About the Bill

The Investigatory Powers Bill is a new law that will give the UK police and security agencies massive powers to collect, analyse and look at our private communications and Internet use. The state does need surveillance powers to fight serious crime and terrorism but this law goes too far. Surveillance should be used against people who are suspected of a crime not the entire UK population.

Here are some of the most worrying parts of the Bill:

• Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will be forced to create a record of the websites you visit and the apps you use and keep this data for a year. This information can be analysed without a warrant. The police only need to get internal sign off to look at this data. Government departments, like the Department of Work and Pensions, can look at this data too.
• Your communications can be hoovered up by the security services. Tapping undersea fibre-optic cables, GCHQ can record and keep all passing Internet traffic for several days, and metadata for six months.
• The police and intelligence agencies can hack into your phone or computer. You don’t have to be suspected of a crime for this to happen. Hacking should be a last resort. It carries massive security risks, which should always be taken into account.
• The security services can easily access any public or private database – whether it’s held by DVLA or Tesco. They have admitted that the vast majority of this data will be about people who are not suspected of any crimes. However, through a very broad warrant, they can analyse this information for six months at a time. We are calling for these powers to be limited.

Why is this Bill being passed?

In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the UK and US governments had built mass surveillance programmes. In the UK, there had been no discussion in Parliament about this and MPs were not even aware that it was happening. Instead loopholes in the law had been exploited to allow these programmes to be built. ORG and many other organisations, as well as three independent inquiries, called for a completely new surveillance law to be passed. The government responded with the IPBill. This outlined in full the powers that Snowden had revealed, and more. While transparency about these powers is an improvement, the Bill goes too far. The UK's surveillance powers should be limited not extended.