Geeklawyer notes that all of the Supreme Leader’s pro-civil liberties “I’m not as bad as Tony Blair” guff is turning out to be crap. He can’t get enough airtime to bleat about how beastly the Burmese government are to crush peaceful protesters in their capital. Yet oddly he is not following through on his promise to repeal legislation that outlaws democratic protest in our own capital and permits the Met to beat up peaceful protestors outside Parliament.
He is continuing with the requirement to compel people to surrender encryption keys on pain of a jail sentence and despite perhaps incriminating themselves. All the while reversing the effective (if not technical) burden of proof if the keys are lost, as often happens.
And now, to combat terrorism of course, he is allowing any government agency to intrude into peoples private lives by getting any phone call data they wish. No safeguards at all, no judicial oversight, nada. Records of everyone you phone or text can be demanded by nearly any government agency. Quite how giving the taxman or the housing authority my phone records helps terrorism is not clear. No, it’s all for the public good, or as the Home Office standard line goes every time the curtail civil liberties:
”We are not intruding into people’s private lives,” said the spokesman, adding that the move was “part of the difficult balance between protecting people from terrorism and serious crime, and respecting people’s human rights”.
Bollocks, you lying scrote.
The article I read suggests that a Judge would have to authorize the release of any information. If they didn’t then this would be a huge violation of civil liberties. Even with Judicial review it still makes one wonder why over 650 governmental agencies would need access to this information. I didn’t even realize that there were this many public bodies! The EU Directive on Data Retention meant that the UK government had to create some kind of new mandate for the retention of phone logs, but they didn’t have to allow everyone under the sun to have access to it. It would be interesting to know what the criteria for gaining access to this information is, I mean will it be used to stop benefit cheats? What is more disturbing is that information on where each mobile phone call takes place will also be stored so your movements will also be tracked and stored.
There’s no need for judicial oversight on a s22 notice - it only needs an inspector to authorise it: that’s going to be a tough hurdle to overcome