Government plans blanket snooping system

The government is planning to extend its snooping powers with new legislation which is entitled the Communications Capabilities Development Programme.

Due to be pushed through later this spring, the plan would mean landline, broadband and mobile providers would have to keep records of calls, texts, emails and other electronic communications.

According to an article in the Telegraph, data would have to be stored for a year, and would include records of everything, even elements as diverse as direct messages between parties on Twitter, or conversations in online video games.

Quite how that would be facilitated on a large scale remains to be seen, but it’s going to be the ISP’s responsibility to keep the records, which will be accessible to the government at any time.

Naturally, this throws up a number of major privacy issues. While the government says it’s committed to ideals such as a “free” and “open” internet, it’s clear that their idea of a free and open system involves being totally and completely monitored in every potential aspect.

There’s also the danger of this stored information being accessed by hackers and used for unintended purposes, or sold on to third parties.

Whereas public tweets which obviously weren’t serious have been subject to the scrutiny of security services in the past – look at Paul Chambers and the infamous “airport bomb” tweet – private messages could be subject to the same sort of scrutiny and over zealous reaction.

Labour tried to push a similar system through when it was in power, but abandoned the effort due to largely negative public reaction.

Yet the coalition is now rolling this out, despite previous pre-election promises to curtail what it called Labour’s surveillance state.

Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, commented: “Labour’s online surveillance plans have hardly changed but have been rebranded. They are just as intrusive and offensive.”

“The coalition opposed Labour’s plans in opposition. Now, despite civil liberties commitments from Conservatives and Lib Dems, Home Office officials are planning to push through the same online surveillance capabilities.”

“They are not telling Parliament, and hope they can slip commitments to build these new surveillance plans before the politicians really know what they are proposing.”

“The plans are a huge waste of time and money, as well as being a huge intrusion on our civil liberties. Online government surveillance is the last thing we need right now.”