British Snoopers Charter Will Be Reviewed within 5 Years

[Thakur]

Due to the rapidly developing technology, the British landmark snooper’s charter bill will only have a limited shelf life and will need to be revisited within 5 years. The defense and security industry have warned that fundamental parts of the new legislation may soon become irrelevant as the technological landscape changes.

The so-called Snooper's Charter is a new draft investigatory powers bill, which actually represents the first major overhaul of the local surveillance laws for fifteen years. It was triggered by Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the scale of mass digital surveillance.

The warning that it will be necessary to revise the legislation again came as a number of tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter joined forces to urge the UK home secretary to reconsider substantial parts of the proposed new bill, claiming that the law will have implications for the rest of the world. Moreover, Apple warned that the new law could paralyze much of the technology sector and even result in international conflicts.

The UN also expressed serious concern that the provisions of the law interfere with the rights to privacy, freedom of opinion and expression. Vodafone pointed out that the new law risked undermining trust and therefore rejected any move to require them to hand over information passing over their networks from outside the country.

The criticism from the international tech firms may appear the most serious for Home Office ministers as it was their rejection of the UK government requests to require them to pass over confidential digital information behind the Liberal Democrats’ veto of the last snooper’s charter bill. The tech firms have launched campaigns to regain their customers’ trust after Edward Snowden’s revelations of the British and American surveillance programs. They complain that users should normally be told when the security agencies seek access to their online and phone information. Besides, the tech giants reject demands to weaken the encryption and provide back doors to allow the law enforcement authorities access to their services.

In response, the Home Secretary defended the bill, saying that it significantly differed from her previous attempt to introduce communications data legislation and that the bill’s safeguards and oversight protections would be the strongest in the democratic world.