UK Bill Hands Vast Surveillance Powers to Police and Intelligence Agencies
By Barry Mason
Global Research
March 14, 2016
On March 1, Home Secretary Theresa May published the Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB), known by critics as the “snooper’s charter”.
It enshrines in law the previously hidden mass gathering of Internet data by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spying agency, as exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.
The IPB is a far-reaching attack on privacy and democratic rights and greatly enhances the power of the growing surveillance state, as it brings the current diverse rules governing state surveillance into one piece of legislation.
In an unprecedented level of intrusion, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will have to keep records of the browsing history of everyone who accesses the Internet for a period of 12 months. State security forces will have the power to access this data unhindered, which would enable them to see every web site a person visited.
The introduction to the all-embracing bill states its purpose is to:
“Make provision about the interception of communications, equipment interference and the acquisition and retention of communications data, bulk personal datasets and other information; to make provision about the treatment of material held as a result of such interception, equipment interference or acquisition or retention; to establish the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and other Judicial Commissioners and make provision about them and other oversight arrangements; to make further provision about investigatory powers and national security …”
It will establish in law the activities of GCHQ, providing the spy agency with access to all the data travelling on Internet cables passing through UK territory, its bulk storage and analysis. GCHQ’s nefarious practices, in which vast amounts of data entering and leaving the UK are hoovered up and shared with the US National Security Agency, as revealed by Snowden, will now be given legal sanction.
The IPB grants GCHQ, the National Crime Agency and, for the first time, a number of major police forces, the power to hack into mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets and the licence to carry out non-targeted “mass hacking” of such devices.
The Rest…HERE
