The Home office has issued a
consultation
paper for a new law that would force phone companies, ISPs and network
operators to record and store every phone call, web page request and text
message.
The information would have to be stored for 12 months by service providers
and would be searchable by a wide variety of organisations, including local
councils, health authorities, and even Ofsted and the Post Office.
"A key aspect of the debate, both during the public consultation on, and
parliamentary debate about, the code of practice for voluntary retention of
data, and also during the debate about the Directive within the European Council
and the European Parliament, has been the impact, or potential impact, that
retention of communications data has on individuals’ human rights," the document
states. "The implementation of the Directive does not alter the balance in that
debate and we consider that these measures are a proportionate interference with
individuals’ right to privacy to ensure protection of the public."
The document gives case histories of instances where this data has been used
to solve crimes, such as data used by the Child Exploitation and Online
Protection (CEOP) Centre, which from March to June 2008 identified 96 suspects -
who have been arrested - and safeguarded 30 children through the use of
internet-related data.
The shadow home secretary, Dominic Grieve, told The Guardian: "Yet
again the government have proved themselves unable to resist the temptation to
take a power quite properly designed to combat terrorism to snoop on the lives
of ordinary people in everyday circumstances."
Landline and mobile phone records are already stored for 12 months as a
matter of course and the extension of the system into web browsing history and
email accounts is merely in line with current EU policy, the government says.
Its usefulness in terrorism cases was also quoted.
"We will be told it is for use in combating terrorism and organised crime but
if Ripa [Regulation of Investigatory Powers] powers are anything to go by, it
will soon be used to spy on ordinary people's kids, pets and bins," said Liberal
Democrats' home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne.
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