Your Rights – RIP (Part 1)

The Passage of the Bill

In 2000, the UK Government published details of its plans to allow law enforcement agencies to access email correspondence. For the first time, UK police would be able to lawfully read your emails and listen in on your mobile phone conversations.

 The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill was positioned by the UK Government - then in its first term in Government and confident in its powers of spin - as nothing more than a move to treat new communications techniques the same way as conventional telephony. But from the start it attracted.

 The Financial Times published an article claiming that the Government wanted it on the statute books before the Human Rights Act came into force in October 2000. Even then critics of the surveillance bill were concerned that giving officials the power to demand access to encryption keys would open the door to a range of privacy abuse issues.

 While the attempt to crack down on the use of the Internet as a way of distributing offensive and illegal material (be it from racist organisations or paedophile rings) was supported by most people, there was concern that the proposed legislation would be used as a blunt instrument.

 Particularly as failure to hand over a text-only version of a suspected email or give the police access to the encryption key you are using could result in a two year prison sentence. Another area of concern was that the police would be able to grant their own warrants to use the proposed Act’s powers to put someone under surveillance.

 Opposition in The Lords

Whereas the passage of the bill was reasonably smooth, its scrutiny in the upper house was more detailed An alliance of more than 50 UK organisations called on the House of Lords to scrap the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. The open letter was signed by a mixture of trades unions, consumer groups, businesses, medical bodies and human rights campaigners.

 These critics pointed out that the bill was badly drafted, too expensive for ISPs to implement, technologically obsolete, damaging to ecommerce and potentially breaking European Union human rights laws. These signatories include Amnesty International, The Manufacturing and Science Finance Union, Esther Dyson, Royal College of Nursing, National Union of Journalists, the Society of Editors, Privacy International and the Telecommunication Managers Association.

 ”We agree that the government has a duty to protect public safety, but the RIP Bill is neither an acceptable nor a responsible means of achieving this goal. We are deeply concerned that the bill will inhibit the development of the internet and ecommerce, while creating a range of onerous and unfair impositions on individuals, organisations and companies,” said the statement.

 

“The Bill substantially increases the power of law enforcement and security agencies, and yet provides wholly inadequate measures for authorisation and oversight. The ability of Government to demand decryption keys creates a dangerous precedent, which will affect the rights of all computer users. Surveillance of website visits will undermine confidence in the internet as a means of communication.”

 ”We urge the government to withdraw the Bill. Any subsequent legislation should, at the very least, provide stringent limitations and oversight to ensure that it does not violate the rights to liberty, fair trial, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and privacy.”

 Despite this opposition, the bill received royal ascent in October 2000.

 Mobile Phone Tracking

Essentially, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) future proofs itself to allow new forms of electronic communications to fall under the auspices of the legislation. But what this basically means that, as technologies are increasingly being woven into individual lives, more information about us are now available in the ether - thus increasing the amount of information that the police authorities could gather.

 For example, very few observers assumed that this law could potentially be used to track a person’s movement – which it definitely can – as the information is held by mobile phone companies with a minimum of accountability. In theory, a police superintendent would have the power to order the use of positioning technology to locate an individual using his or her mobile phone as a tracking device.

At this time, European phone technologies such as GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and 3G were just being introduced and would have position capabilities as standard for the first time. Initially, this technology was introduced as an important tool for the emergency services as well as companies wishing to make the most of mobile Internet through location-based services.

 ”It’s like putting an electronic tag on most of the population,” pointed out Caspar Bowden, then the head of government policy think-tank the Foundation for Information Policy Research.