism.

As the Government consultation published today sets out, maintaining this essential capability will become more complex in the future in the face of technological change. Continuing effectiveness requires continual modernisation.

The UK’s communications industry is one of the most dynamic in the world and the days of the fixed landline telephone, connected by one service provider are long gone. Today, people choose to email, often using a number of different names and email addresses; they text, join social networking sites under various guises, speak over the internet and their options and usage grow month by month. In addition every single message may pass through five or so network providers on route to its recipient. Modern communication, like modern life, gets more complex.

Moreover, in the future, there may be less commercial incentive for service providers to store this data and many more of them may be based offshore. Yet without this data, the intelligence and security agencies’ ability to protect the public from serious crime, will seriously diminish.

It is clear to me that the way in which we collect communications data needs to change so that law enforcement agencies can continue to do their job; to tackle serious crime and gather evidence to fight terrorism and prosecute criminals.

Of course there must continue to be stringent safeguards to control how communications data can be obtained. Provided these safeguards are met, we can continue to strike the right balance between privacy and security. And we can then continue to maintain a capability that allows us to save lives, help convict the guilty and protect the innocent.

• John Reid is a Labour MP and former home secretary

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/apr/27/surveillance-data-protection

The bit in red, more so than anything else in the article seems to have been tacked on as an after thought in order to try and make this seem less totalitarian.

[Xaeryx]

In other related news, the Home Office has apparently been colluding with Phorm.

Any respect I had for the government has gone now. Thankfully the EU is going to lay the smackdown, they're already unimpressed at how BT wasn't prosecuted for illegally using Phorm technology to snoop on customers.

[God Hand]

I'm sure the music industry welcome this.