Engelsen hebben veel last van BSE gehad

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Immers om een database van 'who communicates on phone, email and
Internet to whom, where, how and when' moet je toch wel van lotje getikt
zijn?

Groet / Cees

EDRi-gram Number 7.22, 18 November 2009
The Home Office's plan (known as the Interception Modernisation
Programme) to put under surveillance everyone's email, mobile phone,
text and Internet communications has been stopped, following the
outcomes of a consultation launched in April 2009.

At the beginning of the year, the Home Office had already given up its
plans to build a central database with all information on who
communicates on phone, email and Internet to whom, where, how and when.
Instead, it planned to ask ISPs and phone companies to store this data
for policy and security services access.

The 221 respondents to "Protecting the Public in a Changing
Communications Environment", the consultation published by the Home
Office that closed on 20 July, raised issues related to data protection
but also to the costs involved and the technical feasibility of the
project.

During the period of consultation, a briefing on the Interception
Modernisation Programme issued by LSE Policy Engagement Network on 17
June, pointed out some of the main concerns related to the project.
"This would lead to a tipping of the balance in favour of state power
and away from communications privacy rights for the individual. In fact,
the current policy environment already has incredibly weak privacy
safeguards, and the Home Office is going some way to worsening the
situation rather than improving it" said the briefing.

The report also emphasizes the high costs involved by such a programme
due to he large amounts of traffic associated with each Internet user
and the technology necessary to discard whatever appears to be
"content", to combine different streams of traffic in order to obtain
further information about an individual.

The statement of the Government that the system will record only
information on communications and not the contents is not considered as
argument if favour of the programme. The document points out that "this
is as least as privacy intrusive as content interception." The gathering
of this information will make possible to "create a comprehensive
profile of an individual's interests, intentions, associates, usual
locations, and the nature of those interactions. (...) It is a map of
everyone's private life, but also his or her professional and social
life too."

For the time being, the UK Government has put the programme on hold.
"Any legislation requiring communications providers to keep data on who
called whom, and when, will need strong safeguards on access. It is
simply not that easy to separate the bare details of a call from its
content. What if a leading business person is ringing Alcoholics
Anonymous? There has to be a careful balance between investigative
powers and the right to privacy," said home affairs spokesman Chris
Huhne.

But the Home Office was still in the press' eye with a series of stories
that were meant to explain the usefulness of the communication data. At
least one of the five tales was heavily criticized and interpereted as
distortion of an initial story. The Government claimed that the use of
traffic data was essential to find a man that was lost in an area with
very poor visibility on the Isle Of Lewis. But the rescuers confirmed
that the Marine and Coastguard Agency (MCGA) could not use the location
data, since the man was in the range of just one must. Therefore it was
impossible to identify his exact position via the location data of the
telecom network.
"The mobile phone was most useful for keeping in contact," declared the
MCGA spokesman.

Legislation to access public's texts and emails put on hold (10.11.2009)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/09/home-office-plan-data-storage

Protecting the public in a changing communications environment - news
(9.11.2009)
http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/news-publications/news-speeches/protecting-the-public

Protecting the public in a changing communications environment -
consultation and response (6.11.2009)
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2009-communication-data/

Protecting the public in a changing communications environment - Summary
of
Responses to the 2009 Consultation Paper (11.2009)
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2009-communication-data/cons-2009-comms-data-responses?view=Binary

Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment
(27.04.2009)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/27_04_09communicationsconsultation.pdf
.
Briefing on the Interception Modernisation Programme by LSE Policy
Engagement Network (17.06.2009)
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/informationSystems/research/policyEngagement/IMP_Briefing.pdf

Home Office accused of sexing-up mobile phone rescue (16.11.2009)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/16/imp_mobile_data/

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********