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Reporters Without Borders
United Kingdom
Source: http://rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=7149
Or: http://rsf.fr/print.php3?id_article=7149
19.06.2003
The government pushed through measures to monitor the Internet in the wake of the 11 September attacks. The Terrorism Act passed in December 2001 extended the period of obligatory traffic log data retention by ISPs to at least a year. The home office (interior ministry) also said it would monitor online financial transactions and private e-mail messages. The new law said police no longer had to get prior court permission to act, but simply approval from the home secretary or a senior ministry official. This caused a big row and some ISPs said they might move their servers out of the country. In June 2002, home secretary David Blunkett proposed amending a controversial law passed in June 2000, the "RIP Act" (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act), that allowed monitoring of all Internet activity by the secret services as a means to fight cybercrime. Blunkett now proposed to allow local authorities (tax and social security offices and municipal services, for example) to access details of people's Internet activity, including e-mail they sent and received. This caused such uproar in the media and among civil liberties groups that the government dropped the measure two weeks later.
The independent Information Commissioner, Elizabeth France (responsible for seeing that the government, official bodies and the secret services respected citizens' rights to data privacy), savaged the proposal in an August 2002 report. She said data retention and the proposed amendment of the RIP Act would seriously undermine basic freedoms and reduce guarantees of privacy and that some aspects of the proposed law would be illegal.
LINKS :
* Government information site: http://www.hmso.gov.uk/
* Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties: http://www.cyber-rights.org/
* ISP Association UK: http://www.ispa.org.uk/
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© Reporters Without Borders 2002
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