Dear Member of Parliament, thank you for following your constituent’s tweeted link and visiting this page. This is a quick guide to the problems with the Investigatory Powers Bill.
What's wrong with the Investigatory Powers Bill
For GCHQ, it allows
Bulk data collection, allowing vast amounts of personal information to be gathered and analysed without individual suspicion.
Bulk hacking of devices that don't belong to suspects but to third parties
The analysis of any private and public databases which can be accessed and analysed through very broad warrants. The Government has admitted that the vast majority of information in these databases will be about people who are not suspected of any crimes.
Ministers of State effectively to continue to sign off surveillance warrants despite claims that there is a “double lock”. Judicial Commissioners would not really have the power to challenge surveillance decisions.
For police and law enforcement agencies:
Data retention is being extended to include data gathering of "Internet Connection Records" (ICRs).
ICRs could be literally anything connecting to anything over the Internet. This is a very broad definition and could mean a huge amount of data is being collected about people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. In Denmark, similar proposals were ditched because they are so expensive.
A new "Request Filter" turns all phone records, mobile phone location data and ICRs into a vast, population-wide police database. This data can be analysed without a warrant.
The authorisation of the use of these powers remains with the police themselves, rather than an independent authority.
For British companies:
Companies can be told to hack their customers and to weaken security the security of their products.
Without proper appeals and redress this could endanger trust in British businesses
The Request Filter is described by the Home Office as a safeguard designed to reduce the collateral intrusion produced in searching for small, specific information in a large dataset.
In reality, the Request Filter would allow automated complex searches across the retained data from all telecommunications operators without any judicial authorisation at all.
This has huge privacy risks. Even the Food Standards Agency will be able to self-authorise itself to cross reference your constituents’ internet history with mobile phone location and landline phone calls—and search and compare millions of other people’s records too.
What MPs should do
We recommended voting in favour of these amendments:
Delete the Request Filter in Clause 58-60 4, 5, 6; debate the provisions in amendments 161-171 which attempt to understand and narrow its use
The amendments are listed on Parliament’s website here.
This campaign
This campaign comes to you from the Open Rights Group, a digital civil liberties campaign. We work on free expression and privacy on the Internet. We were formed in 2005 and have over 3000 members. We are a member of the Don’t Spy on Us coalition.
