The Countdown to CCDP?

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in CCDP, Civil Liberties, Information Commissioner, Internet freedom, Mastering the Internet, Online privacy, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology | Leave a comment

According to the House of Lords calendar, on Monday, at 2.30pm Lord Strathclyde will propose a Joint Committee to review the draft Communications Data Bill:

†Draft Communications Data Bill Lord Strathclyde to move that it is expedient that a joint committee of Lords and Commons be appointed to consider and report on any draft Communications Data Bill presented to both Houses in the course of this Session and that the committee should report on any draft Bill by 30 November.

Are we about to finally see the details of what the Home Office wants to do with our data? Who knows. What is clear is that the debate up to now has been catastrophically hamstrung by the lack of information offered on what is being planned, while the arguments offered by Ministers have veered between woefully vague and very dubious.

A Joint Committee would be one important part of the scrutiny process, but it must not held in secret or receive evidence that cannot be made public. Equally, it must be able to scrutinise the technical claims being made about how data will be captured, in particular the ‘black boxes’ discussed as a means of capturing some of this data. Given the reaction from the technical community, including Oxford and Cambridge Universities, it is far from clear this is even possible, and if it is, whether it will produce anything of any value.

We also hope the Conservatives have fulfilled their pre-election commitment to submit the plans to the Information Commissioner for full pre-legislative scrutiny.

We look forward to hearing what is being proposed and the frank, public debate that proposals that will monitor every citizen using a communications device deserves.

Defending a free and open internet

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in Freedom of Expression, Internet freedom, Media coverage, Online privacy, Technology, Web blocking | Leave a comment

Parenting is not spying

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in Civil Liberties, Mobile Phones, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology | Leave a comment

A new mobile phone service launched today demonstrates vividly the debate currently raging about protecting children using mobile phones.

Big Brother Watch has long supported the need for services to give parents more granular control about how devices can be used, but ultimately technology is not a substitute for parenting.

The new service from Bemilo gives parents the ability to read every text message sent or received, as well as control who the child can call from their phone and see what pictures have been taken.

You can’t substitute parenting for technology and if there are problems with what young people are using their phones for the way to fix them is not to have parents spying on their children.

Technology like this creates a serious tension between children and their parents – one can only imagine the reaction of a 15 year old when they find out their mum has been reading their texts. It also de-humanises family relationships, with parents relying on the contents of a webpage to determine the emotional state of their children. If children don’t feel parents respect their privacy, it undermines trust and fosters a cynical view of authority figures that doesn’t help anyone.

Equally, the likelyhood is kids who are bothered will simply get a cheap SIM card and switch it with the parent-enabled one.

Giving parents the tools to control what their kids can do with smart phones is a good thing, but this is a step too far.

Met police plan to store phone data indefinitely

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in Civil Liberties, Data Protection, Information Commissioner, Mobile Phones, Protection of Freedoms Bill, Technology | Leave a comment

According to press reports, the Metropolitan police intend to retain indefinitely information recorded from a mobile phone, without judicial authorisation. This will be irrespective of whether an individual is charged or convicted.

Following the ruling in S and Marper v UK [2008] the legal status of indefinitely retaining personal information was made quite clear, and following the passage of the Protection of Freedoms Act it is the case that DNA cannot be retained indefinitely

Trials are now live in 16 London boroughs, and we have written to the ICO to urge them to investigate the Data Protection Law implications of such technology being employed by the police and whether indefinite retention is, as we believe, an infringement of the law.

The courts have clearly said indefinitely retaining personal information is not acceptable and it appears the Met are flagrantly disregarding the law.

Where someone is not convicted of a crime it is absolutely wrong for the police to hang onto the contents of their phone.

Supporting the Reform Section 5 campaign

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in Civil Liberties, Freedom of Expression | Leave a comment

Big Brother Watch is proud to be supporting the ‘Reform Section 5′ campaign, which has launched today.

Under the Public Order Act it is a criminal offence to act in a way that is threatening, disorderly, abusive or which constitutes harassment. However, Section 5 of the Act also makes it an offence to use language that could be deemed insulting.

The Reform Section 5 campaign, and Big Brother Watch, believe that this is a step too far. Take the case of an Oxford University student who, when out celebrating the end of his exams, approached a policeman and exclaimed ‘Exuse me, do you realise that your horse is gay?’. What should have been taken as a silly remark and ignored turned into an £80 fine, detention in a police cell overnight and a court appearance when he refused to pay the fine. The case was eventually dropped.

There was also the case of a street preacher who, armed with a placard detailing the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality, was fined £700. This was condemned by the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell as an ‘outrageous assault on civil liberties’ and Peter is also supporting the campaign.

Biometrics in schools under scruntiy

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in Biometrics, Civil Liberties, Councils, Information Commissioner, Protection of Freedoms Bill, Technology | Leave a comment

Ministers have announced that the use of fingerprint and face recognition technology in schools, without expressed consent, is to be banned. This announcement means that parents will be given the right to veto a school’s use of biometric data, while pupils are also expected to be allowed to refuse to participate.

Figures have suggested that around three in ten secondary schools presently use biometric data as a means of identification, paying for lunch, or to record attendance. The new guidance from Ministers says that they will be required to ask for written permission from a parent before they collect the students’ biometric data. However, even if a parent agrees a student would have ground to refuse to take part.

The Protection of Freedoms Act, which gained Royal Assent this month, has changed the advice given by the government on the use of biometric data. The changes mean that where a pupil or parent refuses to consent then the school or college must provide alternatives. The advice is currently being consulted on, with the final guide due to be published later this year.

This announcement from the government is a welcomed step forward in granting parents and pupils the power to refuse to use biometric devices in schools. In many cases it is clear that the real motivation for using finger print scanning or facial recognition is often to build up a database of what one person has been doing, for example allowing parents to see what a child has had for their lunch. Schools should not be using this intrusive and expensive technology to spy on pupils and these moves will make a real difference to protecting pupil’s privacy.

London Met police spends £4m a year watching CCTV

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in CCTV, Civil Liberties, Police, Surveillance, Technology | Leave a comment

A Freedom of Information request by Big Brother Watch has exposed the bill for police time spent watching CCTV in the past year.

As reported in today’s Evening Standard, the Metropolitan Police last year spent £4.1m on staff costs in its Visual Images Identifications Detection Office units,

The rampant use of CCTV across London isn’t just a blight on privacy, it’s also soaking up scarce police resources that could be put to better use in preventing crime. And when seen in context of the Met’s own research highlighting how 1,000 CCTV cameras solve less than one crime per year in the capital, it is further concern that CCTV is not being used either proportionately or effectively.

Earlier this year our report on CCTV spending, The Price of Privacy, called for five policy changes to improve the accountability of CCTV. Two of our key recommendations would add a large degree of clarity to the debate and enable the public to decide if this is value for money and a justification for the huge number of CCTV cameras in London. The two changes we called for were:

Require any publicly funded CCTV installation to refer to crime statistics or demonstrate a significant risk of harm before being commenced
Require public bodies to publish the instances where their CCTV cameras have been used in securing a conviction, and for what offences

If the Met published statistics on how many convictions were secured by these units then the public would be able to see how effective they were in improving public safety. Equally, it is important to remember many of the cameras in London are not controlled by the Met – nearly 100,000 are controlled by Transport for London and local councils – and if data was made available on the crimes these cameras were intended to prevent, the public could see for themselves whether it is really an effective tool or an unwarranted intrusion on their privacy.

More Marsham Street misdirection on snooping

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in CCDP, Civil Liberties, Internet freedom, Mastering the Internet, Surveillance, Technology | Leave a comment

Speaking in the House of Commons today, the Home Secretary said:

“Ceop … received intelligence of unique internet addresses from the UK who had accessed child abuse material,”

“Because some of that communications data was not available, nine out of 41 members of an international paedophile ring could not be traced.”

So. They had unique addresss of the UK members. The police could have secured a warrant, siezed the computers of the people identified and recover the data on their PCs and analyse it.

Alternatively, the Home Secretary could sign a warrant and they could put every one of the known people under surveillance, monitoring their internet use and watching who they communicate with.

If this was not possible, because of technical measures put in place by the paedophiles, then I struggle to see how the Communications data plans would solve the issue. Equally, as soon as ISPs are told to log extra data those seeking to use the internet for wrongdoing will take the relatively trivial steps to conceal their activity.

It is wholly wrong to say the only way of bringing these people to justice is to rely on monitoring what every internet user does.

This is exactly the same kind of scaremongering that we saw around 90 day detention, ID Cards and countless other ‘national security’ policies that were rightly rejected as being an unneccesary intrusion on privacy and ones which would make little difference to public safety. The Communications Capabilities Development Programme is such a policy.

–

Update: The Daily Telegraph also reports on this example, which turns out to be five years old and may have been solved today without any additional data,

Queen points to Communications Data Bill

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in CCDP, Civil Liberties, Information Commissioner, Internet freedom, Mastering the Internet, Online privacy, Privacy, RIPA, Surveillance, Technology, Terrorism Legislation | Leave a comment

“My Government intends to bring forward measures to maintain the ability of the law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access vital communications data under strict safeguards to protect the public, subject to scrutiny of draft clauses.”

So there we have it – the Communication Capabilities Development Programme will have it’s day in Parliament. We don’t know what the draft clauses will be or when we will see them, but the Government remains intent on pursuing legislation in the coming session of Parliament.

If someone is suspected of plotting an attack the powers already exist to tap their phone, read their email and follow them on the street. Instead of scaremongering the Home Office should come forward and engage with the debate about how we improve public safety, rather than pursue a policy that will indiscriminately spy on everyone online while the real threats are driven underground and escape surveillance.

The Home Office have been very good at saying what the problem is, but seem intent on keeping the technical details of what they are proposing secret. Is it any wonder that the public are scared by a proposal for online surveillance not seen in any other Western democracy.

They also seem keen to avoid talking about the Black Boxes for real time monitoring capability that we still believe to be part of the plans.

Whether it is a draft Bill or not, if the Home Office needs to tread very, very carefully when it comes to proposing a level of online surveillance not seen in any other Western democracy. The proposals will rightly be closely scrutinised in Parliament and I hope the Conservatives fulfil their commitment to immediately give the plans to the Information Commissioner for pre-legislative scrutiny.

It’s far from clear this is technically possible, with encrypted messages, virtual private networks and onion browsers increasingly part of ordinary people’s online habits. Equally, the ‘black box’ measures risk introducing new security vulnerabilities into the UK’s critical national infrastructure. There’s also the pressing question of what the Bill will propose that isn’t already possible under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

And given that Lord Leveson is only beginning to explore how personal data was illegally obtained from private companies, I’m sure there are many MPs who will want to know how proposal isn’t going to create a huge new risk of people snooping on what politicians, celebrities or members of the public do online.

Before the election the Conservative policy on this was “immediately submitting the Home Office’s plans for the retention of – and access to – communications data to the Information Commissioner for pre-legislative scrutiny.” We don’t know if this has happened.

A draft bill will not offer the same wide-ranging consultation as an ordinary white paper, but there is still a long way to go before this becomes law, if indeed it does. Big Brother Watch will be working closely with privacy and civil society groups to ensure that proposals are scrutinised and if it is the illiberal, intrusive and indiscriminate measure we fear we will work tirelessly to ensure it does not pass into law.

You can also download our key issues briefing and our full briefing.

Leveson turns to dodgy background checks and police searches

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Nick Pickles Posted in Data Protection, Databases, Information Commissioner, Online privacy, Police | Leave a comment

This week Lord Leveson’s inquiry will hear about private detectives running background checks on politicians, something that will come as no surprise to followers of our work.

We warned earlier this year that with more than 3,500 organisations able to perform almost three million CRB checks directly, without needing to prove consent it would be easy for extra checks to be done at the behest of private investigators, journalists or staff.

We also highlighted last year how more than 900 police officers and staff had been disciplined for breaching the Data Protection Act, with many of them responsible for unauthorised searches on the Police National Computer.

Let’s be clear – it is an offence under Section 55 of the Data Protection Act to unlawfully obtain personal information. The idea that ‘nothing can be done’ in relation to the private investigators and their clients is wholly wrong.The Information Commissioner’s Office made clear in it’s most recent report, What Price Privacy Now, the scale of the trade in personal information was and remains a serious problem.

Big Brother Watch continues to call for custodial sentences to be available for those found guilty of a S55 offence. It is remarkable that in an age of digital by default the huge amounts of personal data held by the state, private companies and other individuals and organisations is not protected by the deterrent of jail time.

We also believe that this episode highlights the danger of making large amounts of data available quickly in the name of ‘convinience’ but at the cost of privacy. Without proper audit trails and individual accountability, the rush to electronic systems and large databases continues to pose a clear threat to privacy that cannot continue to be ignored any longer.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 165 166 Next »

Media Enquiries

07505 448925(24hr)