Against Massive Internet Snooping in the UK…2 petitions, perhaps the first of many

Read more UK Government Watch at MelonFarmers.co.uk

Scrap Plans to Monitor all Emails and Web Usage See petition from epetitions.direct.gov.uk Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time. The Home Office says the move is key to tackling crime and terrorism. They have no right to attack our privacy, if the legislation goes through, Britain will be no different from regimes it criticises such as China and Iran. It would enable intelligence officers to identify who an individual or group is in contact with, how often and for how long. They would also be able to see which websites someone had visited. Government should scrap plans immediately. …Sign the petition Stop the government snooping on every email and Facebook message See petition from action.openrightsgroup.org Dear David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Theresa May, I do not want the government to try to intercept every UK email, facebook account and online communication. It would be pointless — as it will be easy for criminals to encrypt and evade — and expensive. It would also be illegal: mass surveillance would be a breach of our fundamental right to privacy. Please cancel the Communications Capabilities Development Plan. …Sign the petition

Stasi Dave…Government revives mega-snooping plan on British internet and phone communications

Read more Liberty News at MelonFarmers.co.uk

See article from telegraph.co.uk

Details of every phone call and text message, email traffic and websites visited online are to be stored in a series of vast databases under new Government plans. Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to the security services under the scheme.The databases would not record the contents of calls, texts or emails but the numbers or email addresses of who they are sent and received by. For the first time, the security services will have widespread access to information about who has been communicating with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook. Direct messages between subscribers to websites such as Twitter would also be stored, as well as communications between players in online video games. Rather than the Government holding the information centrally, companies including BT, Sky, Virgin Media, Vodafone and O2 would have to keep the records themselves. Under the scheme the security services would be granted real time access to phone and internet records of people they want to put under surveillance, as well as the ability to reconstruct their movements through the information stored in the databases. The system would track who, when and where of each message, allowing extremely close surveillance. Mobile phone records of calls and texts show within yards where a call was made or a message was sent, while emails and internet browsing histories can be matched to a computer’s IP address, which can be used to locate where it was sent. Labour shelved the project – known as the Intercept Modernisation Programme – in November 2009 after a consultation showed it had little public support. At the same time the Conservatives criticised Labour’s reckless record on privacy. A called Reversing the Rise of the Surveillance State by Dominic Grieve, then shadow home secretary and now Attorney General, published in 2009, said a Tory government would collect fewer personal details which would be held by specific authorities on a need-to-know basis only. But the security services have now won a battle to have the scheme revived. They are known to have lobbied Theresa May, the Home Secretary, strongly for the scheme. Sources said ministers are planning to allocate legislative time to the new spy programme, called the Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP), in the Queen’s Speech in May.