Home Office proposals for a "Big Brother" capability to
monitor the internet will not work and have poor safeguards against
privacy, according to astudy by the London School of
Economics.
In a briefing to be published by the LSE's Policy Engagement
Network on 17 June, LSE academics and others will say that Home
Office proposals for an
Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) will need new laws
if it is to boost the ability of law enforcement and intelligence
agencies to collect and analyse the internet activities of all UK
citizens.
The government will also have to persuade the public that the
threats from terrorism and crime are so extensive as to justify
ever greater levels of intrusion and expenditure, the briefing will
say.
Data storage
Telephone companies and some internet service providers (ISPs)
already have to store "communications data" for all their customers
for a year. This covers at least 70% of the population, it will
say.
Under the Home Office
proposals for consultation published in April, "Protecting the
Public in a Changing Communications Environment", ISPs would be
required to retain much more information and to pre-analyse it, the
briefing will say.
"The aim is to enable the police and others to meet the
challenges of the internet. These include web-based e-mail, instant
messaging, internet telephony, social networking and online
gaming," it will say.
The report will note that the Home Office says it has abandoned
plans to hold all relevant UK internet traffic in a large central
database. However, Sir David Pepper, former director of the
government's electronic surveillance centre, GCHQ, argued strongly
for such a database on the BBC programme
"
Who's watching you?" flighted two weeks ago.
New laws required
The LSE's Professor Peter Sommer said the Home Office was right
to be concerned about the impact on criminal use of the internet on
investigations. "However, they are wrong to think that this can be
done by light tinkering with existing legislation," he said.
Current law, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000
(RIPA), is based on the old-fashioned telephone, the report will
say.
RIPA gives two main powers. The first is a demand by a senior
law enforcement official for "communications data" such as who
called whom, when and for how long - in effect something like a
detailed phone bill. ISPs retain all of this for 12 months in case
law enforcement asks for it, Sommer said.
"The second and much more intrusive power, a warrant to
intercept the content - that is, eavesdropping on what is said - is
granted not by judges but by the home secretary of the day.
Moreover, intercept material is inadmissible. It cannot be used or
even referred to in court," Sommer said.
This would lead to implementation problems, he said. "With
internet technology you have to collect everything and then throw
away what the law does not allow you to have or use," he said.
"We think that at a practical level the communications
data/interception distinction will be impossible to interpret both
for ISPs and the courts," he said. "Moreover the existing balance
of protections against abuse will also be lost."
Big Brother
The report's authors are also concerned that the Home Office was
saying it aimed to maintain an interception capability. They will
note that police powers and capabilities to watch the public have
increased significantly over the past 15 years.
"We need a full debate about the balance between threats to
public safety, police powers, the effectiveness of safeguards and
cost," the report will say.
"The Home Office says the cost to the taxpayer will be £2bn, but
provides no clue as to how this was derived," it will say.
The report will say that the IMP will place a much greater cost
burden on ISPs, just as they will be expected under the Digital
Britain plans to provide the UK with cheap universal high-speed
internet connections.
"We are pleased to note that parliament's
All Party Privacy Group is
to hold hearings about the IMP in July 2009 and that it is using
our work as a starting point," Sommer said.
The same LSE group was earlier responsible for a
similar analysis of the government's plans to
introduce a national identity card.