Emergency surveillance laws to be brought in

[David Guyatt]

Big Cammy wants to become Big Brother clone...

Emergency surveillance law to be brought in with cross-party support

Move has been prompted by a judicial review claim in the high court that current practice is unlawful

• Patrick Wintour, political editor
  
• theguardian.com, Thursday 10 July 2014 08.55 BST
  
• Jump to comments (170)
  

David Cameron is to explain why the emergency legislation is needed at a press conference with Nick Clegg. Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Barcroft Media

Controversial emergency laws will be introduced into the Commons next Monday to reinforce the powers of security services to require phone companies to keep records of their customers' calls.
The move follows private talks over the past week and the laws will have the support of Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the basis that there will be a sunset clause and a new board to oversee the functioning of the powers.
Details are due to be announced at a Downing Street press conference on Thursday morning. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, modelled on a similar US body and including external experts, will be required to check on how the powers are used.
There will also be annual transparency reports setting out how frequently police and security services are using the legislation. There will also be a new high-level diplomat appointed to smooth relations with the US over surveillance.
The laws will expire in 2016, requiring fresh legislation after the election. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act will be reviewed between now and 2016 to make recommendations for how it could be reformed and updated. Lib Dems insist the new legislation does not represent an extension of existing surveillance powers or the introduction of the snooper's charter sought by the Home Office and long opposed by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.
There will be no power to look at the content of phone calls, only location, date and the phone numbers. Ggovernment sources say they have been forced to act due to European court of justice ruling in April saying the current laws invaded individual privacy. The government says if there had been no new powers there would have been no obligation on phone companies to keep phone records if there was a UK court challenge to the retention of data.
Backbench MPs will ask why the new powers are being rushed through the Commons when the European court of justice ruling was passed in April and the Home Office has refused to discuss the implications of the ruling.
David Cameron said on Thursday: "It is the first duty of government to protect our national security and to act quickly when that security is compromised. As events in Iraq and Syria demonstrate, now is not the time to be scaling back on our ability to keep our people safe. The ability to access information about communications and intercept the communications of dangerous individuals is essential to fight the threat from criminals and terrorists targeting the UK.
"No government introduces fast track legislation lightly. But the consequences of not acting are grave. I want to be very clear that we are not introducing new powers or capabilities that is not for this parliament. This is about restoring two vital measures ensuring that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies maintain the right tools to keep us all safe."
Clegg said: "We know the consequences of not acting are serious, but this urgency will not be used as an excuse for more powers, or for a 'snooper's charter'.
"I believe that successive governments have neglected civil liberties in the pursuit of greater security. We will be the first government in many decades to increase transparency and oversight, and make significant progress in defence of liberty. But liberty and security must go hand in hand. We can't enjoy our freedom if we're unable to keep ourselves safe."
A Lib Dem source said: "We must ensure our country and its citizens are safe, but as Liberal Democrats we will also do so in a way that improves, not erodes our civil liberties, and rolls back, not increases unchecked intrusion into our lives.
"We know the consequences of not acting are serious, but absolutely adamant this urgency will not be used as an excuse for more powers, or for a snooper's charter. We have blocked a snooper's charter before, and will continue to do so."
No 10 said the ECJ rulings had struck down regulations to retain communications data for law enforcement purposes for up to 12 months. Unless they have a business reason to hold this data, internet and phone companies will start deleting it, which has serious consequences for investigations, which can take many months and which rely on retrospectively accessing data for evidential purposes.
Ministers added that some companies had already been calling for a clearer legal framework
Labour backbencher Tom Watson described the move as a "stitch-up". He said: "There has been a deal and it had been railroaded through so my advice to MPs is there is no point turning up for work next week because there has been a political deal." He said he had not seen the detail of the legislation and promised to vote against the timetable.
He added: "The government was aware of this ECJ ruling six weeks ago and what they are doing is railroading this through. No one in civil society has got a chance to be consulted." The shadow cabinet had not seen the proposals until this morning, he added.

[Magda Hassan]

No justification for it is there? And just so they can continue to be the NSA's bitch too. I'm sure they will say it is to do with the Syrian jihad they are busy supporting. I wonder if this plays in with the statement by the EU honcho about it being okay for the UK to have their own laws on some things? I'll see if I can find a link.

[Magda Hassan]

Juncker: UK can reclaim powers while staying in EU

Leaked recording suggests thaw in relations between UK and EU president

LAST UPDATED AT 11:59 ON Wed 9 Jul 2014
Britain will be allowed to reclaim powers from the EU while remaining within it, Jean-Claude Juncker has said.
In a leaked recording of a meeting with MEPs, Juncker insists that he does "not want the EU without Britain". Using the EU term for powers, he says he is ready to return "competences" back to Britain ahead of the in-out referendum promised by David Cameron if he wins the next election.
Juncker tells the MEPS: "I would like Britain to stay as an active constructive member of the European Union. If Britain puts forward a proposal it will be taken under consideration."
In the recording, obtained by the Daily Telegraph, the EU head continues: "I am not in principle saying that no kind of repatriation can take place. If Westminster wants to recover competences, OK. If the others agree, it shall be done."
He also says that Britain is "an essential element of policy-making in Europe because the British are a common sense and down to earth people".
The comments will be welcomed by David Cameron, who failed to prevent Juncker becoming president of the European Commission last month. Cameron had warned fellow European leaders that the former Luxembourg premier would halt attempts to reform the bloc.
Following Juncker's successful election, the prime minister said that keeping Britain in the EU had "got harder" because of Juncker's nomination, which he described as a "bad day for the EU".
Earlier this week, relations between the two men were strained further when Juncker gave a thumbs-up gesture in response to a call from a Labour MEP for David Cameron to be dumped at the next general election. ·

http://www.theweek.co.uk/europe/59370/ju...ying-in-eu

And then there is this which does tie into it:

Britain pledges to fight Europe's Right to be Forgotten bad law

July 10, 2014 By Stuart Lauchlan
House of Lords

The contradictory nature of politics is such that a government can seek to take a stand against one policy while preparing to implement one that's potentially equally damaging at the same time.
So it is this week that the UK government prepares to sneak through beefed-up emergency surveillance legislation to enable phone tapping and online communications interception on a grand scale while simultaneously hitting out at pan-European threat to freedom of information.
The reason it will be emergency legislation is because earlier in the year the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the highest legal authority in the European Union, ruled that telcos and internet companies didn't have to keep records of calls, texts and emails.
So today the Prime Minister will chair a session of the Cabinet at Downing Street to drum up emergency laws, that will only run through to 2016 (they say) to restore the right to the police and security services to get access to online data, all in the name of liberty and security of course. The new laws, which have cross-party support, will be pushed through Parliament next week.

No right to be forgotten

But while this incursion into privacy rights is taking place, at the same time the UK government is taking a stand against another ECJ ruling, that of the so-called Right to be Forgotten which came into force in May.
This enables EU citizens to demand that the likes of Google remove search engine links to things that the complainant would rather not have on public view murder charges, corruption convictions, paedophilic tendencies, that sort of thing.
The creation of what is effectively a blunt instrument to rewrite history was of course welcomed in Brussels, where an over-excited Commissioner for Justice Vivian Reding declared it a massive victory, while most EU states are currently working out how to enforce the ruling.
Not for the first or the last time, the UK finds itself out of step with the rest of Europe and this time that's to be applauded without reservation.
When the ruling was first announced, Prime Minister David Cameron fudged taking a stand on the matter, despite his close links to Google and his working relationship with Google CEO Eric Schmidt who is one of his advisors.
Simon Hughes

But yesterday UK Justice Minister Simon Hughes drew a line in the political sand when he told a committee in the British upper legislative assembly the House of Lords that the Right to be Forgotten is technically unenforceable, would lead to thousands of misconceived complaints and is tantamount to the kind of censorship seen in communist dictatorships.
Hughes did not mince his words, accusing the EU of acting like communist China rather than a federation of democratic states:

We have criticised the government of China… for closing down people's right to information. There are other countries with strict information access.
It is not a good position for the EU to be in to look as if it is countenancing restrictions in the access of the citizen to access to information because it could be a very bad precedent.

The ruling only covers search engines on European sites, which means that, for example, something erased from Google.co.uk will still be visible in Europe if the user switches to Google.com. This means in practice that there is no technical way for complainants to erase information no matter what they may believe.
Hughes said:

If politicians think they can delete findings about their expenses, that's not going to happen. If people think they can delete their criminal history, it won't occur.

It looks to me as if it may be an unmanageable task. It will be a phenomenal task. It's not technically possible to remove all traces of data loaded on to the internet from other sources. You can't exercise the right to be forgotten. The information system could not be made to do it.

http://diginomica.com/2014/07/10/britain...n-bad-law/