Hard-hitting IT commentator Dr Simon Moores gives his personal take
on the hot issue of the day.Two years ago I gave a speech at "The
Internet & Power" conference at Cambridge, where I warned that
the threat of a new Act of Parliament, "The Regulation of
Investigatory Powers", would put paid to any illusion of freedom we
may have.
In a grand rhetorical gesture, I asked: "What began with Magna
Carta, ends with RIP?" and the Act was highly controversial when it
was first presented to Parliament, resulting in defeats for the
Government in the Lords and significant changes being made to
prevent its complete rejection.
Now, I don't care much for political rants and the opinions of left
or even right-wing loonies. I much prefer common sense and, in most
cases, believe that mixing government and technology is a recipe
for the worst kinds of embarrassment and disaster.
But RIP is a special case, because what many of us feared most
seems to be about to happen, as the Act is amended to increase the
number of official bodies that can access personal details of phone
calls and e-mails.
Originally the powers were only available to the police, customs,
Inland Revenue, and the security services, but FIPR (The Foundation
for information Policy Research) is now warning that amendments
will extend this power to other government departments, local
authorities, the NHS and, apparently even as far as your postman,
through what will now be known once more as the Post Office.
According to The FIPR, "The powers contained in RIP Part I Chapter
II allow notices to be served on telephone companies, Internet
service providers (ISPs) or postal operators to obtain information
such as the name and address of users, phone numbers called, source
and destination of emails, the identity of Web sites visited or
mobile phone location data accurate to a hundred metres or
less"
.
Ian Brown, the director of FIPR, has remarked that the difficulty
that the Government has encountered in getting the right processes
in place for the police should make us ultra-cautious in extending
these powers to such a wide range of bodies, with little enough
resources put into the oversight arrangements for the existing
proposals. In practice, these bodies are going to obtain this
personal data on anyone they wish, without any effective way of
checking what they're doing.
I would like to believe that after11 September, RIP will be
exercised sensibly and with appropriate restraint, but then I would
like to believe the same thing about my local council's
unrestricted use of traffic wardens, who might, to play the
complete cynic, also qualify as "authorised officials".
I do wonder sometimes whether there's a new "Reformation" at work
in this country of ours with the Internet and not the Bible as the
blunt instrument of social change.
We might have David Starkey's
Life of Henry VIII to
entertain us in the evenings, but sadly, in our apathetic and
hurried digital age, we have no modern equivalent of Sir Thomas
More, a powerful enough figure prepared to defend the remains of
our freedoms on a matter of principle.
Is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers an Act too far?
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Zentelligence: Setting the world to rights with the collected
thoughts and ramblings of the futurist writer, broadcaster and
Computing Weekly columnist Simon Moores.