UK: sweeping snoop bill back on with Brexit since EU says it's illegal

The European Union’s top court ruled against Britain in its first major judgment of the Brexit era, saying U.K. measures forcing telecommunications companies to keep hold of customer data for a year violate the bloc’s laws.

Such legislation “exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary and cannot be considered to be justified within a democratic society," judges at the EU Court of Justice said in their decision Wednesday.

The opposition Labour Party’s deputy leader Tom Watson, with support from human-rights campaigners, asked the Luxembourg court to review the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act amid doubts over its compliance with European human-rights law.

The challenge was originally brought in the U.K. by Watson and Conservative Party lawmaker David Davis and was referred to the EU court by appeals-court judges. Davis was appointed Brexit secretary following this year’s referendum to leave the bloc.

“The retained data, taken as a whole, is liable to allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained,” according to Wednesday’s ruling.

The suit will now come back to the U.K. Court of Appeal for a final ruling, Britain’s Home Office said. "The government will be putting forward robust arguments to the Court of Appeal about the strength of our existing regime for communications data retention and access," it said.

A special U.K. tribunal ruled in October that spy agencies’ bulk interception of individuals’ private communications didn’t have the proper oversight or comply with human rights law until as late as November 2015.

Last month, the Investigatory Powers Bill, which gives U.K. authorities sweeping powers to retain, hack and intercept the communications of all British citizens, was passed by Parliament and given royal assent.

"No one would consent to giving the police or the government the power to arbitrarily seize our phone records or emails to use as they see fit. It’s for judges, not ministers, to oversee these powers," Watson said in a statement.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-21/u-k-lawmakers-win-eu-case-over-extent-of-internet-spying-powers

I look forward to the thoughtful debate this will provoke ...

You can look forward to all that and more when Trump gets in.

I have been against the intrusion into and the wholesale collection of everyone's private and personal data for many years...



The labour govt opened the doors to it back in 2000...

(and had powers extended under it by...

"...new additions in December 2003, April 2005, July 2006 and February 2010...")

With this...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000



There was also this act of labour govt...


Communications Data Bill 2008

The Communications Data Bill was intended to create powers to collect data concerning people's phone, e-mail and web-browsing habits for mass surveillance in the United Kingdom. The government database would have included telephone numbers dialed, the websites visited and addresses to which e-mails are sent but not the text of e-mails or recorded telephone conversations.[1]

Since October 2007 telecommunication companies have been required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for twelve months. The bill would have extended the coverage to Internet website visited, email messages, and VOIP data.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Data_Bill_2008


And there was this...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interception_Modernisation_Programme

Where this is said...


"...In 2008 plans were being made to collect data on all phone calls, emails, chatroom discussions and web-browsing habits as part of the IMP, thought likely to require the insertion of 'thousands' of black box probes into the country’s computer and telephone networks.[2] The proposals were expected to be included in the Communications Data Bill 2008. The "giant database" would include telephone numbers dialed, the websites visited and addresses to which e-mails are sent "but not the content of e-mails or telephone conversations."[3] Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Home affairs spokesman said: "The government's Orwellian plans for a vast database of our private communications are deeply worrying."[4]

The Home Office denied reports that a prototype of the IMP had already been built.[5]

Reports in April 2009 suggest that the government has changed its public stance to one of using legal measures to compel communications providers to store the data themselves, and making it available for government to access, with then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith stating that "there are absolutely no plans for a single central store."[6]

The new plans are thought to involve spending £2bn on paying ISPs to install deep packet inspection equipment within their own networks, and obliging them to perform the cross-correlation and profiling of their users' behaviour themselves,[7] in effect achieving the original goals of the IMP by different means..."



But I find it absolutely staggering that the eu is trying to appear to be the 'good guys' over all this... because they instigated this in this 2006 eu rule that they dictated to us to abide by...


The Data Retention Directive, more formally "Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC" was a Directive issued by the European Union and related to telecommunications data retention. According to the directive, member states will have to store citizens' telecommunications data for a minimum of 6 months and at most 24 months. Under the directive the police and security agencies will be able to request access to details such as IP address and time of use of every email, phone call and text message sent or received.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

my internet data must bore em senseless.....