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

Secret Scotland : Freedom of Information ‘revolution’ will exclude Scottish Government Ministers

The recent review of Freedom of Information legislation in Scotland, and which organisations should also be brought under the scope of FOI is causing consternation among many bodies, for fear they will be revealed to be a complete waste of space & time (we knew that anyway – Ed)

However, the Scottish Government Ministers have decided to exempt themselves from the planned changes on FOI .. so, secrecy for some, not so much secrecy for others (sounds like business as usual ! - Ed)

Ministers to 'free' all information – except their own

Published Date: 26 March 2009
By David Maddox

A REVOLUTION in freedom of information (FOI) could take place in Scotland in the next few months, as ministers mull over responses to a consultation on the issue.

But ministers have no plans to extend the powers to cover their work, and the changes, even though they could transform the way business is done in Scotland, will not lead to a single new line of legislation.

The Scottish Government wants to force housing associations, bodies set up by local authorities such as leisure trusts, contractors delivering public services and companies involved in private finance initiatives all to be subject to FOI.

It is a proposal that has brought dire warnings from business groups and a flood of protest from the private sector during the consultation, which closed on 12 January.

However this extension of FOI powers, which would make Scotland the most open country in the UK, is likely to be introduced without much scrutiny in parliament by using an order made via devolved powers with no new legislation.

The powers to introduce this extension exist under Section 5 of the Freedom of Information Act, although the move would need to be rubber-stamped by MSPs in a vote on a statutory instrument.

Attempts to do something similar with minimum pricing on alcohol caused a storm of protest inside and outside Holyrood, and led to questions over what the purpose of a Scottish Parliament is, if it does not have proper scrutiny and formulate legislation on major changes. But even more eyebrows were raised in the past week after SNP ministers showed no desire to make themselves subject to any extension of FOI.

They rejected a request by The Scotsman for the publication of Cabinet minutes from February, when the SNP decided to drop its election manifesto pledge of replacing the council tax with a local income tax.

This rejection came despite an earlier SNP attack on the UK government for not publishing minutes of the Cabinet meeting where it was decided Britain should go to war in Iraq, ignoring a ruling by the Information Commissioner for England and Wales. In both cases, the reason for refusal given was to "protect free and frank exchanges" between ministers.

The refusal was a marked difference to an exchange during First Minister's Questions a week before, when Alex Salmond responded to SNP MSP Christine Grahame on the issue.

"I certainly agree that this (Scottish] government is much more accountable and transparent than the Labour government in London," he said, to her assertion that the UK government was "secretive".

The Conservative chief whip, David McLetchie, agreed with the ruling, but accused the SNP of "politically cherry-picking" when it came to FOI. "They cannot reasonably expect to extend FOI to the private sector but not to themselves," he said.

Mr McLetchie suggested the SNP was using FOI powers to target groups it disliked politically, especially those related to PFI contracts and those contracting out public-sector work to the private sector.

He said: "While free and frank exchange needs to be protected for ministers, so does commercial confidentiality for companies."

Despite this, Mr Salmond, in his exchanges with Ms Grahame, gave a strong indication that the Scottish Government planned to press ahead with the proposal and implied he had a political motive to do it.

"One matter that is certainly of public interest and should be focused on is the previous excuses for not revealing the full extent of private finance contracts and obligations on the public sector, which are threadbare," he said.

The consultation results show almost universal support for FOI, but each agreement is almost always accompanied with a reason why it should not be extended. Only the Campaign for Freedom of Information Scotland has wholeheartedly backed the move, arguing that local government in particular avoided public scrutiny by farming out work to the private sector.

Businesses and their representatives have led the arguments against the move. Contractors, such as Balfour Beatty, warned the extension would add to costs from extra bureaucracy and raised concerns about releasing commercially sensitive information to their rivals.

CBI Scotland warned that the proposed extension would drive companies away from Scotland, claiming that, if companies were less exposed in England, they were more likely to do business south of the Border.

"An extension of FOI coverage could potentially act as a regulatory deterrent to private-sector contractors," its consultation submission read.

Housing associations and private-sector suppliers said the plans would create a new level of regulation.

The Scottish Government has said it will take its time to come to a conclusion, but the indications are that all the protests will fall upon deaf ears.