I bet you thought the ID cards debate was pretty much dead and buried, didn't you?
It ain't.
The No2ID Campaign revealed this week that anti-filesharing measures in the Digital Economy Bill currently before Parliament will open a back door into your and your family's personal lives that will be exploited by the database state.
Last year's public outcry against a Communications Data Database - intended to store details of your phone calls, e-mails and internet browsing - forced the last Home Secretary to disavow plans for a giant surveillance database and to drop the proposed legislation. But things didn't end there.
The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 were still passed, requiring internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms providers to retain communications data on all fixed and mobile phone, e-mail and internet usage for 12 months. Because this is linked to the details of the person subscribed to the service, the retained data, wherever it is held, forms a digital dossier on you and your family - who you've been sending emails to, and what you've been looking at on the internet.
Even national security is no excuse for blanket surveillance of everyone's communications, but the Digital Economy Bill will now make allegations of copyright infringement, for instance, sufficient grounds for 'fishing expeditions' (speculative searches) in the data retained by ISPs - thereby ensuring the technology must be in place to enable mass surveillance by other agencies and organisations.
With a new unit set up at the Home Office just last month to push forward the £2 billion 'Interception Modernisation Programme' (IMP), it isn't hard to imagine who else'll be snooping too. Just as terrorism legislation was seized upon by local councils and used to spy on citizens going about their normal lives, so the Digital Economy Bill will provide opportunities for invasive snooping by councils and other quasi-governmental agencies who think they have a right to know what you had for breakfast, which finger you use to pick your nose, and who keeps you warm in bed at night.
The Open Rights Group and others continue to campaign against measures in the Digital Economy Bill. We should all be very concerned about any pretext for mass surveillance without any form of warrant or oversight.
Interception of communications was historically so sensitive that it was made into a power exercised only on the approval of the Home Secretary that cannot be even mentioned in court. Recording all your communications (and providing technical means for them to be arbitrarily investigated) is no different from opening your letters or secretly breaking into your home.
Please do write to your MP in your own words, expressing your concerns.
Meanwhile the Department of Justice has released a circular that outlines key provisions of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 that came into force on 1st February. One such provision is an amendment to the Data Protection Act which places a duty on the Information Commissioner "to produce, issue and keep under review a code of practice containing practical guidance about the sharing of personal data". Any failure to act in accordance with the terms of the new code ... "will not render anyone liable to proceedings in a court or tribunal"!
In other words, there's a code of practice but if they break it, nothing'll happen to them. Learn more here.
Even more alarming is the news that according to the identity commissioner it is impossible to tell whether identity cards have been obtained fraudulently. The independent commissioner Sir Joseph Pilling was put in place to oversee the government's £5.4bn National Identity Scheme and issued his first report this week.
So the damn things have hardly got off the ground and already the government have lost track of how many have been issued and whether they were genuine or not.
Why are we not surprised?
The GOS says: Still, never mind. I expect if we've done nothing wrong, we've nothing to worry about, right?
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