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When the U.K. government passes the Snoopers’ Charter a week after cosying up to Donald Trump, it might be time to log off.
Usually, when someone says on Twitter, "delete your account", it is meant as a witty retort to someone – usually a politician or celebrity – who has made an ill-judged, public comment that causes widespread consternation.
After this week, "delete your account" might be the best advice for anyone who would rather not spend the rest of their life in Guantanamo Bay, wearing an orange jumpsuit, and routinely having various body parts connected to the only car battery in Cuba that wasn’t manufactured in the 1950s.
The reason being, this week, the Investigatory Powers (IP) Bill, popularly known as the Snoopers’ Charter, was passed by the U.K.’s upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords. It will become an Act of Parliament as soon as it receives the rubber stamp from the Queen – also known as royal assent – which is expected to happen before the end of this year.
Just ahead of the inauguration of one Donald J. Trump as president of the United States, a country with which the U.K. government hopes to remain special friends. Oh joy of joys.
"Under the guise of counter-terrorism, and in an environment of devastatingly poor political opposition, the government has now won the ability to spy on the entire population – a ‘world-leading’ precedent," said Silkie Carlo, policy officer, technology, at civil rights group Liberty.
"It is likely that other countries, including authoritarian regimes with poor human rights records, will use this law to justify their own intrusive surveillance powers," said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group (ORG), which advocates for privacy and free speech online.
Under the IP Bill, security and intelligence agencies can order ISPs to collect records of Internet services that a specific device connects to, such as a Website or messaging app. Records will have to be stored for 12 months.
Not only that, but this power can be exercised in bulk, to help the authorities establish links between suspects, and to identify potential threats originating from abroad.
It gets worse: the IP Bill also makes it legal for the government to hack into computers and smartphones so it can monitor encrypted communications.
In a bid to stop the law being abused, the authorities need a warrant that is approved by the Secretary of State and a judge. The government will also appoint a senior judge to be the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPC), who will monitor how the legislation is being used.
On a practical level, it is hard to see how these safeguards will prevent excessive intrusion into peoples’ private lives.
I can quite easily envision an environment where people are hacked and spied on by the government for some spurious reason cooked up in order to get a warrant. Those doing the hacking and spying know that at best they will save the day and catch the baddies, and at worst, they will get a rap over the knuckles by a judge; a judge who they will argue has little knowledge of operating at the pointy end of the U.K.’s counter-terrorism effort.
It would be bad enough if the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the intelligence agency that does the hacking, worked in isolation. However, thanks to U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden, we know that it most certainly does not.
"GCHQ is virtually a branch office of the NSA. It hoovers up around 30% of Internet traffic from the U.K. and EU, and shares it all with the U.S.A. The agencies use the same hacking tools. They use the same core data analytics platforms," explained ORG recently.
And soon the NSA will ultimately report to president Trump.
A man who told the Miami Herald in April that he plans to "load it (Guantanamo Bay) up with some bad dudes." A man who hopes to relax laws banning practices like waterboarding and torture, because "we have to beat the savages," he said, without so much as a hint of irony, on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ in March.
"Is sharing of U.K. citizens’ ‘bulk data’ with a Trump government safe? Will Trump threaten the U.K. with the removal of key technologies if our government steps out of line? Will he push the U.K. into taking ever greater risks and intrusions as the price for this close relationship?" asked ORG.
ORG said that oversight of GCHQ’s relationship with the NSA is woeful. "If we want our future to be safe, it is time to rethink how surveillance is governed and overseen."
In the meantime, the fight over the IP Bill looks set to continue.
The new legislation "is overtly incompatible with human rights law and ripe for challenge," said Liberty’s Carlo on Thursday. "Our message to the government: see you in court."
