“The prime minister underlined that this is about maintaining the agencies’ current capabilities, that this is about the powers they need to keep us safe and about increasing public confidence in what they do and the process”.
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“An internet connection record is a record of a communications service that a person has used, not a record of every webpage they have accessed”.
The admission, made by UK’s home secretary Theresa May, came amid a ministerial debate on a new draft United Kingdom surveillance bill that gives police and intelligence access to websites visited by people without the need for a warrant.
Home Secretary Theresa May will tomorrow publish the new Investigatory Powers Bill, a draft bill that has been dubbed the “snooper’s charter Mark III”. May informed the House of Commons that 90% of large organizations suffered an information security breach previous year.
When police or security agencies apply to intercept someone’s communications, their plans would have to be first signed off by the home secretary – as is now the case – but then approved by one of these judges, something which has been termed a “double lock”.
If the new laws are agreed, all personal internet searches will be held for a year and could be accessed at anytime by your internet service provider (ISP), police officers or the security agencies.
The Government will seek to protect against such abuses by creating a new offence of “knowingly or recklessly obtaining communications data”, which will see those convicted facing up to 10 years in prison.
“Some have characterised this power as law enforcement having access to people’s full web browsing histories”.
ISPs won’t have to store and disclose every page you browse, but they will have to keep a record of every domain you visit.
At the moment, surveillance is monitored by three “oversight commissioners”, who would be replaced under the bill with a single investigatory powers commissioner (who must also be a senior judge).
Critics have denounced the plan as a major extension of surveillance powers which will undermine privacy.
In an attempt to assuage privacy concerns, there will be tougher punishments for misuse of data, judicial warrants to access records would be required and local councils wouldn’t be allowed to access data, the BBC said.
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The proposed legislation has been widely compared to the Communications Data Bill introduced in the 2012-13 legislative session, which was eventually dropped due to Liberal Democrat opposition.
