Another broken promise

In the Coalition Agreement published days after the General Election there is a section devoted to the restoration of civil liberties.

“The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion." 

Good - a much needed reaction to the appalling actions of NewLabour and its cringing posture towards 'security.' It also helped to get inconvenient issues such as torture and surveillance off the radar using the 'national security' cover all.

Included in the Agreement was this little nugget, "Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason."

Now move on a few months and tucked away in the Defence Review is a small paragraph. Plans to set up the ‘Interception Modernisation Programme’ were abandoned by the former Government ahead of the election, but they have now resurfaced in the hands of the Coalition. 

"We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework. This programme is required to keep up with changing technology and to maintain capabilities that are vital to the work these agencies do to protect the public."

As Liberty put it on their website, "Communications service providers (CSPs) already hold large amounts of communications data and an EU directive that came into force in 2009 now requires that data is retained for 12 months. The proposed measure will require Internet Service Providers and telephone companies to store all the traffic details of their customers’ phone and web use for 12 months, including all third-party communications data that crosses their networks. 

This represents a huge extension of the data currently being collected.  It is also unclear whether the data will be processed differently – previously mooted proposals were to require CSPs to process data on each individual.

Hundreds of public bodies, not just the police and security services, can have access to this type of data, including local authorities.  And there is no need for them to go to a court or any other body to access the data – access can be self-authorised (under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000).  

While access to data already held by CSPs can be important in crime-fighting, the scope of this proposal goes beyond that which is necessary and sweeps the innocent up with the guilty.  

So much for the pledge to, "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason". 

We cannot rely on Labour to fight these proposals - their hands are tied by their awful record.