Investigatory Powers Bill: what’s in it, and what does it mean? by Matt Burgess.
From the post:
Internet service providers will have to store the details of every website people visited for 12 months if the new draft Investigatory Powers Bill is passed, the government has confirmed.
The measure was announced by Home Secretary Theresa May in the House of Commons and is included in a raft of new powers intended to reform the way MI5, MI6, GCHQ, and others use surveillance powers.
May said that “communication records up to 12 months” will have to be stored by internet and communications service providers.
This means the individual webpage — “just the front page of the websites,” in May’s words — will be kept. She distinguished between domains visited and “content” — including individual pages, searches and other information — which will not be stored.
In a lengthy statement to parliament, May reiterated that the powers were intended to allow security services to protect the public, and particularly children, against threats including terrorism, organised crime and sexual predators.
…
At least from the standpoint of protecting the public and children from organized crime and sexual predators, full monitoring of government offices would do more good than surveillance of the general public.
As far as terrorism, people in the UK, those old enough to remember less pleasant times in Northern Ireland, know that the modern “terrorism” is a fiction, wrapped in a lie and hidden behind national security interests.
The interests of the security agencies and their contractors are the only ones being served by concerns over “terrorism.”
The Investigatory Powers Bill, all 299 pages, is online.
Curious, is anyone working on a comparison of the Investigatory Powers Bill and the Patriot Act?
The full text of the Patriot Act (Public Law version).
I have read snippets of the Patriot Act but not in its entirety. It’s a difficult read because it amends some existing statutes, inserts entirely new content and creates new statutes as well.
A comparison of these two offenses against the citizens of the UK and the US, respectively, might prove to be useful in opposing them.
With the caveat that whatever new outrages against citizens are contained in the UK bill will be doubled down by the US against its own.
I first saw this in a tweet by Simon Brunning.