Surveillance Society : All UK email & internet traffic to be spied on & stored for a year

All data flowing from your pc on the internet, will now be stored and spied on in the UK from today, in the name of anti terror measures, reports Out-Law News.

Given most of the snooping done on the general population under RIPA & RIP(S)A legislation has been used so far to detect fly tipping or parents sending their children to schools outside their catchment area … it wont be long before we see similar headlines coming from the new arrangements .. (yes .. click on a map to dump a couch and the rozzers will be with you in a mouse-click ! – Ed)

Out-Law News reports :

Internet data to be stored from today

OUT-LAW News, 06/04/2009

Internet service providers will have to store details of web and email traffic and details of internet phone calls for 12 months from today as expanded European legislation comes into effect.

The European Parliament passed the Data Retention Directive in 2006 in response to terrorist bombings in London in 2005. It required phone companies to store records of where and when phone calls were made. Those rules have now been expanded to include logs of internet communications by the .

The content of emails and phone calls will not be recorded or kept, but the details of the communications, such as who was in touch with whom, when and for how long, will be stored.

The EU legislation allows countries to choose a retention period of between six and 24 months. The UK has chosen a period of 12 months.

Bodies which are covered by phone tap law the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) will be able to request a court order for the release of the data.

ISPs will be forced to retain data on what communications were made from which internet protocol (IP) address or phone number, what the destination of that communication was, and its duration.

In the case of mobile phone calls, the data to be retained will also include information on which cell within a network a call was made from. This will give authorities an indication of the user's location at the time of the call.

The addresses of web pages visited do not need to be stored under the new rules. For internet access, ISPs only need to store the dates and times of a user connecting to the internet and disconnecting; the internet protocol (IP) address allocated to the user; and the user ID of the customer.

In March, Home Office security minister Vernon Coaker told a Parliamentary committee that the Government is considering an extension to the rules to include communications sent via social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo. The Government will consult before introducing any new law, according to Coaker, and that consultation could address the retention of URLs visited by web users.

The extension of existing data retention laws has been controversial, and faced an unsuccessful court challenge by digital rights pressure group the Open Rights Group (ORG).

"This requirement, imposed on all EU states, is a serious erosion of our fundamental human right to privacy," said ORG executive director Jim Killock. "Privacy is recognised by European and British courts as a matter of right. The European Human Rights Convention states quite clearly that we have a right to a private life and correspondence, and the European Court of Human Rights has stated that traffic data is ‘an integral element in the communications made’."

The Home Office previously calculated that the cost of retaining all the records that need to be retained, including the newly added internet records, would be £30 million in capital costs and £16 million in operating costs over an eight-year period.

The Government is allowed but not required to repay communications companies the costs associated with data retention.

See: The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009

Surveillance Society : UK House of Lords ruling allows bugging of all lawyer-client & doctor-patient conversations

The House of Lords have ruled that RIPA, the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers Act which allows the Government and public bodies to spy on just about every facet of an individual’s life, can also extend to snooping on conversations between clients & their legal representatives.

This has been going on in Scotland for some time now, as we have reported in the past … (where are all the legal eagles who should be protesting against this ? – Ed)

Out-Law.com reports :

Lawyer-client privilege can't stop surveillance, says House of Lords

OUT-LAW News, 23/03/2009

The state is allowed to bug communication between lawyers and their clients, the House of Lords has said. The UK's highest court ruled that spy law the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) allows lawyers' conversations to be bugged.

Lawyers are allowed to withhold the details of communication with their clients from the police, prosecutors or courts. This long-established right is designed to allow a client to receive full and proper legal advice. Under legal professional privilege they can tell their lawyer the full facts of a situation without fear of the communications ending up as evidence against them.

RIPA is the law which governs secret surveillance, outlining what the state can and cannot do to obtain information.

Solicitor Manmohan Sandhu was charged at Antrim Magistrates' Court with incitement to murder and intending to pervert the course of justice. The evidence against Sandhu consisted of recordings of conversations he had with clients in a room in Antrim police station.

Sandhu claimed that it was against the law for police to record his discussions with his clients because of legal professional privilege. A Divisional Court backed his claim, but the case was appealed to the House of Lords.

Lord Carswell in the House of Lords said that RIPA does allow for the surveillance of privileged communications.

"In its natural and ordinary sense [RIPA] is capable of applying to privileged consultations and there is nothing in its wording which would operate to exclude them," he wrote in his ruling. "It seems to me unlikely that the possibility of RIPA applying to privileged consultations could have passed unnoticed [in Parliament]. On the contrary, it is an obvious application of the Act, yet no provision was put in to exclude them."

Lord Carswell said that legal professional privilege cannot be absolute, that it has to have exceptions. "If it were not possible to exercise covert surveillance of legal consultations where it is suspected on sufficiently strong grounds that the privilege was being abused, the law would confer an unjustified immunity on dishonest lawyers," he wrote.

"There may be other situations where it would be lawful to monitor privileged consultations, for example, if it is necessary to obtain information of an impending terrorist attack or to prevent the threatened killing of a child," said Lord Carswell. "The limits of such possible exceptions have not been defined and I shall not attempt to do so, but they could not exist if the rule against surveillance of privileged consultations were absolute."

Lord Carswell also said that the Code explaining RIPA suggests that the law does cover privileged communication.

"The Code makes detailed provision for obtaining authorisation for monitoring consultations covered by legal professional privilege," he said. "It was laid before and approved by Parliament, but no point appears to have been taken that RIPA did not cover such consultations. It would be surprising at least that no objection was made to the inclusion of those provisions in the Code if it was thought that Parliament had not intended that the consultations be covered by RIPA."

"Parliament intended that the covert surveillance provisions of RIPA should extend to the type of lawyer/client and doctor/patient consultations which are ordinarily protected by legal professional privilege," he said.

Because of the Divisional Court's initial finding that RIPA could not justify such surveillance, though, two of the Lords expressed concern that the Government had carried on regardless.

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers said that the court "made a finding of law against the Secretary of State. She chose not to appeal against that finding. In those circumstances it was not open to her to consider as a matter of policy whether to "take the steps necessary to remedy the concern identified by the Divisional Court". The position was simply that unless and until she took the appropriate steps she could not lawfully continue to carry out surveillance on legal consultations in prisons or police stations".

Lord Neuberger of Abbostbury also said that he was concerned at the apparently illegal survillance.

"Having decided not to appeal the Divisional Court's decision that surveillance of privileged and private consultations under the present regime is unlawful, the Secretary of State should have ensured that such surveillance did not take place or she should have promptly changed the regime so as to comply with the Divisional Court's decision," he said. "Unless no surveillance of privileged and private consultations has been going on for the past year in the United Kingdom (which appears most unlikely), this strongly suggests that the Government has been knowingly sanctioning illegal surveillance for more than a year. If that is indeed so, to describe such a state of affairs as "regrettable" strikes me as an understatement."

see the ruling : http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2009/15.html

Scottish Councils compared to East German STASI secret police,'have general policy' of spying on Scots

Not content with some 7million CCTV cameras set about the whole of the UK, Scottish local authorities are now using spying powers to bug, film, and secretly enter peoples properties throughout Scotland in efforts to keep tabs on everyone from benefits claimants to critics, or whistle-blowing members of staff themselves.

The powers, originally granted to Councils to fight terrorism are now being used instead on everything from dog fouling to housing benefit claims.

It has also been revealed that some Councils have used bugging powers to find out what stories journalists are investigating concerning alleged 'failings' of Scots local authorities, and even it is claimed, spied on solicitors who were handling cases for clients with grievances against certain local authorities.

One solicitor who refused to be named said "some of the officials I have been dealing with have their own skeletons the public should be made aware of.” He added “Perhaps someone should spy on them too"

So, if your pet Jack Russell poops on the wrong pavement, expect the whirring, if suspicious, sound of a secret auto-focus lens in your living room from time to time …

The Sunday Herald reports :

Spy society

In 2002 Scottish councils were given the power to secretly film and bug citizens in the fight against terrorism. Now a watchdog claims local authorities are abusing the powers to target thousands of ordinary people.

By Investigations Editor Neil Mackay

SCOTTISH COUNCILS ARE USING SURVEILLANCE AND security powers intended to fight terrorism and organised crime in order to spy on ordinary members of the public suspected of petty offences such as breaching the smoking ban, playing music too loudly and dropping litter.

Local authority chiefs have ordered staff to spy on unwitting members of the public some 3579 times since being granted the powers in 2002. Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), councils have the power to secretly film and bug people, use paid spies to inform on a suspect's activities, and even intercept communications data such as mobile and landline use and information about email traffic.

The law was supposed to be introduced to deal with new threats to security in the 21st century such as global terrorism, international organised crime, internet crime and paedophilia. Information on the "misuse" of the Ripa powers by Scottish councils was gathered by the civil liberties pressure group and watchdog organisation, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC).

SACC researcher Alan Hinnrichs submitted freedom of information requests to all 32 councils. Twenty-six replied, revealing not only the frequent and haphazard use of the powers, but also the bad training and lack of safeguards and oversight that local authorities employ to protect the privacy and human rights of citizens.

SACC claims councils are abusing the civil liberties of the Scottish public and says civil servants and bureaucrats should not have such wide-ranging powers. The watchdog believes that spying on ordinary citizens should only be a power granted to the police or the security and intelligence services in cases of extreme danger such as threats to national security or to prevent major crime.

Of the councils which replied to the FoI requests, Edinburgh was found to be using the Ripa laws the most excessively, authorising spying actions 1252 times.

The council claimed "most commonly, directed surveillance is used by community safety staff to investigate complaints of anti-social behaviour. A small number of authorisations will be made by Environmental Health and Trading Standards staff investigating breaches of legislation relevant to their area of work. Finally, staff dealing with fraudulent benefit claims will have made a small number of applications".

Edinburgh also said it used "covert human intelligence sources" (CHIS) four times. A CHIS could be a friend paid to pass information to the council, or someone paid by the council to gather information on a target and relay details of their life back to local authority bureaucrats. Edinburgh Council defended Ripa as "an important tool" and said it only used the powers "as a last resort".

East Ayrshire used Ripa powers 94 times, mostly to monitor noise levels for Asbo applications. Powers were also invoked to monitor the sale of fireworks to minors.

In Falkirk, which used Ripa 380 times, citizens could be spied on for noise nuisance, littering, if they were suspected of driving a taxi without a licence, for breaching the smoking ban and if their expense claims were thought to be exaggerated.

Details from Moray showed just how badly informed and trained council staff were about the Ripa legislation. A restricted inspection report from the Office of Surveillance Commissioners dated September 2004 says the council's policy on using covert human intelligence sources was "clearly confused" and "displays a lack of understanding". "Every record" relating to covert human intelligence "was significantly defective".

Staff had not carried out risk assessments over the use of covert human intelligence, the report said, and "the need for them was not understood".

It added: "The chief executive, who is listed as an authorising officer for all directed surveillance and not just cases relating to confidential information, has still received no training." No central record of authorisations existed and the "provision of training has been very patchy". Some staff were "essentially self-taught" and others had received no training. Applications for spying powers were "never signed".

Perth and Kinross council admitted it used the powers six times to access "communications data". Covert human intelligence sources were employed twice and directed surveillance used 15 times. The Western Isles only employed the Ripa powers three times, twice for what is described as "anti-smoking" purposes and once because of the alleged misconduct of an employee.

Glasgow City Council said that on 44 occasions it used powers under the act regarding "the acquisition of telecommunications traffic data". These were in relation to suspected offences under the Consumer Credit Act, such as illegal money lending. Glasgow defended its use of Ripa saying it mostly used the powers to deal with serious criminal offences.

Richard Haley, secretary of SACC, said he was "astonished and baffled" by the misuse of Ripa, adding: "We need to be clear that this is not about a few more CCTV cameras. This is directed surveillance, likely to obtain private information on ordinary people. We are talking about the use of cameras and microphones and agents.

"If these cases are serious, then they warrant proper policing, not amateur detective work by council officials acting as if they were part of a private detective agency. Profound civil liberties issues are raised here.''