David Cameron has accused Labour of creating a “control state” and vowed a Tory government would hand power back to voters with a new “right to data”.

In a speech, the Tory leader set out plans to give voters access to information in 20 key areas.

These would include crime statistics, the performance of schools and hospitals and road traffic data.

Source: BBC News

Privacy watchdog needs greater powers and snooping laws must be reformed, says committee. The House of Lords Constitution Committee has expressed disappointment at the government’s response to its report on surveillance and privacy.
…
The House of Lords will debate the issue this Friday.

Source: Computing

The meeting began with introductions and quickly moved on. We had a number of specific points we wanted to discuss with the Commission and they had some equally specific points they wanted to discuss with us; as it turns out both were pretty much the same.

We discussed the issue of informed consent vs implied consent. I raised my concerns that Phorm, BT and the Home Office are all stating that consent can be implied with regards to data published on the world wide web. The Commission responded very strongly on this stating that EU Law does not recognise implied consent and that consent must be explicit and informed and that all such services must be Opt-In….

Source:NoDPI

A Government agency has denied wanting to monitor all internet and phone use in the UK.
…
Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group claimed: “The statement doesn’t appear to contradict the idea that ‘black boxes’ to intercept communications may be installed. It simply says they don’t plan to create a massive database nor monitor everyone.”

He added: “But whatever the meaning of their statement, the fact that so much of this has to be taken on trust reinforces the need for greater parliamentary and judicial oversight, which are very weak in the UK compared with most European democracies.”

Source: IT PRO

GCHQ is not developing technology to enable the monitoring of all internet
use and phone calls in Britain, or to target everyone in the UK. Similarly,
GCHQ has no ambitions, expectations or plans for a database or databases to
store centrally all communications data in Britain.
Because we rely upon maintaining an advantage over those that would damage
UK interests, it is usually the case that we will not disclose information
about our operations and methods. People sometimes assume that secrecy comes
at the price of accountability but nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, GCHQ is subject to rigorous parliamentary and judicial oversight
(the Intelligence and Security Committee of parliamentarians, and two senior
members of the judiciary: the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the
Interception of Communications Commissioner) and works entirely within a
legal framework that complies with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The new technology that GCHQ is developing is designed to work under the
existing legal framework. It is an evolution of current capability within
current accountability and oversight arrangements The Intelligence Services
Act 1994 and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 underpin
activities at GCHQ - both existing systems and those we are planning and
building at the moment. The purposes for which interception may be permitted
are set out explicitly in the legislation: national security, safeguarding
our economic well being and the prevention and detection of serious crime.
Interception for other purposes is not lawful and we do not do it. GCHQ does
not target anyone indiscriminately - all our activities are proportionate to
the threats against which we seek to guard and are subject to tests on those
grounds by the Commissioners. The legislation also sets out the procedures
for Ministers to authorise interception; GCHQ follows these meticulously.
GCHQ only acts when it is necessary and proportionate to do so; GCHQ does
not spy at will.

Source: GCHQ Press Release

Spy chiefs are pressing ahead with secret plans to monitor all internet use and telephone calls in Britain despite an announcement by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, of a ministerial climbdown over public surveillance. … The £1 billion snooping project - called Mastering the Internet (MTI) - will rely on thousands of “black box” probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure. … Jacqui Smith announced that she was ditching controversial plans for a single “big brother” database … However, she failed to mention that substantial additional sums - amounting to more than £1 billion over three years - had already been allocated to GCHQ for its MTI programme.

Source: The Times
Also more info from The Register

The Home Secretary today makes a delayed announcement of a consultation on proposals for the so-called Intercept Modernisation Programme. It has been widely reported for some months, and plans were acknowledged by Lord West the security minister last week, that this would place Home Office ‘probes’ in the datacentres of every British internet provider at an estimated cost of £12 billion.

This would allow direct skimming of all traffic, making it massively easier to intercept email and monitor individual’s web use using existing powers. The Home Office would become a clearing-house, able to provide data ad lib to other government agencies. It would also become possible for the first time to collect and store details of all communications by everyone in the country so that government agencies could investigate friendship networks and personal habits using data-mining techniques.

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID said:

‘Just a week after the Home Secretary announced a public consultation on some trivial trimming of local authority surveillance, we have this: a proposal for powers more intrusive than any police state in history.

‘Ministers are making a distinction between content and communications data into sound-bite of the year. But it is spurious. Officials from dozens of departments and quangos could know what you read online, and who all your friends are, who you emailed, when, and where you were when you did so - all without a warrant. Tracking your your every move is more efficiently creepy than reading your letters.’

Source:NO2ID Press Release

Smith said creating a single database run by the state to hold such personal data would amount to an extreme solution representing an unwarranted intrusion of personal privacy. Instead the Home Office is looking at a £2bn solution that would involve requiring communications companies such as BT, Virgin Media, O2 and others to retain such personal data for up to 12 months.
…
Instead they will have to apply for the data to be released to them on a case-by-case basis to each individual telecoms and internet company.

Source: The Guardian

apComms, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Communications … is launching an inquiry into Internet traffic to assess regulation of ISPs and a range of Internet traffic issues from behavioural advertising and privacy to child abuse images and Internet neutrality to answer what role Government should play when it comes to Internet traffic.

Submissions are invited on 5 questions by 22nd May and evidence sessions will be held in Parliament in June, with the final report expected in the Autumn.
…
Inquiry questions

Although we intend to address the broad sweep of all of these topics and make a range of recommendations; we would particularly like to learn how these five specific questions should be answered:

#1 Can we distinguish circumstances when ISPs should be forced to act to deal with some type of bad traffic? When should we insist that ISPs should not be forced into dealing with a problem, and that the solution must be found elsewhere?

#2 Should the Government be intervening over behavioural advertising services, either to encourage or discourage their deployment; or is this entirely a matter for individual users, ISPs and websites?

#3 Is there a need for new initiatives to deal with online privacy, and if so, what should be done?

#4 Is the current global approach to dealing with child sexual abuse images working effectively? If not, then how should it be improved?

#5 Who should be paying for the transmission of Internet traffic? Would it be appropriate to enshrine any of the various notions of Network Neutrality in statute?

Source: apComms, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Communications

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (Liberal Democrat)

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in planning the Interception Modernisation Programme, they have considered deep packet inspection equipment as a means of analysing people’s internet communications in order to ascertain their identity in cases where it is not evident from the source and destination of data packets.

Lord West of Spithead (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Security and Counter-terrorism), Home Office; Labour)

The Government’s Interception Modernisation Programme is considering how deep packet inspection technologies might support the lawful interception of communications and separately the lawful acquisition of communications data.

Source: TheyWorkForYou.com