Privacy? Not in Britain, mate!

Today the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIP) was due for discussion in the House of Commons with the purpose of expanding it to include a wider range of agencies. The debate has been postponed - unofficially, because the amendments it includes are so unpopular.

At present the new order to be approved and brought into power on August 1 allows a broad range of government agencies, including all local authorities, the NHS, the Postal Services Commission, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary and the Food Standards Agency, to demand the communications records of internet and telephone users. These agencies, who share some law enforcement authority, could not expect access in the past and had to seek a court order.

Originally the RIP powers were only made available to the police, customs, Inland Revenue, and the security services. These were the agencies remaining on the Act after the Bill that first went before Parliament was cut back substantially to get it into legislation. Its passage with greeted with considerable political reservation, especially in the Lords.

Agencies originally deleted from the old Bill to get it passed were then added under this month's Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data: Additional Public Authorities) Order 2002.

Critics are calling it a 'Snooper's Charter' and say the new moves will put a strain on existing consumer protection legislation such as the Data Protection Act (1998). This Act is considered at present to be hard to enforce. Even the readiness of the police to handle large quantities of sensitive information has been questioned. Again, the most vociferous criticism of the amendments is from the House of Lords, which could slow down passage by a considerable time.

If the Order is passed into law, information requests will be approved by a designated individual within each body, but there will be no independent review of RIP requests. Different agencies will have the right to hold onto data for different periods of time depending on what they are collecting it for.

Data that will potentially be available includes the name and address of users, phone numbers called, source and destination of emails, the identity of Web sites visited or mobile phone location data accurate to a hundred metres or less. Individuals can take complaints to the investigatory powers tribunal if they feel their information has been misused.

Meanwhile ZDnet reports that the European Union is collecting data to see if music player software violates EU privacy laws. The issue arises as a user contacts an online song database because it involves revealing personal data - such as the computer's IP address - for identification. Even more attention is being paid Microsoft's .Net Passport, which the EU also considers to involve violation.

It seems that our regulatory bodies have a definition of privacy as something that can only be violated by commerce, not the state.

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