A cross-party group of MPs has urged the government to abandon
controversial plans that force telephone and internet companies to
make records of the public's phone calls and internet activities
available to the police and government agencies.
Home Office proposals for a voluntary scheme of data retention,
requiring phone companies and internet service providers to store
communications data for up to a year would result in "inevitable
failure", the all-party Internet Group said.
The MPs urged the government to follow the US by dropping demands
for the mass-retention of communications data, in favour of a data
preservation scheme, that would preserve only those records needed
for criminal investigations.
The recommendations follow concerns that the government's data
retention proposals - introduced after the 11 September attacks
taken together with existing communications monitoring laws -
amount to an irreconcilable breach of human rights law.
The government has also come under fire from internet service
providers who believe the data retention proposals will leave them
open to legal challenges. They are also concerned that the high
costs of storing and retrieving data will not be met with adequate
financial support from government.
The MPs urge the government to rethink its approach, and to work
with law enforcement agencies and European governments to develop
an alternative approach based on data preservation.
"We do not believe that it is practical to retain all
communications data on the off-chance that it will be useful one
day," the MPs say in a 40-page report.
Data preservation has already shown to be successful in the UK,
with the police congratulating phone and internet companies for
voluntarily retaining communications data for the police following
the 11 September attacks.
Data preservation is less burdensome and less costly to business
and consumers as well as being less harmful to public confidence,
the MPs argue.
The government should resist the temptation to solve the problems
with its voluntary data retention scheme by making the scheme
compulsory. This would do immense damage to communication service
providers and would not achieve the goals of law enforcement, the
report said.
Read the report
>>