- Register
18/4/01: Cybercops are go! - critics of the
government's policies were not invited and/or were banned
- NO MENTION OF RIP Sky News
18/4/2001War On Cyber Crime - claimed to be a bigger
threat to Britain than terrorism.
- NO MENTION OF RIP ITN
18/4/01: New cybercrime squad launched
- NO MENTION OF RIP BBC
18/4/01: New force to tackle cybercrime
- VNU
18/4/01:Government unleashes hi-tech super sleuths
- Guardian
Online 18/4/01: Government launches cyber-crime unit
- ZDNet UK
17/4/01: Tories pledge to boost broadband and e-commerce
- Sunday
Times 15/4/01: No Hiding Place - Bryan Appleyard - "[RIP
is] the most pernicious invasion of privacy ever imposed by a democratic
state" Anthony
Barnett (founding director of Charter 88)
- CW360 11/4/01: IT user groups unite to take Government to
task
- Financial
Times 10/4/01: Push to level the playing field
- VNUnet
9/4/0: Are your staff surfing safely? - ...the Home
Office has promised to publish a code of practice covering RIP [wrong
- not about this], its publication has been delayed....George
Gardiner, senior partner at solicitors Buchanan Ingersol...called on the
Home Office [??!!] to delay publication of the
code no longer than is strictly necessary.
- Internet Magazine
6/4/01: Stallman supports Internet Campaign
- Register
6/4/01: Free software would have prevented foot and mouth, BSE, Hatfield
rail crash - RMS - Pausing
only for the obligatory swipe at the UK Government, the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act and the Private Security Industry Bill (and tipping
his hat to FIPR's Caspar Bowden, also in the audience) Stallman went on a
gentle meander through the history of copyright, ending at the present day
when the media companies own most copyrights and also (he alleges)
own the politicians who make the laws that maintain the system.
- Financial
Times 5/4/01: Snooping code delay until end of the year -
Iain Bourne, strategic policy manager at the Information Commission,
said: "We got a lot of very detailed submissions, some of which were
longer than the code itself. The code was supposed to colour in the skeletal
outline of the law. Some thought it went beyond that." The commission
will now take expert advice before publishing the final version of
the code, "hopefully by the end of the year," Mr Bourne
added.....The delay risks leaving both employers and staff in legal limbo.
Sarah Veale, senior policy officer at the Trades Union Congress,
said: "A lot of us were relying on the code to clarify when the right
to privacy protects the employee . . . we need it to help employers, as much
as employees. If we're not going to have a code (this year), then if someone
is unfairly treated it means we may have to go to court. That's got
to be the inevitable consequence." The Confederation of British
Industry said it hoped the delay reflected a "fundamental
rethink" of the code. "Our response (to the commission)
contained a number of very serious objections to the code. We said it was
too complicated and too long and that some parts, such as e-mail, were unworkable,"
said Rod Armitage, head of legal affairs.
- ZDNet
UK 4/4/01: Government backtracks on encryption enquiry -
Despite accepting its own taskforce
recommendation two weeks ago, the Home Office now says there will be no independent
enquiry into the effects of the controversial RIP Act...."The impact of
the Act should be looked at by an independent panel to see if the government
has got it right or not, rather than whether or not the industry is
happy" Yaman Akdeniz CRCL
- Silicon.com 4/4/2001:
'Shunned' industry scuppers European cybercrime treaty
- Guardian
3/4/01: Cyber terror threatens UK's biggest companies - The
CMA asked172 of its senior personnel
... Thirty-two per cent admitted being the victim of cyber-terrorism.
- Register
3/4/01: Spooks cock snooks at RIP oversight
- The RIP Tribunal - citizens defence against abuses of
the Act - has been criticised for being poorly staffed, so underfunded that
the ISC reported in December, that it was unable
to open mail, let alone process complaints. The Tribunal
has
confers no right of cross-examination.
But the ISC meekly notes only that progress needs to be monitored by the
next committee. Without an effective RIP Tribunal, it is impossible
for UK citizens to invoke the European Convention of Human Rights,
the only legal recourse available.
- ZDNet
3/4/01: Watchdog warns Net policing will go unchecked
- "The official parliamentary watchdog has exposed
the [RIP] complaints mechanism as a sham, and a senior member has
highlighted its inadequacy under the European Convention of Human
Rights" Caspar Bowden, FIPR
- IndyMedia
2/4/01: Commons debate: Mayday, MI5, subversion, and the internet"
- Iternet Magazine
4/01: A Manifesto for the Internet - Repeal
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act immediately ... consult
widely on new legislation which will allow police and other agencies the
legal power they need to investigate crime without damaging the security of
the Net and without trampling over the civil liberties of every one of us.
- Scotsman
30/3/01: Thriving communications pose new legal implications
- Financial
Times 29/3/00: IMRG opinion - Spam - E-mail's foot-and-mouth
- (RIP-related ??) NTK
30/3/01: Registering the troublemakers
- CW360
17/4/01: CBI counters threat to license consultants
- ITWeek
9/4/01: Security staff face licensing
- ITWeek 9/4/01: LEADER - ...is
there a need for laws to regulate IT security staff? Licensing would
lead to more legislation and red tape, but it is unlikely to
help IT managers find the best staff for IT security, especially
given the current skills shortage... also most IT staff are
involved in security in some way - will they all have to be
licensed? And if a body is set up to award licenses, will it also
be able to revoke them? Is so under what circumstances?
- VNUnet
3/4/01: IT security firms face prevention or regulation
- VNUnet
2/4/01: IT security professionals may be licensed
- Computer Weekly:
2/4/01: Government may license IT security consultants
- Silicon.com
30/3/01: You're not getting in - not with data like that
- Register
30/3/01: SysAdmins to need a licence from Home Office?
The idea of the Bill is to bring
in a licensing scheme for bouncers, private investigators and
wheelclampers but its current wording clearly includes IT security
consultants and even plain old systems admin folk.
Since this really can't be the intention of the legislation - it would,
after all, be completely unworkable - you have to ask why the Home
Office has written it as such?
..."In 1999 the government wanted
'key-escrow' - a copy of everyone's encryption keys. The RIP Act 2000
allows seizure of anyone's encryption keys. Do they now want to ban
anyone from working with encryption without a license?"
Caspar Bowden, FIPR
- Silicon.com
30/3/01: IT pros may need licences to work-
"This looks like a tactic to keep the government's options open.
Unless there are the same cast iron exemptions for programmers,
sysadmins and IT consultants that have been granted to other
professions, the government can introduce licensing by order at any
time." Caspar Bowden, FIPR
- Home
Office 30/3/01: 'unofficial' Release
- FIPR
Release 29/3/01: Govt. stalls on licensing of computer consultants
- Register
30/3/01: US company defeats Brit RIP Act
SafeWeb's proxy servers encrypt all data
transmitted between an individual's computer and the Web sites visited, once
they've logged on to the service. Thus the only information one's ISP can
record, hence cough up to nosey Feds, is the fact that one accessed
the SafeWeb site...
The company also has an application called Triangle
Boy, which adds an extra layer of security for the truly paranoid
and further obstacles and frustrations for investigators and censors....
Because the T'Boy boxes are distributed
randomly, it is virtually impossible for any government authority to defeat
the scheme with filtering, firewalls or surveillance hardware -- meaning
that Netizens in notoriously authoritarian countries like China,
Afghanistan and Britain, say, will be able to access whatever they
please on the Web and leave no trace of their comings and goings.
- Register
19/03/01: Hong Kong ISPs slam encryption demands
(see Hong Kong section
for details )
- The concerns are similar to those raised last year over the UK's
government's Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill
- NTK
16/3/01 - TOTALISE vs Motley
Fool...So British law now says UK Websites can be sued for libel (because
they are publishers) and be compelled to hand over personal details (because
they aren't). Nice... as UKCRYPTO regular Donald Ramsbottom noted, if
the courts have this much power to compel disclosure: why did they ever
need RIP in the first place?
- KableNet
15/3/01:
Privacy schooltime - ...what the PIU (when it eventually
reports) must not do is recommend attempts to legislate the privacy issue
away. When the government attempted to move in this direction with its RIP
Act, it was rightly slammed by civil rights groups Ian
Kearns, IPPR
- Dotcom.com
14/3/01: British Law Lets Government Monitor The Net
- VNU
12/3/01: Cybercop slams EU law
- Britain's leading cybercop has slammed European Union
data processing legislation which he says makes it impossible for police to
smash online crime rings.
- ZDNet
Uk 9/3/01: Ignorance of email snooping law rife
- Guardian
8/3/01: Hush push for secure privacy
- Last year, Hush paired with the UK privacy advocates Cyber
Rights and Cyber Liberties to offer Britons free encrypted email that
bypassed the restrictions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP)
Act. (Asked if Hush might consider moving its office to Britain post-RIP,
Hush's Dublin-based chief executive Jon Matonis laughed. "No.
Absolutely, we would not. It would be too restrictive.")
- Guardian
8/3/01: Hackers: the political heroes of cyberspace
- Silicon.com
8/3/01: Bewildered IT directors struggle with email laws
- VNUnet
7/3/01: Cybercrimes treaty edges closer
- Industry
Standard 7/3/01: The wrong arm of the law
- Irish
Times 6/3/01: Myths that hinder Internet expansion
- New
Media Age 6/3/01: Enormous burdens
- ZDnet
UK 6/3/01: Government regulations stifle e-business
- Silicon.com
2/3/01: 'Unworkable' Snooping laws delayed for third time
- Guardian
1/3/01: In sight of the law
- Financial
Times 1/3/01: Richard Woods ISP public affairs adviser
- Guardian
1/3/01: Spot the difference
- Prospect 3/01: LETTER
from FIPR
in reply to Microsoft's Money -
Others can judge whether, in calling RIP's opponents
"libertarian", Mr.Carr told us more than he intended about his own
beliefs.
- Scotsman
26/2/01: BCC boss warns of red tape threat
- Computing
26/2/01: Philip Virgo - Whatever happened to broadband?
- Scotland
on Sunday 25/2/01: Watch out for the dangers of a wired world
- Irish
Times 23/2/01: Pretty good encryption man joins Hush team
- NTK
23/2/01: To the GOVERNMENT
GATEWAY Website: ... CHAMBERSIGN...is a system run by Viacode, with "key
recovery" built in. You get to generate your signature key. Your
encryption key, though, is created by Viacode - and they keep backups. So if
you use it for communicating securely, someone, somewhere, could
silently obtain your key from Viacode and monitor you....the ChamberSign
FAQ: "while ...a ChamberSign digital signature will stand up in a court
of law, the PGP digital signature is unlikely to". PGP: perfectly
legal, just not supported under this government.
- Industry
Standard 21/2/01: Is Blair's net full of holes?
- John Kampfner
Party
strategists are piqued by the reluctance of dotcom glitterati to join rock
stars and other celebrities in spreading the New Labour message in an openly
partisan way. For its part, the Internet industry is becoming disenchanted
with Labour, not least because of the controversial Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which many view as clumsy and
authoritarian....
Lord Haskins [in the recent report from his
Better Regulation Task Force...] also pointed to the damage that could
be done by RIPA, arguing that, if other countries did not introduce similar
legislation, "Net operators might relocate". But no ground will be
given here. One government aide commented: "The Net arose from anarchic
origins; it has an anarchic ethos. We need to do what we can to ensure it's
channelled carefully." Internet entrepreneurs have yet to achieve
anything like the political clout of the captains of the old economy – a
price they may be paying in part for their reluctance to be New Labour
cheerleaders.
- Silicon.com
20/2/01: Underneath the RIP Act - Pia Heikkila interviews
John Abbott (NCIS), Bob Packam (NCS), Neil Barrett (IRM)
- Guardian
19/2/01: MoD inquiry into 'privacy breach'
- Ministry
of Defence police have ordered an internal inquiry into allegations that its
officers extracted private information stored on a mobile phone of an
anti-nuclear protester... to determine whether the information was taken in
accordance with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
- Silicon.com
15/2/01: Kournikova filters could be illegal
- Register
14/2/01: Pedos volunteered system passwords to cop
- A spokesman for the Home Office told El Reg: "The thinking behind RIP
obviously predates operation Cathedral, but when putting together legislation the government consults all relevant parties for expert
opinion. " He said that a case like Operation Cathedral would not have been the only
reason for the law to be drafted, but he would not rule out the
possibility that it formed part of the debate. He said "It is a good example of
what the RIP Act is trying to do."
- Times
14/2/01: FYI
- BBC Online
13/2/01:Tackling online child pornography
- ComputerWeekly
9/2/01: Privacy, what privacy?
- NTK
9/2/01: Rubberhose
thwarts this by allowing a large number of encrypted messages to be stored
on the same drive, each encoded with a different password. The total number
of levels is unknown, so when Commandante Plodista requests your passphrase,
you can happily give him the password to the lowest level (or three),
confident that noone can ever prove that this isn't *all* the data you have
on the drive.
- ZDNet UK
8/2/01:
ISPA awards: Boos for BT and criticism for ISPs
- ...Pinder took the opportunity to criticise
ISPs for their failure to get involved in the current
consultation process about the RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers) Act.
According to Pinder the response has been "disappointing", and in
an interview with ZDNet News Pinder accused ISPs of immaturity. "It is
all very well to moan and make a fuss about these things but you've
got to be grown up about it as well," he said.
- Silicon.com
8/2/01: BT cast as Internet villain at ISP awards
- Tim Berners-Lee was named Internet
Hero, while BT chief executive, Sir Peter Bonfield scooped the Internet
Villain award for holding back unmetered and broadband Internet
access....The UK's new e-envoy, Andrew Pinder opened the awards. He
urged the industry to work more closely with government and criticised the
audience for not making their cases loudly enough: "You've got to
help me in the representation of the issues that I have to take to
government, but you have to make yourselves heard." Pinder
said there has been a disappointing number of nominations for the technical
advisory board to watch over the implementation of the RIP Bill - a
problem which he said must be addressed
- Register
7/2/01: Police urge business to report hi-tech crimes
- Network News 7/2/01: Industry figures see
red over RIP Act grey areas
- Network News 7/2/01: Did they or didn't
they - the UUnet RIP case continues
- BBC
Online 6/2/01: Cybercrime - does it put you off using the internet?
- NO MENTION OF RIP BBC Online
2/01: Life of Crime - Cybercrime
- Register
2/2/01: 'Cyber Sweeney' host hi-tech crime meet
- The National Crime Squad is holding
its first ever conference on hi-tech crime and electronic extortion via the
Internet. The conference, to be held between February 14 and 15 at the
International Convention Centre, Birmingham, will include delegates from over
20 European countries and will feature speakers from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the National Crime Squad.
- ZDNet UK
2/2/01: Firms say data laws lack clarity
Richard Riley, the head of the RIP Act
implementation team, told a seminar organised
by law firm Russell
Jones & Walker that the portrayal of the act as
"an Orwellian nightmare of mass surveillance is a load of
rubbish". Riley said that the
concept that a permanent intercept capability, with so-called black
boxes, would be installed in every communication service provider (CSP)
is a fallacy. "[It] will not apply to all CSPs in the UK - the authorities
do not have the resources," commented Riley...
The eminent human rights lawyer, Michael
Birnbaum QC, said that the failure of
the government to introduce a single piece of legislation that covered
all surveillance and interception had left a
confusing mixture of powers. He said
that there is confusion because of the number of statutes that would need
to be considered before a warrant could be issued. "Some of the
protections that the RIP Act provides against
abuse are inadequate, while others make
the task of investigation so complicated that they discourage use
of the Act."
- Guardian
1/2/01: Dr Jekyll, Mr Straw -
If Howard had done all this, the media and the
people would be up in arms. We might even have taken to the streets to call
for his dismissal. But because the author of these attacks on our liberty is
the softly spoken, plausibly hesitant Jack, we have let these things pass,
all the while being distracted by Labour's rhythmic beat about hospitals and
schools. The interesting part of the government's attacks on freedom is that
it reveals an innate suspicion of the public. The measures to retain DNA
samples, for instance, classify each one of us as a potential criminal,
whether guilty of a crime or not. In the case of RIPA, everyone's privacy
has been compromised by the black boxes which the government insists certain
internet providers install. Henry Porter
- Guardian
1/2/01: It's official: I'm a menace to society - All
over the world, governments are trying to stamp out peaceful protest
and dissent. In Britain, the new
terrorism and investigatory powers acts enable the security
services both to characterise protesters as terrorists and to ransack
their communications without a warrant.
George Monbiot
- CW360 1/2/2001: Breaking down the mind barriers
- Australian Radio National 1/2/01: Phillip Adams
interviews Caspar Bo
- wden on RIP
- Prospect 2/01: LETTER
in reply to Microsoft's Money - Those
who sought to stop the RIP Bill did so because we believed the dangers that
it was designed to cure, though real, did not justify the dangers it would
cause. Michael Catty, Stevenage, Herts
- Observer
28/1/01:
Crackdown on web baby sites faces instant log-off - Note
that Hutton is not just calling
for UK-based child-brokering sites (if such exist) to be shut down by the
ISPs which carry them. He is instructing ISPs to desist from 'relaying
material' from such sites, no matter where they are located. If this is
really what he has in mind, he is either certifiable or entirely
ignorant of how the internet works, because the only way of achieving it
would be to monitor the clickstreams of every single UK user of the
net - and not even Jack Straw believes he can do that.
- Tribune
26/1/01: LETTER from Caspar Bowden
- ZDNet UK
24/1/01: Dutch government acknowledges Echelon spy network
- NetworkNews
24/1/01: UUNet falls foul of RIP Act
- NetworkNews 24/1/01: ISPs stage debate over Government's frustrating RIP Act
- NetworkNews 24/1/01: Will the thorn in the side of
the online industry ever RIP
- IndyMedia
23/1/01: Police snooping increases as NCIS recruits cyber cops
- Wired
23/1/01: Privacy Battle Brews in England -
The new Criminal
Justice and Police Bill, which began what is expected to be its long
journey through British legal and political channels on Friday, is being
promoted as a defense against "yob culture."...But the bill covers
more than quality-of-life crimes. It also allows the police to expand their
DNA database by permitting all legally acquired DNA samples to be stored
indefinitely -- even if those samples belong to people who were later
acquitted or not even charged with a crime. Section
49 of the bill gives British police officers and customs guards the power
to copy the disk of any computer device found during a legal search in
order to be able to carefully examine the contents at a later time...Locking
the files down with password protection or encryption won't help, under
Britain's recently passed Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIP),
the police are allowed to demand decryption keys or passwords. Not providing
it can land you in jail for up to two years.
- BBC Radio 4
'Today' 23/1/01:
"...the Demon Internet
founder tells his old company that a threat to move overseas doesn't make
sense" 06:14 (intro
confounding interception and data retention follows)
- Nigel Cassidy (BBC)
"...moving abroad, would it be practical?" (heavy
skepticism)
- Cliff Stanford
(Redbus): "Er, yes
actually it's not very difficult to move certain services to avoid
particular bits of legislation - it would be a ludicrous situation but
it would be quite feasible"
- Cassidy (nonplussed): "
so this threat to move, um, is it realistic?" (virtually
prompting the answer 'no')
- Stanford : "I think so, yes...it's
perfectly reasonable to move ... overseas... outside the range of
silly..."
- Cassidy (interrupts tersely): "how
close
are we to this actually happening...do you see many ISPs doing
this?" [more objective and thorough
reporting here...]
- Financial
Times 23/1/01: Criminal intelligence body backs down on seven-year data
records - The National Criminal
Intelligence Service has retreated from its controversial
recommendation to government that telecoms and internet companies should be
forced to keep records for seven years of every call,
e-mail and website visit made using their systems. The law enforcement
agency has now suggested three years is the maximum period it could
justify recommending and that only certain data need be held. But even this
revised proposal will be fiercely resisted by the internet industry.
- Irish Times
23/1/01: Flanagan pushes ahead with plan for police reform
- Times
22/1/01: Heroes and villains
...The
bookies’ favourite for the title is Jack Straw, the Home Secretary,
who, according to many Interface readers, meets all the criteria for
the award: “Grrr factor; universal offence; internet ignoramus and
unrepentant”. Other readers’ opinions include: “He makes me grit
my teeth every time I see him on TV”, “He doesn’t have a clue about
the internet” and “He annoys everyone”. The reason for his
unpopularity is his promotion of the Regulation of Investigatory
Powers (RIP) Bill, which critics say will impose far greater restraints
on the internet than on any other communications medium. They say it will
force ISPs to install monitoring equipment, which telecoms companies are not
required to do, and invade personal and business privacy
....As well as choosing the “man we love
to hate” for the first time, the ISPA award judges will again be naming
a hero...Joining Berners-Lee on the shortlist are Richard Clayton
of Thus and Roland Perry of the London Internet Exchange (LINX). Both
have played significant roles in lobbying for changes to the RIP Bill and
are eloquent spokesmen for the internet industry.
- Times
22/1/01: The Internet Oscars
- Times
22/1/01: RIP - death of privacy on the internet - In
June 1999, buried among all the sound and fury of the internet boom, the
Government released a consultation paper entitled Interception
of Communications in the United Kingdom. This paper marked the first
stage in what is now widely considered to be one of the most
controversial acts of legislation so far introduced by the present
Government, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill or RIP.
Widely condemned as “misconceived”, “inappropriate”
and even “hysterical”, the legislation has been the target of a
large number of attacks from both inside and outside the computer industry,
including Amnesty International, the National Union of Journalists and
Professor Ian Angell of the LSE.
- Independent
21/1/01: Demon sees devil in the detail of RIP Act
- Newsbytes
21/1/01: New Zealand Politicians Protest E-Mail Snooping Bill
- Wired
19/1/01: ISPs 'RIP' Into British Police
- ITanalysis.com
19/1/01: Snooping bill ignored en mass
- Silicon.com
18/1/01: ISPA labels police 'inept' in privacy row
- Computer Weekly 18/1/01: John Riley column -
Ship your secure financial transaction systems over to the Isle of Man
if you want to ensure the government doesn't snoop on your customers. The
same goes if you are an ISP. That independent island, with the oldest
Parliament in the world, has rejected the dog's breakfast of an RIP Bill,
bulldozed so cavalierly through the UK Parliament by Jack Straw last autumn.
- ZDNet UK
17/1/01: ISPs blast police ignorance -
The proposals sparked fears that law enforcers
might build profiles of Internet users by trawling through records of
Internet browsing. "We
have no intention of doing that," said Gaspar when challenged
on the issue at the meeting. Gaspar,
however, said that only three years storage could be justified on the
grounds of carrying out an investigation and said the figure of seven years
had been based on the needs of the Criminal
Cases Review Commission
- Financial
Times 17/1/01: Internet companies hit at police ignorance of e-mail
- Register
17/1/01: RIP not a problem thanks to police stupidity
- VNUnet 17/1/2001:
ISPs draw up 'say and pay' list for police
- ZDNet UK
17/1/01: One in five employers snoop on staff email
- NetworkNews 17/1/01: LETTER - Secret Spyware
- BBC Online
17/1/01: Ford workers 'accessed porn'
- Industry Standard
16/1/01: 40% of UK government services now online -
However, civil liberties groups are concerned that the development of the
government gateway will threaten citizen's privacy because the only
system of authentication on offer for individuals embodies "key
recovery" originally designed for corporate users. The
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 gives the state powers to
requisition keys covertly from third-parties, exposing supposedly secret
communication to eavesdropping. Campaigners say mass-deployment by
government could tilt the rest of the market.
- New
Scientist 13/1/01: Review of Crypto by Steven Levy
- Register
12/01/01: The solution to RIP, email sackings and Big Brother
- ZDNet UK
12/1/01: Cybercrime treaty may conflict with UN declaration
- Business 2.0
11/1/01: Surf away from the snoopers
- BBC Online
11/1/01: 'Lewd' e-mailers keep jobs
- Economist
11/1/01: Stop signs on the web
- Telegraph
11/1/01: Employees fight back after 'porn' crackdown
- Independent
10/1/01: Save e-mail from the snoopers
- NetworkNews 10/1/01: Password hijackers risk job
- Guardian
9/1/01: Unions concerned about BBC email policy
- Observer
7/1/01: Beware - you've got mail
- Guardian
6/1/01: TUC claims firms overreact by sacking staff for lewd office emails
- Newsnight
5/1/01: Smut in the Office - no
mention of the RIP Act - "...in October the government
gave new powers to employers to help them trace cyber-slackers..."
- but plenty of puffs for spyware
- Channel
4 News 5/1/01: Big Brother in the office
streaming
- BBC Online
5/1/01: Big Brother warning after e-mail sackings
- Net Imperative
4/1/01: 2001 - Odyssey or non-event Part III
- Telegraph
4/1/01: Personal view: Ben Rooney
- Guardian
2/1/01:
Net tightens around the hacktivists
- Prospect
1/01: Microsoft's
Money John Carr
|
OLD
26/1/98
briefing to Barbara
Roche (DTI
Minister for "Secure E-Commerce Bill")
- Establish an Advisory Committee on
the Regulation of Encryption - a standing committee of experts
fairly reflecting the views of industry, academia, and civil
liberties NGOs. ACRE would consult with law enforcement officials,
advise the regulator, and report to a parliamentary scrutiny
committee
Caspar Bowden |
The Foundation for Information Policy
Research (FIPR), one of the main bodies to draw together internet activists,
was at the centre of the campaign against the bill.
In a major part of its activities, briefing
the media, the FIPR succeeded brilliantly, persuading many journalists to
parrot its libertarian
anti-RIP line. The FIPR, with an advisory council boasting many of the
most prominent internet cheerleaders and the leading lawyers in the field,
was ready and waiting when the RIP debate began...
The French government has recently
established a new national forum, made up of representatives of the internet
industry and French civil society, to discuss the direction the internet is
taking...We need something similar in Britain. [more
John Carr here]
- Independent
31/12/00: Email spies 'in breach of' human rights
- Observer 31/12/00: Winners and losers
- Information
Security Bulletin 12/00: Letter from Caspar Bowden
- Sunday Times
31/12/00: Peer reviewer - Caspar Bowden
- ZDNet
30/12/00: 2000 Roundup: Privacy under attack
- Silicon.com
23/12/00:
A year in review: The 'Snooping' Bill
- Silicon.com
22/12/00: Cybercrime manifesto stalled by European Commission
- BBC Online
21/12/00: Smutty e-mailers keep their jobs
- CNN.com
20/12/00: Sexy e-mail explodes into controversy
- BBC Online
19/12/00: Should your e-mails stay private?
- BBC Online
18/12/00: Cybercrime treaty draws fire from campaigners
- In all, 23 organisations have
signed a letter warning that the treaty will do serious damage to civil
liberties under the guise of helping law enforcers catch computer
criminals... one of the most worrying aspects of the treaty was the fact
that it had been drafted behind closed doors and gave no forum to
organisations keen to contribute...the treaty rides rough shod over privacy
concerns by giving law enforcement agencies wide-ranging snooping powers
they can use without getting the permissions required when domestic
surveillance is carried out.
- ZDNet UK
18/12/00: EU plans for e-crime laws
- ZDNet Australia
18/12/00: Is national security threatening our privacy?
- Sunday Times
17/12/00: Yum yum: the saucy e-mail that wrecked Claire's life
- Financial
Times 15/12/00: Ministers urged to look again at powers to intercept e-mails
- Lord Haskins, the government's
chief adviser on regulation, has urged ministers to review
controversial powers to intercept e-mails...the act could prompt some
businesses to relocate outside Britain...His comments will embarrass
Home Office ministers, who resisted strong pressure for changes to the
act
- BBC Online
15/12/00: Press send to censor
- Financial
Times 14/12/00: The danger of overburdening the web : Lord Haskins
- The impact of the more
controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act should also be reviewed
within a year of its implementation. There is concern that this hastily
proposed legislation will put British businesses at a disadvantage
internationally and may force some e-commerce traders to locate offshore
(see Regulating
Cyberspace report)
- ComputerWeekly
14/12/00: Hire an e-envoy with conviction
- ComputerWeekly
14/12/00: Users voice cybertap fears (2) "It
is difficult to see how the proposals would not breach UK data protection
and privacy legislation and the Human Rights Act. The proposals
significantly under-estimate the true costs and resources in retaining such
data - it would be extremely difficult for companies to comply with such
legislation" - Vodafone.
- ZDNet UK
11/12/00: Programmers fight government with M-o-o-t OS
- CNN.com
8/12/00: German officials warn of Net 'Big Brother'
- Silicon.com
8/12/00: UK cybercrime crackdown in breach of human rights - Simon
Moores: "we live in a society that has all the apparatus of a
police state, but none of the benefits. While the database is not available
yet, I suspect if the government wins the next
election it could become a very real threat", and Chris Bailey,
Perri 6
streaming
- Information
Security Bulletin 11/00: Geert Kampschoer (CEO
!!) on RIP and "PKI" - ...from Wellance
works via a private key infrastructure which is extremely difficult to break
because the key is held by the individual (!)
and not awarded by the ISP (?), as is the case
with the public key infrastructure (??)....For
example, for the Government to view documents being managed by a service of
this type requires the securing of a warrant to approach the sender and/or
recipient for access. This is not the case with straightforward PKI,
where ISP's can still intercept and hand over content without the knowledge
or consent of the 'owner'. (???!!?)
- ComputerWeekly 7/12/00: LEADER - Cybercops should
resist the seven year-itch - The problem lies
with the RIP Act itself. It will damage the UK as an e-business destination
and undermine confidence in confidential data. It should be scrapped
- ComputerWeekly
7/12/00: Users voice cybertap fears
- ComputerWeekly 7/12/00: Encryption experts to make
RIP obselete
- ComputerWeekly 7/12/00: The eyes don't have it - in
three Acts
- ComputerWeekly 7/12/00: Dealing with staff
Internet abuse
- ComputerWeekly
7/12/2000:
Legislate ISPs to aid police hunts, says NCIS
- ComputerWeekly 7/12/00: Industry anger at
super-snoop plan
- Register
7/12/00: Encryption tears holes in RIP
- VNUnet
6/12/00: Privacy group throws book at Amazon
- Silicon.com
5/12/00: Dutch ISPs groan at the cost of wiretapping
- Register
5/12/00: Govt ministers distance themselves from email spy plan
- Roland Perry, CEO of the London Internet Exchange, Linx,
surprised us by saying he had had a copy of the report for several
months...BT, for some reason, keeps billing records and logs for five years,
whereas nearly all other telecoms companies delete them several months or so
down the line, as the data costs more than its intrinsic value to store. The
long storage period was seen as a classic example of BT's lack of business
sense. BT is happy however - so we were reliably informed - to allow the
security services full access to this data when requested.
- KableNet
5/12/00: Big Brother behind the NHS's screen -
Where else do you find Tory Home affairs shadow Lord Cope of Berkeley gamely
accepting an award from former MI5 officer David Shayler? It has to be the
Privacy International's annual Big Brother awards...
- Silicon.com
5/12/00: Tory peer picks up surprise privacy award
- Financial
Times 5/12/00: Ministers shun call for new snooping powers
- Ministers
are thought to be against endorsing the proposals to allow such data to be
held by the state for up to seven years. They fear the opposition from
politicians and civil rights experts that such a move would provoke in
the run-up to the next general election. "They (the agencies) may
be flying a kite, but this is not something we are going to be rushed
into," said a Whitehall official yesterday...."It raises huge
data protection questions," said David Smith, assistant data
protection commissioner. "We recognise there may be a case for short
term retention (of data records) - that is a matter for parliament (since
such retention is currently illegal) - but
there is not a case for holding the records for seven years."
- Silicon.com
5/12/00: Snooping proposals branded 'impossible' - NCIS
say this is just a proposal and it expects debate on it. "What we're
proposing is not something that contravenes
existing legislation (!!)," a
spokeswoman added. However, for the proposal to be adopted, it is likely new
legislation would need to be passed by Parliament.
- Guardian
5/12/00: Omagh bombing cited by agencies demanding access to all phone calls
- "It is not just the current
communications data that is needed," says Mr Gaspar. "Identification
of users (particularly with anonymous pre-paid mobiles) is invariably
dependent upon research through older data and analysis of links with other
callers and locations. This kind of research is used so frequently that at
least two major software programmes exist for the analysis of this data.
All law enforcement agencies use these programmes."...."It
is clear the police want the ability to track every citizen as they go about
their business," said John Wadham, director of Liberty.
- ComputerWeekly
5/12/00: Telcos in a flap over cybertap law. Blanket approach to evidence
revealed - telcos are already
storing digital evidence for up to five years - a practice that ACPO
admits will not now stand up to legal scrutiny.
ComputerWeekly
5/12/00: Leaked ACPO document reveals cybercops' seven year itch -
The report considers two options for a national data storage facility: one
run by the government, which raises concerns over civil liberties, or one
run by contractors under a PFI scheme - which will raise the concern due to
Whitehall's poor record of managing such contracts
- E-Commerce Times
5/12/00: Cybersnoop Proposal Roils UK
- Hindustan Times
5/12/00: Spies want total e-access
- Financial
Times 5/12/00: Ancient idea helps to hide modern messages
- These days, steganography, from the Greek for
"covered writing", has fallen from fashion somewhat. The limelight
has been stolen by encryption, where messages are scrambled so they cannot
be understood. Indeed, debate on privacy and government legislation, such as
the much criticised Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in the UK, has
concentrated entirely on encryption as the main tool in the modern security
arsenal. Yet measures to help governments read scrambled messages are
pointless if the authorities do not know that a message is being sent.
- Times
4/12/00: Big Brother software under scrutiny - “... We
don’t then stop that person looking at that site, the software simply
warns them they are likely to be breaking company rules and they should
click on an offered button to close the site down. They have the chance to
proceed, but then their action will be logged to their network manager...I
freely admit that it’s very Big Brother and it is essentially a wire tap
on the net, but somebody has to enable companies to keep an eye on what
staff are doing online because ultimately it is the directors of those
companies that will take the rap.” Karl Fielder on 'DataCop'
- Register
4/12/00: Politicians line up against Euro email snooping laws
- Newsbytes
4/12/00: New British Govt Cybersnoop Plans Stun Privacy Professionals
- Metro 4/12/00: 'Stop MI5 snooping on e-mail'
- Glasgow Herald
4/12/00: LEADER: The threat from prying eyes
- Glasgow Herald
4/12/00: Anger at M15 plan to bug all calls
- ZDNet UK
4/12/00: Civil liberties groups condemn Big Brother proposals
- BBC Online
4/12/00: E-mail spy powers 'necessary'
- Register
4/12/00: Police request right to spy on every UK phone call and email
- Since the Home Office - and Jack Straw in particular -
has made it clear it is sympathetic to increased surveillance of UK
residents, the security services have clearly seen an opportunity to get
self-serving recommendations into law. This report - which, incidentally,
contains no mention of any safeguards to prevent abuse of the system - is a
stark indication of how totalitarian the government has become
- Silicon.com
4/12/00: Government wants seven-year record of all communications
- ZDNet UK
4/12/00: Police big brother plan is illegal says Liberty
- YouGov
4/12/00: Spy chiefs demand powers to monitor emails and internet hits [and
VOTE
whether records of all phone calls, emails and websites browsed should be
stored on a police database for 7 years? NO - 86% 5/12/00]
- ThisIsLondon
4/12/00: 'Stop MI5 snooping on e-mails'
- BBC
R4 'Today' 4/12/00: Roger
Gaspar, John Wadham streaming
- Guardian
4/12/00: Spies seek access to all phone, email and net links
- BBC R5 3/12/00: Paul
Boateng (Home Office) and Kamal Ahmed
(Observer)
streaming
- BBC Online
3/12/00: Spy plans 'threat to human rights'
- Sky News
3/12/00: 'Big Brother' fears over new spy powers
- Observer
3/12/00: LEADER - Spied on from cradle to grave
- ...It is a scandalous proposal. British
common law makes no presumption that the individual has the right to privacy
and this has generated an extraordinary culture in British officialdom which
presumes a right to investigate. As usual, there are no proposals for
serious safeguards, such as requiring investigating authorities to apply to
a court for the right to gain access to such information.
- Observer
3/12/00: Secret plan to spy on all British phone calls -
Britain's intelligence services
are seeking powers to seize all records of telephone calls, emails and
internet connections made by every person living in this country. A
document circulated to Home Office officials and obtained by The Observer
reveals that MI5, MI6 and the police are demanding new legislation to log
every phone call made in this country and store the information for seven
years at a vast government-run 'data
warehouse', a super computer that will hold the information...
- Guardian
2/12/00: Why that joke email could get you the sack -
One multinational company in Germany - where the rules governing spying on
employees personal emails are much stricter - is understood to have already
taken advantage of the more relaxed laws in the UK by sending all the emails
sent and received by staff from its offices in Germany to London where they
are monitored.
- NTK
1/12/00: ....for those of you who continue to
pester about the lack of updates to STAND post-RIP, allow us to invite you
to the pre-launch of FAXYOURMP.COM....
- ZDNet UK
30/11/00: Jack Straw tipped for top cybersnoop award
- ComputerWeekly
30/11/00: No ban on hacking tools
- ZDNet UK
29/11/00: Cable company sacks six for email 'misuse'
- Scotsman
28/11/00: Internet secrets and how to keep them
- ZDNet UK
28/11/00: Could employers ban personal email?
- Register
28/11/00: Email snooping row kicks off again
- Independent
27/11/00: This woman's watching you, Big Brother profile
of Elizabeth France - What does she think the next
problem area will be? "I think, technically, it will be on convergence
issues relating to communications and location data." This is where the
individual's movements can be tracked when they use technology such as
mobile phones. "There is the whole issue of who should have access to
the data and for how long and what use it is put to," she says.
- ZDNet UK 27/11/2000:
TUC advises on snooping - In
a new report, Surveillance at Work: Sensible
Solutions, the TUC advises
companies to work with employees to produce guidelines on good business
practice and the safeguarding of privacy.
- Financial
Times 27/11/00: Draft snooping code 'facing few changes'
- Elizabeth France, the data protection commissioner,
said she "could not imagine" the commission's controversial draft
code on workplace surveillance and other data processing would "change
in its essence" when the final version appears next spring...The
commission's tough approach could also force employers to change their
e-mail systems so that - unlike now - deleted messages cannot be retrieved
from the hard disc...
- Independent
26/11/00: Three killers trapped by bug in prison cell
- Guardian
25/11/00: Email? You've got the elbow -
"An employer could use
instances of alleged misuse of the e-mail system to build up a case of gross
misconduct."
- Guardian
25/11/00: Swamped with anomalies - The
legal situation governing what is allowed and what isn't has the clarity of
a Mississippi swamp
- Scotsman
24/11/00: Big Brother needs watching
- NTK
24/11/00: RIPA Tribunal...formed in October - The
technical-oversight-committee-in-exile of the Ukcrypto mailing list swiftly
scanned the released list of members, and spotted the only one to publicly
comment on previous proposals, one Mr William Carmichael...we see Charles
Clarke is busy changing the history books too
- ComputerWeekly
23/11/00: RIP Act nominated for Big Brother awards
- YouGov
23/11/00: Charles Clarke defends Labour's record on civil liberties [and
VOTE whether RIP infringes] 68%
AGREE
He denied that there was ever a problem
in the RIP Act - covering the Government's email snooping powers - with the
so-called reversal of the burden of proof, even though an amendment was made
in the Lords which effectively corrected the reversal
When asked why the amendment was made if
there was never any problem with the Bill, Mr Clarke blamed the Lib Dems
"who argue for the lawyer position as they always do".
"Parliamentary
arithmetic," Mr
Clarke said, was the reason for an amendment to a Bill with which he
"didn't accept there was a problem in the first place." - interview by Ben Farey
|
The
Times 28th June: Letter from FIPR
...Mr Straw correctly
says that the prosecution must prove past possession of the key,
but that is cold comfort because the defence must prove
non-possession at the present time. Moreover, since there is no
evidence when someone forgets something, criminals will always
be able to plead a bad memory, discrediting the defence for the
innocent.
...RIP targets criminals as
accurately as a sawn-off shotgun pointed at a crowd, and puts
Kafka on the statute book. A law which replaces the presumption
of innocence by an ordeal without evidence, with two years' jail
if one is not believed, is not a question of
"balance". It is simply wrong. |
YouGov: So there’s never
been a problem with the reversal of the burden of proof?
Charles Clarke: No, I don't think
there has.
YG: Why then was an amendment tabled in June in the Lords,
which effectively, as some people have seen it, reversed the reversal
of the burden of proof?
CC: Well, I know that's what's
argued... we felt it was necessary to come to an agreement with
the Lib Dems in particular, to get an agreement in the Lords, so we
did. I don't actually myself think
that the amendment made any significant
difference at all, it wouldn't have been the case otherwise.
But the Lib Dems did: fine.
|
Committee
Stage 28th Jun 2000 : Column 1009
Amendment 167C
For the
purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown
that he was not in possession of a key to protected information
at a particular time if--
(a) sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an
issue with respect to it; and
(b) the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt
Lord Bassam [Lab] - The
real issue created by the second limb of the offence is what
burden is placed on the defendant where the prosecution has
only been able to prove prior possession of the key. We
have tabled an amendment making it clear that where
the prosecution has been able to prove previous possession, that
alone cannot lead to a conviction if the defendant raises
some doubt as to whether or not he still has the
key....
...Lord Phillips [LibDem] - "Sufficient
evidence", I assume and hope, in this context means
prima facie evidence and does not mean
a balance of probabilities.
We are content with the arrangements proposed under this
amendment to throw the burden of proof
beyond reasonable doubt back on to the prosecution but
only if the evidence--the sufficient evidence that has to be
produced by the accused--is prima facie evidence. Subject
to those points, we are content with the amendments
tabled by the Government
...Lord Cope [Conservative]
- I am glad that the Government have moved on the
question of burden of proof. It was important that they
should do so.
...Lord Bassam [Lab] -
Lord Phillips...said that he would
[NOT !] be satisfied if the test was made on the balance
of probabilities. So far as concerns the Government, it
would not have to extend even as far as that; a
weaker version of it would be acceptable.
I hope that helps the noble Lord. |
YG: But, if there were no problem
initially, presumably there would have been no need for an
amendment.
CC: Yes, precisely (????), we thought
there was a need (????) for
an amendment because of the parliamentary arithmetic in the Lords.
But, we didn't accept there was a problem in the first place.
YG: You didn't accept there was a
problem?
CC: No, not with the burden of proof.
No.
YG: So why was there an amendment
then?
CC: Because of the parliamentary
arithmetic in the Lords.
(contd.)
|
YG: What about the conflicts with the
Human Rights Act?
CC: Well, there is no conflict.
YG: None at all?
CC: No. One of the parts of the Human
Rights Act is that the Secretary of State for whatever Bill has
to sign on the face of the Bill as to whether the Bill does or
does not conform with the Human Rights Act.
He can't (can
!) sign if it
doesn't conform with the Human Rights Act, that's perfectly legal and
the Commons and Parliament can pass the legislation despite that
statement. And one can imagine circumstances in which nothing can be
done. That's never happened so far. However, in the case of the RIP
Bill, it was compatible with the HRA. He didn’t do that as a kind of
wish, a Utopian wish, he did on the basis of
considered advice as to what the situation was. And the
advice he had that added to his conclusion was that the Bill was
consistent with the European Convention of Human and the Human Right
Act.
YG: But business does not seem
particularly happy about it?
CC: Well, it depends on who you speak
to in business. I saw a piece in Computer
Weekly the other day that said it very positive. There were
concerns in business about various aspects of it.
Some parts of business were worried
about some aspects of it. Other parts of business were worried about
other parts of it and we discussed it with business and we made
amendments to try to reassure them about the various points that were
made, which I think were reassuring. Obviously the proof of the
pudding will be in the eating, but I think business generally is
relatively satisfied with where we are at the moment. Our intention is
to work very closely with business throughout.
YG: There is talk about a growth in
personal privacy tools which will circumvent these decryption notices,
rendering RIP pretty useless anyway. What do you have to say about
that?
CC: Well, you have to take
a decision whether you're opposed to it. Whether you're
happy for paedophiles to operate on the net unaddressed, whether
you're happy for drug gangs to operate on the net unaffected, whether
you're happy for people to be trafficked in that way or not.
There's no doubt that the development
of Internet technology and all the things that go with it has
strengthened the hand of the criminal, but it's ridiculous to try to
stand in the way of progress in that way, but we have to develop what
weapons we can to contest them.
And the crimes which are committed
via the Internet are important crimes and have to be contested.
YG: But you can understand
people's concerns that it affects their privacy and their civil
liberties?
CC: Well, I understand it up
to a point. I understand the concerns of people who
believe what they have read in the papers and are therefore frightened
about this, that and the other. But, as you yourself said, there's
a lot of misleading information in the papers on
false information.
YG: But, the whole act is very
complex. A lot of people are confused because it's fragmented, bits
are being phased in after a certain amount of time. Do you think that
this has led to some of the confusion?
CC: To some extent. But it's partly
because the Bill is trying to deal with the whole issue of
surveillance. Now there are all different kinds of surveillance. A
policeman sitting across the room looking at us, a bug in the salt
pot, they're all different levels.
Now, for the first time - and the
Government hasn't got sufficient credit for this - we've put all the
forms of Government surveillance onto a consistent basis that has to
be properly and legally approved. That has not been the case in the
past. There were a lot of agencies that could do these things without
any scrutiny whatsoever on what they were doing. And I think the Bill
is a step forward from that point of view, an important step forward.
If people are worried
about their situation, which they are entitled to be, the issue runs
right across the whole way in which then technologies of surveillance
are now so much better developed than they were 20 years ago (?????)
The question facing that is do you
want to regulate it or not. Our position is to regulate it. Other
people are saying (????!!?!?!), 'no,
let's not regulate it (????!!?!?!),
let it go on,' and deal with it in that way'. Fine. But I think that
that’s turning your back on what's really going on. |
- VNUNet
23/11/00: The importance of patience and politics
- Telepolis
22/11/00: Nicky Hager - International co-operation in internet surveillance
....Like the British RIP Act, this is to be
achieved by amending the Crimes Act to make it illegal to intercept
electronic communications or hack into computers - and then exempting
all the intelligence and law enforcement agencies (police, customs etc)
from the new law. Police interception warrants will then cover all kinds of
communications (not just telephones) and search warrants will permit covert
access to computers from a remote terminal. According to the Police briefing
papers to the incoming Minister last year, they are also seeking powers to
oblige people "to assist the police to access computerised material
when executing a search warrant"; forcing people
to hand over passwords and encryption keys.
...The other half of the plan is changes to
the Telecommunications Act, again mirroring the RIP Act. The intelligence
agencies and police want amendments that require Internet service providers
and telephone companies to install equipment and
software to make their systems "interceptable". (Sources
say that Telecom New Zealand has already been paid to make its network
"interception capable".) A controversial side-issue is whether the
government or the telecommunications companies should pay for the changes.
In Australia's similar 1997 legislation, it is the Internet and phone
companies that pay.
...While there is equipment available that
could target a single e-mail user, other countries introducing similar new
laws have required an "interception interface" to be built into
every Internet and phone company's system. For e-mail, this involves
specialised software being installed by Internet service providers that can
be remotely controlled by intelligence and police agencies. This provides
capabilities that Moechel describes as "spooks' heaven". This is
what the New Zealand legislation will permit. This would not yet mean electronic
"trawling" of all e-mail traffic, as the GCSB does. But, as
the British Statewatch organisation wrote (about the RIP Bill), "Over
the past ten years secret and clandestine methods of
gathering 'intelligence' previously employed in the days of the Cold War
by internal security agencies have been permeating
policing practice."
- ZDNet
22/11/00: Carnivore cleared by Department of Justice -
However, the system is a tool without safeguards to prevent misuse,
according to the report. The system does not keep track of who accessed it
and when. Every operator has the same user name -- "administrator"
-- and there is no feature for confirming that the wiretap has been ordered
by a court. In addition, the report warned that misuse of the system could
result in significant privacy violations, confirming the accusations of many
privacy advocates.
- Ananova
22/11/00: Report on FBI e-mail surveillance tool plays down privacy fears
- A high-speed computer scanning system that enables law
enforcers to intercept e-mails of suspected criminals has been backed in
a report commissioned by the US Department of Justice
(and as
.pdf)
- New Zealand Herald
21/11/00: Snoopers' charter - do we need it?
- Register
20/11/00: Echelon discoverer gives masterclass in paranoia
- Silicon.com
21/11/00: Council of Europe calls for global internet crime squads -
French political lobby group (!!!) the Council
of Europe plans to set up a series of global cyber crime units to improve
international co-operation among police forces
- Observer
19/11/00: Don't read all about it: The creeping erosion of press freedom goes hand in hand with the erosion of our personal
liberty - Mary Riddell Under
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, we can be snooped on by bosses
eager to track us on CCTV cameras, monitor emails and ascertain how much
work time we spend booking holidays, shopping at Tesco On-Line or (in the
case of 45 sacked Orange employees) allegedly downloading pornography from
the internet....The RIP Act gives the state vast powers to spy on email
traffic between journalists and contacts...
- Register
17/11/00: TUC gets arsey about RIP email laws
- UKInernet.com
17/11/00: TUC calls for email guidelines
- ZDNet UK
17/11/00: Unions call for email agreement
- BBC Online
17/11/00: Firms 'should allow personal e-mails' -
"...instead of reacting by banning the personal use of e-mail at work,
it makes more sense for employers to consult with their workforce and draw
up guidance which protects and reassures everyone." John Monks, TUC
- Wired
16/11/00: Kiwi Tech Laws Taking Hard Turn
- Register
14/11/00: RIP just got scarier
- Times
15/11/00: Send the wrong e-mail and you could be fired on the spot
- VNUnet
14/11/00: Home Office rapped over cybercrime plans
- Financial
Times 14/11/00: Labour to create network of cybercrime police
- ...the cost to the state of the RIP Act had increased "roughly a
hundredfold". "The initial regulatory assessment put the cost
at £750,000," said Caspar Bowden, the foundation's director.
But the Home Office this summer agreed to contribute up to £20m
towards the industry costs of installing the "black boxes" needed
for the interception. In addition to the £25m announced yesterday,
the government is spending £25m on a National Technical Assistance
Centre...
- Independent
14/11/00: Pandora on Big
Brother Awards 2000 - the Home Office is front-runner
in the chase for "Most Heinous Government Organisation", and its
suitably double-think Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (which allows
e-mail snooping) is going for "Most Appalling Project". While
Black Jack is, according to inside sources, a virtual dead-cert for the
"Lifetime Menace Award". So there you go, Jack. Who says nobody
loves you?
- BBC Online
13/11/00: 'Cyber cops' plan unveiled (rehashed
Home Office Press
Release !!!)
- Register
13/11/00: Look out! Here come the cybercops
- Independent
13/11/00: Digital detectives to combat cybercrime (ditto)
- InfoSecurity
Magazine 11/00: Jack the RIPA - There were also
some ridiculous clauses in the original bill. The most famous is probably
the 'reversal' of the burden-of-proof. The idea was that if a warrant was
issued to access my encrypted data, and I claim to have forgotten or never
to have had the key, I end up in prison for two years. Clearly this was
daft, and it has subsequently been changed
- Observer
12/11/00: The e-envoy is dead; long live the e-envoy - One of the sadder sights of the past year has been that of Allan having to stand idly by while Jack Straw and his goons forced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill through Parliament - in the process alienating those ISPs and e-commerce companies whose co-operation the envoy desperately needed in order to achieve his objectives on the e-business front. As a civil servant,
Allan cannot be blamed for the RIP catastrophe: he could do nothing to stop it. It
would have required a senior Minister to take on the Home Office on its home territory. As it happens,
there is a Minister responsible for e-business, one Patricia Hewitt, but she uttered not a peep of protest about what the Bill would do to her bailiwick.
Why not?
- Sunday Times
12/11/00: Cybercops squad to fight crime with computers -
Jack Straw is expanding his press office operation at a cost of £400,000
to the taxpayer. At a time when police forces are complaining of low
numbers, Straw has advertised for an extra 10 spin doctors
- VNUnet
10/11/00: Freedom of expression internet style -
in the wake of the... (RIP) Act... it may make
Chinese diplomats sitting across the table from their UK
counterparts less inclined to listen to lectures on
human rights and freedom of information...The UK authorities may
dream that the country will become a European ecommerce hub, but it is
Germany that appears to be putting in place a legal framework to make this
happen. The German government is currently debating
what, in effect, amounts to an anti-RIP bill, giving staff the
right not to have their e-mails monitored.
- Silicon.com 10/11/2000:
Jack Straw and Ann Widdecombe tipped to win Big Brother
- Irish Times
10/11/00: Republic targeted for sale of 'unhackable' system
- NetworkNews 8/11/00: RIP black box supersnooping
leaves me shaken and stirred
- NetworkNews 8/11/00: 'Open source' secret service
- Guardian 8/11/2000:
How asterisks speak louder than words - Francis Wheen Is
it a surrealist manifesto? Is it a postmodernist joke? No, it's the annual
report of parliament's intelligence and security committee (ISC),
published last Thursday...Tom
King [streaming
begins 5m 9s], the
absurd chairman of this preposterous committee, was asked if the blizzard of
asterisks suggest that the secret state is becoming even more secretive. Not
at all, he replied cheerfully: it just goes to show how much more
information we are being given.
- Times
7/11/00: New law is not a snoopers' charter - So
employers must tread carefully to avoid breaching the law. The key is
proportionality. “If you suspect someone is bringing in drugs, you don’t
set up a CCTV in the loo to film everyone,” says Clarke. “Listening to
every telephone call, intercepting e-mails stored in a ‘personal’
folder, opening mail marked ‘strictly private and confidential’ could
all raise the prospect of a clash between the RIP Act, the regulations and
the Human Rights Act.”...Barry Clarke, employment partner at Russell
Jones & Walker
- Silicon.com
7/11/00: Hague promises to overhaul IR35 and ecommerce acts
- Financial Post (Canada)
6/11/00: FBI issues hack-attack alerts: Strike 'probable'
- Industry Standard Europe
6/11/00: France strikes a blow for Net privacy
- Independent
5/11/00: Net spy Act may be illegal
- INTELLIGENCE
AND SECURITY COMMITTEE 3/11/00: Annual Report 1999-2000
- We were also briefed on the
establishment of the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC). The NTAC
will be a twenty-four hour centre operated on behalf of all the law
enforcement, security and intelligence agencies, providing a central
facility for the complex processing needed to derive intelligence material
from lawfully intercepted computer-to-computer communications and from
lawfully seized computer data, which are being increasingly encrypted.
The NTAC will also support the technical infrastructure for the lawful
interception of communications services including Internet Services. We
noted that the NTAC will be located in Thames
House, but that it will be operated by the National Criminal
Intelligence Service (NCIS) on behalf of the Home Office. The three Agencies
will provide the NTAC with both some staff and fund part of its activity.
They will also be fully engaged in its operation and will be customers of
its product.
- Register
3/11/00: Net dad Vint Cerf slams RIP
- NTK
3/11/00: OK, so Bowden isn't a spook - at least as far as we know...
- ComputerWeekly 2/11/00: Living with RIP - Chris Sundt
- Guardian
2/11/00: Every click you make - Bill Thompson - Web-based
email services such as HotMail may seem secure because your
messages are stored on their computers and sent over their connections, but
the web pages you are looking at still have to come into (and go out of)
your work network and this means they can be monitored.
- Ananova
2/11/00:
Group offers answer to cyber surveillance
- Register
1/11/00: Cyber Rights Hush up new RIP powers
- ZDNet UK
1/11/00: Hushmail backs UK anti-snooping effort
- NetworkNews
1/11/00: MI5's 'black box' signals RIP to server privacy - Brian
Gladman, former technical director at Nato, said the content of the
box should be made public. "We ought to know what is in the box,"
he said. "If it was built by MI5, there is little chance."
- PC Magazine
12/00: Guy Kewney - would you let all your personal data reside on a BT
server? - remember BT is also full of people with
military rank--the 'shadow' positions of the armed forces, who form part of
the country's Intelligence service and are there in case of an armed
emergency. And if the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill is enforced,
and I'm deemed to be a threat, the Government can simply examine all my data
- Silicon.com
31/10/00: Microsoft hack update - hacker 'won't be caught' - Aled
Miles, managing director of Symantec Northern Europe, ...added that
despite its unpopularity, the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers
Bill...does give law enforcement agencies a chance to catch such
criminals.
- ZDNet UK
31/10/00: Government claims Net laws do not need modernising
- NZ Stuff
30/10/00: Hager reads too many spy books - Swain
- NZ
PA 30/10/00: 'Secret plan' denied
- NZ Sunday Star Times
29/10/00: Sweeping powers for spy agencies
- New Scientist
28/10/00: Indelible evidence
- New Scientist
28/10/00: LETTERS - Tapping the Net Before anyone gives
too much credence to Charles Clarke's rambling apologia for the
government's pernicious and paranoid proposals for poking around
everyone's e-mails (7 October, p
55) and his protestation that the government is technically up to
scratch, they might like to consider...
- ZDNet UK
27/10/00: New eavesdropping law is good news for IT directors -
The law makes it legal for management to ask
for the information and so the IT department cannot be charged with being
management's lackeys -- they are simply upholding Her Majesty's Statutes
(????) - Andy
Redfern
- Diana Wallis MEP
27/10/00: RIP Act May Break EU Law
- ZDNet UK
27/10/00: Snooping laws in confusion
- Register
27/10/00: Europe to investigate legality of RIP
- BBC Radio 2 Jimmy Young 27/10/00: Lord Phillips
of Sudbury on RIP workplace surveillance
- Silicon.com
27/10/00: Snooping Bill could be ruled illegal
- Telegraph
26/10/00: The death of privacy?
- Guardian
26/10/00: Hi honey, I'm on the computer
- ComputerWeekly
26/10/00: RIP Act extends culpability
- ComputerWeekly
26/10/00: Employers snoop rights in doubt
- YouGov
25/10/00:
Is it a case of RIP for privacy at work?
- vote whether you agree or disagree [82%
1/11/00]
that the Government
should have the power to demand your encryption key
- Industry Standard Europe
24/10/00:
You can call me, Al - The
government here just lost its e-envoy, and it's crippled business and
infuriated the privacy lobby with some crazy spying legislation called
RIP
- BBC 24/10/00: World Tonight on workplace surveillance
- ZDNet UK
24/10/00: Employers can read your email from today
- BBC Online
24/10/00: Cautious welcome for e-snoop law
- BlackNet
24/10/00: Employers gain e-snoop powers
- NetImperative
24/10/00: 'E-snooping' Bill takes effect today
- Guardian
24/10/00: US praises Blair for hi-tech successes - The
government's controversial regulation of investigatory powers (Rip) bill,
which relates to computer communications, was deemed so draconian that
companies such as Nokia and Yahoo! warned they might move from British
shores.
- Guardian
24/10/00: The RIP Act (unchecked,
out of date, inaccurate)
- ComputerWeekly
24/10/00: E-snooping regulations go live in Britain
- BBC1
24/10/00: Julie Etchingham reports on RIP workplace surveillance streaming
- BBC Online
24/10/00: Employers gain e-snoop powers
- ThisIsLondon
24/10/00: 'Snooper's charter' faces test
- Ananova
24/10/00: Employers gain licence to snoop on e-mails
| 3/10/00
DTI
Response to consultation ...small number of
consultation responses suggested that the Regulations should include
a
proportionality test...The Government is not convinced (!?).
|
- Financial
Times 23/10/00: UK e-snooping rules conflict
- "Any monitoring must be
proportionate (!?)
and related to business needs...." the DTI added...
- ZDNet UK
23/10/00: Britain braces for battle on workplace surveillance
- BBC Radio 4 'You and Yours' 23/10/00: Nigel
Hickson and Malcolm Hutty on workplace surveillance
- Ananova
23/10/00: 'Snooper's charter' could face human rights challenge
- NTK
20/10/00: COE fscked up its 'Cybercrime Convention' a *second* time....
- Irish Times
20/10/00: EU draft cyber crime treaty spells trouble - As
it now stands, the draft Convention on Cyber Crime introduces many of the
elements of Britain's notoriously oppressive Regulation of Investigatory
Powers Bill.
- Scotsman
19/10/00: One click of the mouse and they're monitoring your house
- ZDNetUK
19/10/00: Computer crime treaty threatens human rights
- ComputerWeekly
19/10/00: Forum unites to stop cyber crime -
Government ministers, police forces, security services and business
executives are to meet in Edinburgh next year, in a drive to influence
international policy on cyber crime. The Global Forum for Law Enforcement
and National Security will bring representatives of up to 190 countries
together to try put the risks posed by new technology on the political
agenda.
- Times
19/10/00: Who is reading your e-mail?
- ComputerWeekly
19/10/00: Staff unclear over e-mail snooping
- Financial
Times 19/10/00: Crime wave has websites rushing to fill the breach
- Silicon.com
18/10/00: Front-runner pulls out of e-envoy race - "The
UK needs someone who can stand up and be counted
(!!!) when party
policy runs counter to the country's best interests - for example in the first
drafting of the RIP bill." Richard
Barrington, Industry Director, office of the e-Envoy
- BBC Online
18/10/00: Big Brother or friendly helper? -
"It is essential that it is not marketed (!)
as a Big Brother," James Tipple, head of location-based services at BT
Cellnet.
- ISPworld
18/10/00: RIP the UK Net Economy?
- Register
17/10/00: Bosses join email snooping scrum -
Just a small note about modern news management lunacy. The CBI put
out a press release on 13 October, saying that on the 16 October it would
attack the DPC's code on email snooping. We called up to find out if
anything not in the press release had been said yesterday. No, because no
one said it. The CBI doesn't even appear to have told the DTI and DPC
direct. It was a press release about a press release that didn't exist.
- NetImperative
17/10/00: Data Protection Commission stiffs RIP
- According to the CBI, the DPC draft could outlaw random
monitoring of email and phone conversations: “This draft causes confusion
and uncertainty,” said Nigel Hickson, head of e-business group,
CBI. “We’ve been working with the DTI since August to establish a fair
compromise on the RIP Act. This just takes us back a step.”
- ZDNetUK
16/10/00: Digital crime plans come under attack
- Telepolis
(from German) 16/10/00: Private Internet use at work to be permitted
- Contents checks can be criminally pursued as violation of
the post office and communications secrecy, if " a serious suspicion on
abusive use " is not present
- Financial
Times 16/10/00: CBI attacks code banning snooping on staff e-mails
- IT Week
16/10/00: Neil Barrett - It is better to forget
- New Statesman
16/10/00: Writers - guilty until found innocent
- Tony Geraghty
- VNUnet
12/10/00: At what cost human rights?
- BBC Monitoring
12/10/00: Governments seek to regulate the Internet - New
Internet regulations announced by the Chinese authorities at the beginning
of October include holding online companies responsible for any material
that party officials might consider "subversive"...In the United
Kingdom, meanwhile, there is concern that parts of the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers (RIP) act - a new surveillance bill granting the
government sweeping powers to access e-mail and other encrypted Internet
communications - may be in conflict with the European Human Rights Act.
- Independent
11/10/00: Watchdog limits electronic surveillance at work
- Government plans to allow
companies to snoop on staff e-mails and phone calls were thrown into chaos
yesterday after its own privacy watchdog issued proposals to restrict
hi-tech workplace surveillance... is one of the first attempts to rein back
the Big Brother trend for bosses to snoop on their staff.
- Financial
Times 10/10/00: New rules for checking staff 'very complex'
- ZDNet UK
9/10/00: Watchers must watch out
- SecurityFocus
8/10/00:
Cybercrime Treaty: Take Two Dave Banisar (EPIC)
- most of the controversial
provisions on issues such as security tools and access
to encrypted data are unchanged, or are even worse than
before...
- The most significant change in
the treaty is the inclusion of two sections on interception of
communications and traffic data that had been listed as "under
discussion" in the previous draft. The two sections require
countries to adopt laws to "compel a service provider" to
either capture content themselves by building in surveillance
capabilities, or to "cooperate and assist" authorities
Carnivore-style....
- The section on access to data still
requires countries to enact laws that would allow government agents to
force anyone "who has knowledge about the functioning of the
computer system or measures applied to protect the computer data"
to cough up "all necessary data."...
- The COE has yet to hold an open
meeting on this treaty and still plans to have the final version by
December. The G8 is meeting in a couple of weeks in Berlin, but
the invitees are limited to a couple of government and industry
representatives from each country. Independent security or privacy
experts? Forgetaboutit...It's hard to call this process anything but a
pre-determined sham
-
- Industry Standard
6/10/00: Can the EU Preserve Web Privacy in England?
- ZDNet UK
5/10/00: Government okays snooping on staff
- CNN.com
5/10/00: U.K. snoop law may conflict with EU Human Rights Act -
"We can't see how the two laws don't come into conflict. We think it is
quite likely a union will instigate a court challenge soon" said Trades
Union Congress (TUC) Spokeswoman Sarah Veale...The
DTI acknowledged that the draft regulations had included clauses demanding
caller consent for e-mail and phone tapping (except in cases concerning
criminal investigations, or the monitoring of activities such as downloading
pornography), but the clause was pulled when businesses complained.
- BBC Online
5/10/00: Protecting privacy and monitoring e-mail
- ZDNet UK
5/10/00: Can you expect human rights online?
- Telegraph
5/10/00: Tony Blair seeks e-envoy
- ComputerWeekly
5/10/00: Farewell to the e-envoy
- ComputerWeekly
5/10/00: Voice your RIP Act concerns
- Guardian
5/10/00: Feedback - Letter from Avedon Carol
- ZDNet
4/10/00: FBI releases first Carnivore data -
...more than half of the 750 pages were blacked out and hundreds more were
withheld. The Electronic
Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) filed suit in June under the
Freedom of Information Act seeking the release of the Carnivore source code,
other technical details and legal arguments addressing the potential privacy
implications of the technology.
- CNN.com
4/10/00: U.K. employers win powers to snoop on workers
- TechWeb
4/10/00: U.K. Bosses Get Access To Staff E-mail -
"By allowing employers disproportionate powers of surveillance over
employees, these regulations fly in the face of the protection afforded by
the Human Rights Act" Caspar Bowden, FIPR
- VNUnet
4/10/00:
Fresh confusion over email monitoring
- Guardian Online
4/10/00: Licensed to snoop - Picture the scene:
suddenly you get a boss who has got it in for you but can't fault you for
any of your work. So he starts looking at all the back emails you have made,
and all the websites you've visited...Remember what Richelieu said
- give me ten lines written by the most honest man and I will find something
in them to hang him for. Patricia Hewitt, the
minister for e-commerce - believed to be the same Patricia Hewitt who used
to be an outstanding champion of civil liberties - denies that business is
being given a licence to snoop because there are limits companies can't go
over, such as "intercepting personal calls for unjustified scurrilous
interest". But who's to judge?...
- BBC Online
4/10/00: Snooping laws 'to face court challenge'
- Financial
Times 4/10/00: Companies free to snoop on staff -
The TUC said an early union-backed legal challenge to the new rules was
likely, on the basis that they breached employees' new right to privacy
under the Human Rights Act.
- Times
4/10/00: Bosses given right to spy on e-mails
- Telepolis
3/10/00: On-Line Privacy Battles Highlited
- VNUnet
3/10/00:
Ms Hewitt's real opinion of the RIP Bill was clear from
her opening remarks, when she said: "We shouldn't kid ourselves that
this will solve hardcore crime on the internet, but we shouldn't just throw
up our hands."
- VNUnet
2/10/00: Firms warned over email interception
- ZDNet UK
2/10/00: RIPA and Human Rights Act conflict
- Guardian
3/10/00: New computer bill that probes too much - "There
is a very real risk of the UK business environment turning into a state of
information paranoia" Richard Latham, CEO Bluewave
- Independent 3/10/00: LETTER - Rights and Wrongs - "Is
the UK Government which paid for the full-page advertisement on human rights
in The Independent (2 October) in any way connected to the UK Government
which is, among other things, eroding the right to trial by jury, pressing
ahead with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill and inflicting the
voucher system on asylum seekers?" ALAN STREET, Sudbury, Suffolk
- CIO.com
1/10/00: E-Mail by Demand
- NTK
29/9/00: - ...Jack Straw
ducks out of an online chat at the last minute; the Lib-Dems call for a RIP
repeal next government; Patricia Hewitt suddenly starts putting the
"RIP saves us from pedophiles" mantra into heavy rotation. Has the
government finally clocked what a hasty civil rights nightmare they've
wrought?
- ZDNet UK
29/9/00: Ex-cracker slams UK cybercrime law
- The
Journalist (NUJ) 10/00: R.I.P
– Privacy and Sources
- PC
Magazine 10/00: ISPs may move offshore to protect privacy
- Independent
28/9/00: Lords to defeat Bill limiting jury trials
- VNUnet
27/9/00: E-minister defends snooping law
- "We
shouldn't kid ourselves that this will solve hardcore crime on the internet,
but we shouldn't just throw up our hands. I'm not prepared as a parent and a
civil libertarian (!)
to do that..." - Patricia
Hewitt
- Network
News 27/9/00: US spy software could devour RIP
- Computing 27/9/00:
No longer for your eyes only
- Gazeta.ru
25/9/00: Controversial Eavesdropping Order Ruled Unlawful
- ZDNet
UK 25/9/00: Nations struggling to fight cybercrime
-
European and U.S. officials are moving toward a final draft of the
world's first international treaty on cybercrime, a broad effort that
high-tech industry groups and privacy advocates fear could intrude on
personal privacy and hamper e-commerce..."When the US government cannot get
a controversial policy adopted domestically, they pressure an international
group to adopt it, and then bring it back to the US as an international
treaty -- which obliges Congress to enact it"- David Banisar (EPIC)
- Observer
24/9/00: Another fuel blockade? Don't worry - Straw's spies are out
- All of which makes
Straw smile that sinister smile of his. Clearly the folks who are glibly
promising to blockade fuel depots 50 days hence are not familiar with the
terms of the RIP Act, which expressly allows the Home Secretary or his
agents to intercept email under a number of circumstances. One such is if he
believes the UK's economic well-being is threatened.
- Scotland on Sunday 24/9/00: Companies have human
rights too you know
- Computing
21/9/00: A year in the life of an e-minister
|
Just fancy that !
"The new Bill isn't giving the
police extra powers...it's modernizing police powers...and I
think everyone would think that is reasonable....We
are not reversing the burden of proof..."
Patricia
Hewitt BBC Radio
26/4/00: You and Yours |
"...I don't think we got everything
right in the first version of the RIP Bill. I do think it's a
greatly improved Act as a result of very extensive parliamentary
debate (!)...I don't think
it's a problem, or anything we should apologise for..."
Patricia Hewitt
- ComputerWeekly
21/9/00: Should Big Brother control the Net?
- Real Time Club debate
: "This house believes that Control of the
Internet by governments is imperative for the well being of society" -
DEFEATED 45 to 14 (Speakers for: Prof.
Harold Thimbleby, Brian Paterson [Home Office Encryption
Co-ordination Unit] against: Tricia Drakes, Christine Maxwell)
- ZDNet
21/9/00: Carnivore clone goes open source
- Computing
21/9/00: Promises, promises: who will make your vote count ?
- ComputerWeekly
21/9/00: LEADER - Back Blair's buzz
- ThisIsLondon
21/9/00:
Big Brother at the LSE
- Guardian
20/9/00: Email spy law 'costly and undemocratic'
- Financial
Times 20/9/00: Personal freedom is central policy
- BBC
Online 20/9/00: Software targets porn sneaks
- Register
20/9/00: Lib Dems go against RIP bill
- VNUnet
20/9/00: Watch how you go! - part two
- Times
19/9/00: If you feel that you are being watched ... you probably are
- BBC
Online 18/9/00: Guardian
editor Alan Rusbridger on RIP streaming
(starts 25m)
Tony Hall*
(Director, BBC News): A lot of concern about privacy, what’s your
judgement, will privacy be possible in this new online world ?
*
Many people have contacted FIPR to ask why RIP had almost no coverage on
TV. BBC television did not even mention the name of the
bill (let alone provide any analysis or reporting) until 8th May, three
months after it was published and six months after the
Queen's Speech.
We wrote to Tony Hall
(Director BBC News) on 27th April,
but did not receive a reply.
It required five unreturned telephone calls and a follow-up
letter, contrasting the BBC's
"blackout" with pieces from four American TV networks and C4News to obtain a
four-line fob-off from his deputy Mark Damazer (on 7th June).
After months
of prodding, Newsnight eventually ran a short piece on 19th June, spending
several minutes on a rugged North Sea helicopter ride but only thirty
seconds explaining the bill, before badly bungling a studio interview
with Mr.Clarke
(FIPR had been bumped three hours before transmission). Panorama were
completely uninterested despite repeated detailed briefings. Clarke also
ducked appearances on 'Today' (6th March) and C4News (24th May) when he learned of FIPR participation.
|
Alan Rusbridger
(Editor, The Guardian): I think it is a huge issue that people have
not really begun to grapple with at all yet. People who log onto the
Internet have only a very hazy idea of what information is being captured
when they log on. A lot of commercial sites now base their commercial model
on being able to capture information about you, and plot that, maintain it
over a period of years, and maybe even sell it on to commercial advertisers
and so forth, and that’s how they think they are going to make revenue.
Knowing that really makes people feel uneasy, and government doing it makes
people thoroughly uneasy. I think it’s especially disturbing in a
country like the UK, which has just passed what I think is an extraordinary
measure, this RIP Bill, which allows the government to intercept any e-mail
at all, and you have to hand over the encryption codes, and nobody knows
whether their e-mail is going to be monitored or not. There’s a £25m
centre being built in order to do this, and I don’t know if this is
compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Both
commercially and governmentally the privacy issue is fundamental, because
ultimately people won’t use the Net if they feel they are being spied on.
Phil
Noble (Politics
Online): …I totally agree with you about the British
Government policy on reading e-mails. That's the sort of thing that ten
years from now people may look back and say “that was Marie Antoinette
saying ‘let them eat cake’” - that was the policy that started the
revolution …privacy on the Net is going to be THAT big an issue.
- InfoWorld
18/9/00: Letter - Propaganda needed -
I WAS STRUCK by this line in the article on the RIP act in the U.K. in
which [Home Office Minister Charles Clarke] "stressed that 'propaganda
is needed' to re-educate the public about the bill and asked the Commons to
help promote 'the interests of this country's businesses when the time
comes.' " I think it's heartwarming to see that the political
philosophies of the U.S.S.R. have survived the breakup of that Communist
state. Lloyd Flanagan, Richmond, Va.
- Telegraph
18/9/00: Economic view: Patrick Minford
- Financial Times
17/9/00: Unions in call for guidelines on use of internet
- New Scientist 16/9/00: Tam Dalyell MP -
Westminster Diary
...I was taken aback
by public anger at a controversial new law that went through Parliament
recently. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act extends
the telephone-tapping powers of government departments to cover electronic
communications. And it's not just the usual suspects among civil liberty
groups who are complaining. Now people in industry are up in arms that
the RIP act gives the Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham
the right to spy on domestic and international electronic communications.
As Britain will be the only country giving such powers to its
government, will it scupper our chances of becoming a world leader in
e-commerce? Patricia Hewitt, the minister for
small business and e-commerce, has sent
me a long, thoughtful letter that the House of Commons Library or I will
make available to any interested parties.
Hewitt says that the same technologies
which allow businesses to communicate in
private can also prevent the law-enforcement agencies from accessing communications
between criminals and terrorists. There is a need to update the
powers of the agencies to deal with the challenges of the new technologies.
The RIP Act brings surveillance activities into a more structured
framework than ever before. She adds that, unfortunately, this is a
case where the powers on the face of a bill can appear more stark and
threatening than they are in practice.
Clearly, the debates about Internet interception
and access to the keys controlling encryption technologies have not
been good adverts for e-business in Britain.
The challenge for Home Office minister
Charles Clarke, with whom Hewitt will work
closely, is to consult with business in a way that will show that any
secondary legislation will be both fair to
Internet service providers and have a
minimal impact on the activities of legitimate businesses. "This
way," says the minister, "I hope we
will turn round the present perception and
show that Britain is a good and safe place to do e-business."
- VNUnet
15/9/00: Email snooping debate is over
- VNUnet
15/9/00: Blair's new Jerusalem
- Computing 14/9/00: Peter Branton - Hague's IT
vision is just the beer talking - "industry has
collectively argued [the RIP Act] is unworkable and should be scrapped. So
is Hague going to listen to those in the know? Well, maybe, but once again
he will commit only to 'reviewing' it"
- ComputerWeekly
14/9/00: Blair slams 'alarmist' criticism over lack of e-business trust
- Blair defended the RIP
Act. "When information is being exchanged, the Home Office is perfectly
sensible to look at what the potential difficulties are in terms of
international crime and terrorism...This is being faced by all countries
around the globe. A lot of the concerns expressed over RIP are hugely
alarmist over what the Government was intending to do with it, and I think
we have taken care of most of the difficulties that people have"
- ComputerWeekly
14/9/00: Tories will reform RIP and IR35, says Hague
- ComputerWeekly
14/9/00: Who'd be an e-envoy now?
- ComputerWeekly
14/9/00: LEADER: What the check list doesn't tell
- NetworkNews 13/9/00: RIP deadline slips as dialogue
continues
- Times
12/9/00: Point, click, lose your job
- Times
12/9/00: Musicians caught in a Gorgon's Web - "[the
RIP Act] has prompted some Internet service providers to consider
relocating, and the threat of litigation could prompt a Napster-style
service to do likewise...A solution could be borrowed from the broadcasting
industry, which has sought to take action against the unauthorised
decoder...The criminal law could be imposed in much the same way against
file-sharing websites. Although controversial, criminalising the
distribution of the software that facilitates unauthorised file-sharing
is likely to be far more effective than the RIAA's actions."
- Silicon.com
11/9/00: Steve Rawlinson of ClaraNet - Is
RIP forcing ISPs out of Britain? streaming
- Guardian
11/9/00: New Media Diary
- Guardian
11/9/00: All-seeing society
- On
July 28, while many of us were settling down with a bag of crisps to see
whether Nasty Nick had been rumbled, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers
(RIP) Act was passed..."a superbly effective machine for keeping tabs
on law abiding citizens [such as journalists, who, for example, might find
it very difficult to investigate a public authority and protect their
sources] and of no use against criminals who can easily circumvent the
proceedures."
- Telegraph
7/9/00: Blair hopes to click with Net access for all
- ComputerWeekly
7/9/00: Government scores two out of five for e-business
- ComputerWeekly
7/9/00: Spare the spin on the e-economy
- BBC
Online 7/9/00: Could YOU be the new internet tsar?
- VNUnet
6/9/00: Is the government helping your career?
- Financial
Times 6/9/00: Tories launch their mini-manifesto
- VNUnet
5/9/00: "US users bite back at snooping law - Steven Mathieson
For example, 86 per cent of internet
users want opt-in privacy - in other words, website organisers must keep
their data secret until the user says otherwise, according to research
released by charity the Pew Internet & American Life project. That's
the opposite, incidentally, of a policy just negotiated by the US government
with internet advertisers, under which websites can track user activity
unless they have taken steps to opt out of monitoring...
..."What bothers me is the damned
box. Why would the FBI need a box? You don't need a sealed box to do any
of these tasks, most of which are already being done right inside of the
router at every ISP," says Cringely...
...In addition, attorney general Janet Reno
has pledged that a university will carry out an independent review of
Carnivore by the start of December. Will the UK government follow
the US's line? Perhaps - if the British public become as vociferous
in defence of their privacy as the Americans.
- Financial
Times 5/9/00: Plans to control e-mail dropped
- BBC
Online 5/9/00: Hague's 17 new policies
- KableNet
5/9/00: UK e-envoy quits
- USA
Today 5/9/00: 'Carnivore' unlikely to be validated
- Financial
Times 4/9/00: Tories and Liberals prepare manifesto launches -
The Tories would review the new regulation of investigatory powers act that
governs surveillance of e-mails and telephones. Business claims the
legislation is impractical and impossible to comply with.
- Times
4/9/00: Hague promises 'strong and free' Britain
- Guardian
4/9/00: The RIP Act and your rights -
...the draft regulations would go a
step further, to authorise monitoring or recording of emails and phone calls
without consent for specific reasons, such as a suspicion of
"unauthorised use". Industry pressure groups argue that they
should be able to monitor employees' emails without consent. Civil liberty
groups and unions disagree, and say that staff should have the right to
privacy at work.
- Sunday
Times 3/9/00: Mobile phones to locate callers
- ZDNet
UK 1/9/00: ISPs debate offshore email to evade RIPA
- Scotsman
1/9/00: Is this RIP for UK hopes in E-Commerce ?
- ComputerWeekly
31/8/00: Cancel the oppressive RIP Act, says Redwood -
"Why stay here and face the cost and hassle
of interception and surveillance if you can go elsewhere and avoid it? The
Government should cool down and cancel this piece of legislation. It should
study what other competitor countries are doing more thoroughly. It should
not wish to lead the world in offering the most oppressive regime for
e-business." Former Conservative minister John
Redwood
- ComputerWeekly
31/8/00: LEADER- Memo to TB: Get an e-grip!
- ComputerWeekly
31/8/00: A well-intentioned act that only hits the good guys
- ComputerWeekly
31/8/00: DTI
extends RIP deadline to September
- uk.internet.com
30/8/00: No escape from the email spooks
- About.com
29/8/00: Privacy Furor Over British Cyber-Snooping Law
- Independent
28/8/00: "After Demon Eyes, Tories portray Blair as Big Brother"
- "
...it is in e-commerce especially that Blair has proved he is the Bigger
Brother. The Government's bill is effectively a snooper's charter, allowing
the state to read all our e-mails. George Orwell wrote fiction but this is
fact." John Redwood, Conservative's Parliamentary Campaigns Unit
- Independent
27/8/00: Law makers lose the plot on internet crime
- "...a government that is either unaware of the implications
of what it is doing (which is hard to believe, given the adverse press it
has received) or just plain incompetent – that will result in the baby
being thrown out along with the bath water. Sure, the UK will be a great
place to do e-business; it's just such a shame that there will be nobody
left to do business with." Jyoti Banerjee, chair of e-commerce
committee, Better Regulation TaskForce
- Newsbytes
25/8/00: British E-mail Snooper Law Delayed
- Economist 25/8/00: Being watched (not
online)
- VNUnet
25/8/00: RIP Bill hit by delay over email rules
- Financial
Times 25/8/00: British e-mail law shelved
- Telegraph
24/8/00: Wendy Grossman - Why we want the snooping law to RIP -
the Electronic Privacy Information Centre won a court ruling that the FBI's Carnivore,
a system that can be installed by an ISP to filter out a specific user's
e-mail, is illegal...
- Computing
24/8/00: RIP interception rules still unclear
- ComputerWeekly
24/8/00: UK: the e-commerce pariah? -
...marks the latest stage in one of the sorriest sagas of legislation
affecting online users anywhere in the world.
- ComputerWeekly
24/8/00: 'We listened to industry on RIP Act' says Straw -
You ask for international comparisons. I make no apologies for this
Government having taken a lead in tackling the difficult issues involving
e-mail interception and encryption. But other countries are now looking at
ways to update law enforcement powers to take account of technological
advancement. Look at the recent debate about the "Carnivore"
e-mail interception system in the US...
- Salon
23/8/00: Are British bobbies reading your e-mail? ...For
Americans, RIP should serve as a warning. Don't get too comfortable just
because Carnivore failed in the courts. The United States and the United
Kingdom have traveled in lock step on restricting cryptography and other Net
freedoms, and the legislation they try to pass in one place inevitably pops
up in the other, though not always in the same form. And they keep trying.
- Financial
Times 23/8/00: LETTER - "the hypocrisy of the
government in this affair is staggering"
- IT-Director
22/8/00: Privacy in the UK: R.I.P. - True
to form, the Home Office has produced a piece of legislation which ignores
the fact that the Internet is global, which is bound to be challenged by
civil liberties groups in the EU Courts, which is liable to provoke legal
actions in other countries, which is anyway probably technically unworkable,
can easily be circumvented by steganography and which virtually guarantees
public embarrassment of the UK's "intelligence" services.
- Telegraph
22/8/00: LETTER - Who is the traitor ?
- Daily Express
22/8/00: Protests grow over Government's repressive Internet legislation
- Daily Express
22/8/00: Brian Gladman - Why this Government is harming e-commerce
- Daily Express
22/8/00: Ten things you should know about RIP
- Guardian
21/8/00: Easy ways to reinvent our industry
- Observer
20/8/00: Bosses beat email spying ban
- Financial
Times 19/8/00: Industry forces climbdown over e-mail intercepts
- Micro Computer Mart
17/8/00: Leo Waldock reports on RIP Bill
-
- ComputerWeekly
17/8/00: Glossy and
glorious - but out of touch - The RIP
legislation promises to be an unmitigated disaster...
- ComputerWeekly
17/8/00: This e-mail may be read by MI5
- ComputerWeekly
17/8/00:
David Taylor's Open Letter to Jack Straw
- Guardian
17/8/00: David Birch - Why should Thomas Paine, a man who died in 1809, be adopted as patron saint of the
internet?
Britain tried to get the colonies to pay
for their defence, and they wouldn't, much as business does not want to bear
the cost of the RIP Bill
...each side over-estimated the goals of
the other. British intransigence, when compromise was both sensible and
feasible, created rebels where there were none before. Is that so different
from the current situation, where netizens suspect Jack Straw of wanting to
read their email while the Home Office sees subjects suspicious of the RIP
Bill as agents of anarchy?
...Economics may be at the core of the
discontent but it is when the more emotional and emotive issues of liberty
and freedom come into play that the flames are fanned to fire. This is why
arguing about the RIP Bill may turn out to have more significance than
people may think.
- Times
15/8/00: LAW - E-mails from Big Brother
- (Carnivore) Wired
14/8/00: These Wires Were Made for Tapping -
"If it's (the FBI's) position that the Carnivore technology provides a
way to strip out only what they're allowed to get, why don't they give the
technology to the ISP, have the ISP control it and have the ISP give the
results to the FBI? Why do they have to control it?" David Sobel, EPIC
- InternetWeek
14/8/00: Carnivore Takes A Bite Out Of The Fourth Amendment
- BBC Online
14/8/00: Spy in your pocket
- Independent
11/8/00: Why I am so scared of Paulsgrove Woman
- The internet has become a fantastic resource for child
abusers (or "child-lovers" as they style themselves), allowing a
trade in images and experiences that effectively "normalise" child
abuse for many paedophiles. Those callow twenty-something netniks, who
roundly condemn the Government for seeking to monitor the Net, should
consider what potential damage is done by allowing such contact to go
unchecked... David.Aaronovitch@btinternet.com
- Financial
Times 11/8/00: LETTER - Rules on staff's e-mails must be practical -
We were, however, concerned by the reply from Patricia Hewitt, the minister
for e-commerce (Letters, August 8). Contrary to that letter, the Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Act, and the regulations that will underpin it, will
certainly place additional burdens on business... (Digby Jones, Director
General CBI)
- Register
11/8/00: CBI to press for longer RIP discussion
- ComputerWeekly
10/8/00:
RIP fall-out creates further outcry
- Telegraph
10/8/00: INTERVIEW - Elizabeth France -
"We certainly thought it would breach the Human Rights Act but
it has been improved as it's gone through and we have to wait and see
on a case to case basis what happens," she says. ... The commissioner's
message to Mr Blair is unambiguous (??):
"We're watching" (!)
- Scotsman
10/8/00: Difficult Business of International Internet Control
- Guardian
10/8/00: (Duncan Campbell): The spy in your server
...GCHQ was not normally permitted to
encroach on domestic communications. Now the RIP Act says that as many
domestic internet communications travel on the same "trunks" as
external communications, GCHQ will be allowed to trawl through these
messages without restriction.
Another limitation, which had prevented the
direct targeting of people in Britain by GCHQ without specific authorisation
has also been dropped. The Home Secretary has been given powers under
Section 16 (3 4) of the Act to sign an
"overriding" warrant every three months. This will allow general
surveillance without the need for individual warrants.
This will apply to "serious
crime", which can include organising demonstrations that may affect
public order. The government has offered no justification for its
willingness to allow GCHQ to intrude on domestic political and policing
matters. The RIP act will also allow any agency nominated by the Home
Secretary to tap into the addresses of emails sent and received (though not
their content) without a warrant...
- Times
8/8/00: How a law-less 'data haven' is using law to protect itself
- Net-BC
8/8/00: Der Datenschutz ruhe in Frieden
- Daily Yomiuri
8/8/00: John Jerney - Carnivore and its cousins threaten privacy
Across the pond in Britain, a similar storm
is brewing. Over there, the system is known as the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers, or RIP...Sounds simple enough to defeat, doesn't it? I
mean, anyone concerned need only encrypt their communications, right? Not so
fast. The RIP bill also includes provisions for the British Home Office to
legally demand the encryption keys to any data communication. The
legislation includes a two-year prison sentence for those who choose not to
comply. That's bad enough, but here's
where it gets really draconian. In the case of a company or other
organization, the Home Office can not only insist that a person hand over
the encryption keys to the government, but the law also prevents that person
from informing anyone else of these actions, including the person's manager,
coworker, or employer.
Interestingly, the provisions in Russia's
SORM don't go nearly this far...
So what's the big deal about systems such
as Carnivore, RIP, and SORM? Notwithstanding the hypocrisy in the West of
slamming Russia for an activity already under way in the Untied States and
soon to be under way in Britain, the real problem is the fundamental
encroachment of freedom that, if left unchecked, can cause a slippery
descent down an already all-too-well greased slope.
Recall that during previous
"scares" in the United States, including but not limited to the
Red Scare, the civil rights initiative, and various peace movements, the
government amassed incredible files on both noted and unnoted individuals
including Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and thousands of other
suspected "troublemakers." Add to this the modern tendency for
both governments and corporations to employ increasingly sophisticated
profiling technologies, and the situation becomes potentially serious.
Profiles are already used by law enforcement agencies to screen large cash
purchases, identify "suspicious" airline travelers, and even to
signal which drivers should be stopped for potential drug trafficking.
Left unchecked, could Carnivore, RIP, or
SORM be the first step towards a much broader profiling of our online
activities, helping to identify other "suspicious" behavior?
Government authorities say no, stressing that Carnivore and its cousins are
used simply to catch bad guys.
Conventional wisdom, on the other hand,
recommends that we all stay alert to these potential threats to privacy.
Technology, after all, can serve to both liberate and imprison free people.
The responsibility is ours to have technology reflect the morals and values
by which we choose to live
- Financial
Times 8/8/00: LETTER from Patricia Hewitt -
Your article...(August 3) suggests that the...regulations...will entail a
"legal clampdown" on companies' monitoring of electronic
communications by "bringing private business under the scope of
interception laws for the first time". This is not accurate.
The regulations will actually reduce the burden on business by making
exceptions to the general rules on interception set out in the regulation
of investigatory powers act
- ZDNet
7/8/00: Meet Bigger Brother - Curiously,
several civil liberties types in Britain were quoted in a recent New
York Times article as defending the bill because it codifies - and fesses up
to - surveillance practices already in use. Congress could have used the
same defense in 1974 for legislation setting out conditions under which a
political party could burglarize an opponent's national committee
headquarters.
- Electronics Times
7/8/00: U.K. e-mail law draws criticism
- Scotsman 7/8/00: Rocky Road ahead for those looking for the
truth (search
here)
- Independent
6/8/00: A.C. Grayling - Veils are for hiding behind– and lifting -
On the larger question of governmental and legal invasions of privacy, matters
are clear enough. Properly warranted tapping of e-mail messages is, like
telephone or mail interception, an unpalatable but necessary weapon in the
fight against crime and terrorism. It is a price we pay for security. Your
cyber sex with an e-mailer in Oregon will merely amuse an official
eavesdropper, but your plan to blow up Parliament deserves to be detected.
- Observer
6/8/00: LETTER - Net Losses - ...internet service
providers planning to move abroad if the Government's Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Bill becomes law should not worry too much. There will
be plenty of home-grown IT expertise to support their operations, thanks to
that other draconian piece of legislation known as IR35...
- Sunday Times
6/8/00: (Dan O'Brien) Silencing the web's vulnerable voices -
I find it worrying that, even as groups such as the baroness's (Thornton)
seek to control what our children see, we are preventing the children from
giving themselves a voice online. But then whenever a regime sets about
restricting free speech, I suppose you're always silencing someone
- Sunday Times
6/8/00: (Jeremy Clarkson) Snap away, spy cameras - just get my good side
- Obviously,
they can't possibly spy on all of us... And that's where, I think, the
freedom organisations are getting their knickers in a twist about
nothing...Only the guilty have something to fear from Big Brother
- Financial Times 5/8/00: Companies caught in a legal
web (search
here)
- Guardian Unlimited
4/8/00: e-Envoy
Alex Allan quizzed on RIP (registration required)
- Schnews
4/8/00: The Empire Bytes Back
- Register
4/8/00: RIP grants rights to spies who employ us
- Wired
4/8/00: "Will Crypto Feast on Carnivore?"
- in the aftermath of the FBI's recently revealed
Carnivore email surveillance system, email security companies are hoping
they can convince average email users to seal their electronic envelopes --
and finally propel email encryption into a broader market.
- De Vere Hotel Magazine (July/August) - Yours confidentially
- Times
4/8/20: Employers attack 'e-snooping Act' delays
- Financial
Times 3/8/00: Companies face curbs on snooping
- ComputerWeekly
3/8/00: Support the cybercops
- ComputerWeekly
3/8/00: No cash for cybercrime
- ComputerWeekly
3/8/00: LEADER: One rule for all?
- Independent
2/8/00: Andrew Brown - My accidental life as a lesbian pornographer -
the "clickstream" that you leave as you move around on the web
reveals almost everything about what you read in the course of a working
day: the logs of a website don't show unambiguously who has visited, but
they do show where each visitor has come from. That is available to the
Government under the RIP bill that received royal assent last week
- Times
2/8/00:
LETTER From Mr Alan Phillips
- Sir, If Tony Blair wants to read my e-mails,
courtesy of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, why shouldn't I
read his memos?
- NetworkWorldFusion
2/8/00: IETF faces new wiretap flap
- Network News 2/8/00: Oftel welcomes ITC merger
- Parliamentary Monitor IT Briefing 8-9/00 - RIP Bill finally Clears Lords
- Internet Magazine
1/8/00: Crisis of confidence
- ZDNet UK
1/8/00: Outrage at government 'tagging' of citizens
- Independent
1/8/00: Greenwich fails to synchronise its e-time with Gates
- BBC
R4 'Today' 31/7/00: Interview with ClaraNet - move e-mail servers offshore
because of RIP ?
- PC Magazine
9/00: Peter Jackson - Your right to privacy
- WriteTheWeb
31/7/00: UK internet snooping law passed - so now what?
- NetImperative
31/7/00: ISPs must RIP by end of 2001
- Time
31/7/00: To Each His Own? -
This week Britain's House of Commons will consider a controversial
government proposal to allow official access to virtually all electronic
communications for law-enforcement purposes - a measure that would give U.K.
officials far more power than their counterparts in Washington dare ask for.
- Telepolis
31/7/00: Dutch Intelligence Suspected of Using Unauthorised Random Interception of Email
Traffic
- Guardian
31/7/00: Roy Greenslade - 'I arrest you for emailing'
...From this day on, without our
knowledge, the authorities can intercept our messages. They will know who
said what to whom about what well before the information can be published.
Indeed, by having that knowledge in advance they may well be able to take
measures to prevent its publication. This isn't far-fetched. A good
example occurred recently when the renegade MI5 officer David Shayler
emailed the Observer and the Guardian. When the police - claiming to be
acting in the national interest - tried to compel the papers to hand over
the emails, the request was refused. A judge ordered the papers to comply,
a ruling that was overturned by the court of appeal in a masterly judgment
by Lord Justice Judge which stressed the rights of a free press to
investigate matters on behalf of the public without compromising its
informants.
If the RIP Act had been on the statute
book at the time, that case would never have reached court because the
police would have used the act's powers to obtain the emails secretly
regardless of such rights. It wouldn't have helped if the emails had been
encrypted. Under the new act, the authorities can demand the key to any
encrypted message. In other words, the RIP Act makes all traffic over the
internet in Britain available to the state if a body, however flimsy its
suspicion, decides to apply for the right to intercept emails.
...The passing of the RIP Act denies
everyone the freedom, and the privacy, we thought the internet had
provided. It robs journalists and their sources - including that most
potent and essential of tipsters, the whistle-blower - of their rights
and, quite possibly, threatens their liberty...In what appears to have
been panic at the growth of the internet and the freedom enjoyed by its
users, the British government has accorded itself powers which no other
western country has dared to take.
Yet this, remember, is the government
that came to power crowing about its commitment to end secrecy. Instead
its record has been a disgrace. Jack Straw last week finally announced
that the Home Office will consult media bodies to ensure that future
legislation which does "impact on press and media reporting"
does not create "unintended restrictions". What a cheek. The
sound of the stable door being closed long after the horses have bolted is
deafening.
- Observer
30/7/00: Police to track mobile phone users -
Privacy campaigners and Opposition
peers urged the Government to ensure that the read-outs of physical
location produced by the new mobile phones should be made available only
after a warrant is obtained from a judge. But
the appeals were rebuffed....Under the Act, the only authority
overseeing these capabilities will come from an Interception Commissioner,
who does not have to be notified pro-actively of their use, or whether
tracking data is passed between government departments once acquired.
- Observer
30/7/00: Every move you make, every breath you take... -
To civil liberty campaigners, (RIP) represents the
most pernicious invasion of privacy ever imposed by a modern democratic
state...The State will have powers to snoop, often without a warrant, on
the email and internet activities of everyone with an internet connection...also
gives the police unparalleled powers to use the new generation of mobile
phones to pinpoint the location of any individual. They will act like a
homing device planted secretly on the phone's owner without them realising
- Observer
30/7/00: Net firms set to flee RIP Bill - Top
internet service provider ready to move systems abroad - Blue-chip clients
express security fears
- Independent
30/7/00: Boffins show how to defy e-snooping bill -
The ink of royal assent is barely dry on the Government's e-mail regulation
bill, and computer programmers have already produced an idiot's guide
explaining how to get round it.
- New Zealand Herald
29/7/00: Cyber-cops set bells ringing
- ZDNet
FR 29/7/00: La Grande-Bretagne autorise " l'écoute" des mails
- Transfert.net
29/7/00: Big Browser est légal, mais ridicule
- Guardian
29/7/00: LETTER - Bravo Benji - Benji the Binman
may or may not be: a strange individual, a grubby mercenary, an idealist ...
Stealing household waste may or may not be: illegal, a squalid occupation,
the least glamorous branch of espionage. But when the government proposes to
read not just my emails but the encryption software protecting my privacy,
then I am extremely grateful for the corrective and democratic light he is
shining into these murky corners of government
- MSNBC (Reuters)
29/7/00: European Union ministers vow cyber crime crackdown -
European Union ministers said on
Saturday they would seek new laws to crack down on fast-growing crime by
Internet fraudsters, computer hackers and child pornographers.
- Telegraph
29/7/00: MPs warned of e-snoop failure - THE
e-snooping legislation which received Royal Assent yesterday is already out
of date because the technology is advancing too fast and the law cannot be
enforced, say computer experts.
- CNN.com
28/7/00: U.K. e-mail snooping bill passed
- ABC News
(AP) 28/7/00: British government's cyber-snooping bill to become law
- Telegraph
28/7/00: LETTER - Lost investment -
my Hong Kong-based internet company will not now plan a significant British
office...This is a direct result of the vote in Parliament approving RIP. It
is ironic that the People's Republic of China's Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region offers a friendlier internet business environment than
Britain.
- CNSNews
28/7/00: 'Data Haven' Offers Snooping-Free Internet Service
- MacWorld
28/7/00: RIP Bill gets go-ahead - Clarke stressed
that "propaganda
is needed" to re-educate the public about the provisions of the
Bill
- NTK
28/7/00: First, the bad news: RIP got Royal Assent...
- ZDNet UK
28/7/00: Privacy groups promise 'cold war' over RIP
- Guardian
27/7/00: May your privacy RIP - (FIPR)
relentlessly stalked the government. It won major revisions to key parts of
the bill, including the assumption that people claiming to have lost their
encryption codes are innocent until proved guilty...But it still remains
a draconian bill....For the first time, GCHQ, Cheltenham, which hitherto has
needed a ministerial warrant to intercept domestic communications only if
there was suspicion of terrorist activity, will be able to trawl much more
easily through domestic mail
- MSNBC
27/7/00: Cyber-snooping now legal in Britain
- ABC News (Reuters)
27/7/00: British e-mail snooping bill passes into law
- UK.internet.com
27/7/00: Steven Mathieson - RIP: the final analysis
It all ended last night, without a vote, in the House
of Commons. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill, which sets
out powers for tapping Internet traffic, is waiting for the formality of
Royal Assent, but will probably get that within the next few days. And the
UK's ebusinesses will start deciding on damage limitation exercises to cope
with legislation that many think is disastrous...
Government ministries tend to listen most
sympathetically to the organisations on which they have the biggest
effect. The DTI bends over backwards to work with business and IT, and
this constituency is now up in arms at what the Home Office has produced.
The Home Office's main contacts, by contrast, are in the police and
security services. The Internet interception clauses, now part of the RIP
Bill, were taken over by Charles Clarke, whose media appearances tend to
involve him pointing out how important it is that the Government is tough
on crime. In other words, it was less likely that the Home Office would be
sympathetic to the IT industry in its drafting...
...What happens now is unclear. There is
no time scale for installing the black boxes, no clear guidelines as to
how interception will work - expect a battle over those - and it is
anyone's guess how many international firms will move their IT
operations. In a somewhat unfortunate turn of phrase, Charles Clarke
told the House of Commons last night that there will be a "propaganda"
campaign to convince the world that the UK is still a good place to do
ecommerce...
- eVantage
7-8/00: UK e-commerce - RIP
- Register
27/7/00: Blair gets RIP thanks to a few sleepy MPs
- VNUnet
27/7/00: Snooping Bill to become law by November - Home
Office Minister Charles Clarke rejected a briefing document issued by
industry think-tank the Foundation for Information Policy Research which
said the technical measures of the Bill could easily be side-stepped by
criminals. "I
do not accept the comments of the Foundation for Information Policy Research
quoted by the honourable Member..."
- Silicon.com
27/7/00: Snooping Bill is passed and present
- New Scientist
27/7/00: Blind watchmen - Britain is about to
waste millions of pounds on an obsolete Internet snooping system
- Independent
27/7/00: Minister downplays e-mail snooping Bill
- Register
27/7/00: Politicians unite in RIP love-in
- CBS News
26/7/00: Parliament Passes E-mail Snooping Bill
- Law Will Allow Monitoring Of Personal
Computer Use
- Even Password-Protected Emails Could
Be Read
- Businesses Worried Law Will Drive
E-Business Offshore
- Yourdon.com
26/7/00: Carnivore, British e-mail, and the Digital Divide -
perhaps British citizens are sufficiently
oblivious and mild-mannered that they'll put up with such a regulation about
encryption keys; but I find it mind-boggling to imagine that the rest of
the world would be willing to send sensitive e-mail messages into the
UK if they knew that the government effectively had carte blanche authority
to scan those messages...And that brings up the second difference
between the US and UK: the UK measure would not be approved by judges, who
(at least in the US) require a credible argument that a crime has probably
been committed before signing a warrant. Instead, warrants for e-mail
surveillance would normally be authorized by the Home Secretary; other
officials, including high-ranking police officers, would be authorized to
approve requests for encryption keys. Not only that, the legislation would
allow the British government to snoop on electronic communication for a host
of reasons, including to "protect national security", and to
"safeguard the country's well-being," in addition to preventing
and detecting serious crime.
- Transfert.net
26/7/00: Big Browser soulève l'ire du Net
- Thirsty.com
26/7/00: Security experts publish RIP circumvention paper
- BBC Online
26/7/00: 'Snooping Bill is technically inept'
- Silicon.com
26/7/00: Once more into the breach for the 'Snooping Bill'
- Reuters
26/7/00: Government expects e-mail snooping bill to become law
- Financial
Times 26/7/00: Business steps up campaign on e-mail codes
- Register
26/7/00: How to dodge RIP
- ZDNet UK
25/7/00: Report undermines RIP - "RIP will destabilise policy by creating a legitimate demand and market for
privacy tools, which both the law-abiding and criminals can use to
circumvent the legislation. The government has proved stolidly incapable of
anticipating trivial counter-measures" Caspar Bowden, FIPR
- Guardian
25/7/00: Hugo Young - The Lords is potent, wise and quite indefensible
- Government plans for utilities
supplies, big-brother email oversight and freedom of information are among
major matters that either have had or will have unwelcome attention from the
peers....Many of these interventions show a pattern. They have a lot to do
with the rule of law. That's true of the regulation of investigatory powers
bill...A doctrine seems to be developing. In place of the Salisbury
convention, which debarred the old hereditary chamber from blocking a
government's manifesto pledges, comes an anti-Napoleonic convention, which
says the Lords have a duty to stop authoritarian diktats from the Commons
- (not RIP but...) BBC Online
25/7/00: Congress fears FBI internet tap tool - The
FBI's Assistant Director Donald Kerr said the programme did not search
through every message looking for words such as "bomb" and
"drugs". Instead, it worked on certain strict criteria, such as
looking at messages from a particular account. "We don't have the right
or the authority to just go fishing"
- VNUnet
25/7/00: E-signature law labelled as 'red herring'
- (not RIP but...) ZDNet UK
25/7/00: Congress isn't swallowing Carnivore
- ZDNet UK
24/7/00: Firms can sue over RIP leaks
- Political Antenna.com
23/7/00: RIP Democracy
- Express
23/7/00: Snoopers' charter puts ISPs in flap
- Independent 23/7/00: Christopher Walker - We could
all be losers in the electronic revolution - The
revolution could lead to an increase in democratic freedoms - the ability,
for example, to access government documents, even those that were meant to
be kept secret. But this will only come about if we defend our rights. The
recent legislation to snoop on emails and internet activity is just the
beginning of government control. The road from Caxton to the Inquisition's
book burning was a short one.
- Sunday Times
23/7/00: Under threat from state cyber police -
WHILE Tony Blair continues to bleat about privacy over the leaking of his
off-message messages the government remains determined to foist a bill on
the rest of us that many companies fear will turn their leaks into a flood.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill snuck through the Commons
like a stealth bomber in fog in February but it has crash-landed in the
Lords. The net ignores national boundaries yet the bill would make
Britain the only G8 country - apart from Russia - with state access to
decryption keys. So far the bill has been a PR disaster for Labour at a
time when Britain stands a good chance of establishing itself as Europe's
leading e-industry nation. Some companies, albeit small ones, have said they
will leave Britain if the RIP bill goes through and some of the world's
largest tech firms have also voiced concerns. The government will look to
get royal assent for the bill before the summer recess. But tinkering at
the edges is not enough. Instead it should nail down the coffin on RIP.
- Sunday Times
23/7/00: Danny O'Brien - Fixing the bugs in our democracy
Plenty
has now been written about this horrendous bill; enough, one would think, to
give pause to even the self-referential juggernaut of Labour. But no:
despite the loud protests of practically anyone who uses the net, they
assumed that, once the government declared its intent, its vast bureaucracy
would steamroller over the squeaking objections of a bunch of nerds. Of
course, the net users didn't know that...
Lindsey, naturally, e-mailed these bug
reports - together with a series of patches - to the Home Office. One civil
servant, in an accidental slip-of-the-click we all make, pressed Reply
instead of forwarding the message. His mail went out to a mailing list of
concerned net users, together with his own commentary at the top. "A
bit sad, really," it said...
There's something very 21st century
about listening to earls and lords lecture the government on
packet-switching, datagrams and hard-drive clusters. But, unlike the Commons
and unlike, it seems, the civil service, our peers took the time to
understand the technology they were legislating against - and turned to the
net experts to learn about it. The bill set the gentleman amateurs of the
world against the sleekest of career politicos, and in so doing woke up the
government...
- Observer
23/7/00: Whitehall braced for reform of the Official Secrets Act -
From 1997 to the end of the current spending review in 2003 funding for
spies and surveillance is planned to increase 34 per cent, or by £248
million. It follows five years of cuts under the Major government. The
bulk of the money is believed to be earmarked for the new Government
Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham. The building will be the focus of
controversial moves to intercept email under the Regulation of Investigatory
Powers RIP bill. Government figures released earlier this month revealed
that bugging, phone-tapping and letter-opening by the police and security
services have risen by 60 per cent since Labour came to power
- Sunday Times
23/7/00: Human rights 'revolution' to hit powers of the RUC
- NY Times
22/7/00: A Constitutional Challenge for Britain -
One more venture by Mr. Straw is a bill to let the state make anyone who
uses coded e-mail give officials the key to decode it, so they can intercept
and read it as they wish. That proposal has drawn outraged protests from
leading technology companies in Britain and elsewhere. Not only Jack Straw
but Prime Minister Blair seems to have no concern for civil liberties. What
matters, evidently, is pleasing the voters by being tough on law and order.
- Telegraph
22/7/00: LEADER - A driven man - As
Home Secretary, Mr Straw has shown himself to be an unpleasant mixture of
weakness and ... He has been ruthless, too, in seeking the power to examine
any private e-mail. Weakness and posturing are a nasty combination. The Home
Secretary's grip on his job is looking very shaky.
- Guardian
22/7/00: LEADER - Justice done - Meanwhile a Labour
government is seeking to introduce a law - the RIP bill - which allows for
the interception, surveillance and disclosure of journalistic material
without prior judicial authorisation. As it stands, a source may be
identified and compromised or action taken to prevent the flow of
information without a newspaper even being aware of it, still less being
able to challenge any applications for authorisation.
- Financial Times 22/7/00: Logjam forces bill
concessions (search
here)
- Reuters
21/7/00: Digital Surveillance? You'll Get Used to It -
"I am convinced that covert surveillance is likely to prove the only
effective answer to increasingly sophisticated crime," said Lord
Justice Murray Stuart-Smith, the former overseer of MI5 and MI6...
- Personal Computer World
21/7/00: Dodging Big Brother on the net
- American Public Radio 21/7/00 streaming
Real
Audio (4m 32s)
- LinuxUser
Jul/Aug 2000: Alan Cox interview on
crypto policy - Cox criticizes those who drafted the RIP
Bill for failing to listen to the people who really know the
area..."Everybody they consulted told them they were idiots, so they
stopped consulting people."
- PC-Pro
21/7/00: Lords RIP Into Snooping Bill - Again - However,
the Bill may be incompatible with the ECHR in other respects ... possible
contravention of the right against self-incrimination (by demanding a
password that exists only in the suspect's head) ... The Bill will now
return to the House of Commons, where Charles "I shall make no
concessions" Clarke MP will doubtless assure members once again that
the legislation poses no threat to commercial security or personal privacy
- Irish Times
21/7/00: Web reaches juncture as users go global - However, it would be hypocritical to
criticise China when Britain is planning to trample human rights underfoot
in forcing through an e-commerce killer, the RIP (Regulation of
Investigatory Powers) Bill
- IngeniorenNet
21/7/00: Kritik af britisk net-aflytning
- Silicon.com
21/7/00: PSINet joins ISP stampede over 'Snooping Bill' -
If the Bill is passed then PSINet will have to seriously reconsider whether
the UK is an appropriate place for electronic commerce at all
- BBC Online
20/7/00: Peers pass e-mail interception bill - "It's
Zombie legislation. Although clinically dead with macabre wounds, it still
lumbers on menacing both individual privacy and commercial confidence"
Caspar Bowden, FIPR
- Register
20/7/00: RIP branded 'zombie legislation' as it passes Lords
- ZDNet UK
20/7/00: RIP Bill nearly law, critics say more changes needed
- VNUnet
20/7/00: Snooping bill passed by House of Lords
- Financial
Times 20/7/00: E-mail act set to become law after changes
- Telegraph
20/7/00: Whitehall backs down on e-snoops
- Guardian
20/7/00: UN report scorns UK human rights record - The
wide-ranging
report calls for...sweeping changes to the...regulation of investigatory
powers bill going through parliament.
- ComputerWeekly
20/7/00: E-leaders make RIP Bill threat
- Telegraph
20/7/00: Watch out, Big Brother is on a small screen near you
- WSWS
19/7/00: British parliament set to adopt law enforcing police access to encrypted
email - Why is it
that even the threat of a significant transfer of capital abroad has not
altered the government's course?...Under conditions of mounting social
inequality and the inevitable political discontent this creates, the RIP
bill is deemed necessary to maintain the long-term political and class
interests of the ruling elite, whatever the immediate costs to the economy.
- Silicon.com
19/7/00: ISPs prepare to flee as Lords send off 'Snooping Bill'
- New
York Times 19/7/00: British Authorities May Get Wide Power to Decode E-Mail
measure...would
make Britain the only Western democracy where the government could require
anyone using the Internet to turn over the keys to decoding e-mails messages
and other data
"What's going to happen is that
companies are going to reroute everything away from the U.K. and take their
business abroad." Will Roebuck, e-Centre
"What this does is contravene a large
number of fundamental rights in the European convention on human rights and
other international standards, which include the right to privacy, the right
to liberty, the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of
association" Halya Gowan, Amnesty International
"The British authorities have a
history of engaging in activities outside the law which inflict on people's
privacy or otherwise affect their liberties, and then suddenly saying that
the time has come to bring the law into line with practice" Conor
Gearty, professor of human rights law, King's College London.
- Guardian
19/7/00: That charter for snoopers (Bassam)
admits that "it is not possible to intercept
the external communications... without intercepting internal communications
as well"....Ministers will be able to issue
interception warrants covering broad categories of information without
naming specific addresses or individuals...Keys would have to be
disclosed if the information was "necessary for the effective
performance of any public authority" in carrying out their
statutory functions. (The government's original test was even vaguer than
that.)
- Guardian
19/7/00: Jonathan Freedland - The text that got away -
"I think we should ditch this Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill.
We'll get a nice headline out of it, too: RIP, RIP. And we can dress it up
as an advance for civil liberties and proof that we're a listening
government, etc. Such a move won't just delight all the liberal
hand-wringers at the Guardian. Half the country uses email these days: they
don't much fancy having their steamy one-liners to Sandra in Marketing being
pored over by PC Plod either. This is a good example of what could be a
liberal, yet populist issue: we can call it Stop the Snoops. I, personally,
should be associated with this." - the memo TB should have sent
- Guardian
19/7/00: Lords join the left to curb net snoopers -
The power has been restricted, but companies cannot be sure their data will
be secure. In the Lords last Wednesday business leaders such as Lord
Stevenson, the chairman of Pearson, was forced to admit he and "the
large companies like the ones I run have not really understood the
implications involved. It is my judgment that no one knows what the cost to
the economy will be"
- VNUnet
18/7/00: Further RIP Bill changes tabled
- Guardian
18/7/00: Unsafe texts - Not only is (RIP)
one of the most sustained attacks on civil liberties in recent history -
allowing for powers of surveillance that Stalin would have been delighted
with - the bill will also fail in its aim of tightening computer security.
- Wall
Street Journal 17/7/00: U.K. Internet Tapping Bill Stays Intact -
it would make Britain the only country in the Group
of Seven industrial nations with the explicit legal power to demand that
companies hand over keys required to decode data encrypted for secrecy
- UK.Internet.com
17/7/00: UK ebusiness threatened as RIP passed by Lords
- Time
17/7/00: The Infoanarchist
- New
Statesman 17/7/00: Click your mouse and vote
- Guardian
17/7/00: No 10's leaked memo reveals faults in RIP bill
- Times
17/7/00: RIP Bill to have final Lords reading
- Observer
16/7/00: RIP to civil liberties and the e-business revolution - The
only thing I care about,' the security manager of a major bank is reported
to have said to Clarke in a private meeting, 'is the text of the Act. Which
is why my [encryption] keys are going to Switzerland.
- Financial Times 15/7/00: Industry's e-mail bill
warning - the government offer to pay Pounds 20m towards
the cost of installing interception black boxes to capture electronic
traffic was described as "at best, puzzling" [CBI & ISPA]. (search
here)
- Register
14/7/00: Lords do their worst on RIP
- NTK
14/7/00: - the one remaining pressure group still
supporting the Bill: self-proclaimed protector of the kids, BARONESS
THORNTON (wife of anti-RIP [pro-RIP ?? shurely shome
mishtake?] rentaquote, John Carr)...RIP critics "would
like to have the regime which exists in America, which is protected by the
First Amendment and which has no constraints at all." And what could
such extremism lead to? "In America, children are kidnapped..."
- VNUnet
14/7/00: UK snooping bill key amendment defeated
- ZDNet UK
14/7/00: Government power over cryptography dented by Lords - "if
the UK becomes the only G7 economy with a Government Access to Keys (GAK)
law, companies and their customers will think long and hard before
conducting e-commerce in this country" Caspar Bowden
- Financial
Times 14/7/00: LEADER: RIP, R.I.P.
- (not RIP but...) BBC Online
13/7/00: Carnivore upsets privacy groups - "Nobody
knows how it works and how it can be targeted. It's a black box" James
Dempsey, CDT
- VNUnet
14/7/00: Advisory board to monitor RIP enforcement
- VNUnet
14/7/00: Peers move to ease RIP cost fears
- Silicon.com
14/7/00: 'Snooping Bill' will be law by October says Peer
- Telegraph
13/7/00: FBI under attack for spying on email
- ComputerWeekly
13/7/00: RIP needs safeguards
- BBC Online
13/7/00: Safeguard over e-mail 'snooping' Bill
- Telegraph
13/7/00: LETTER - RIP Bill is anti-democratic and totalitarian
- Telegraph
13/7/00: LETTER from Charles Clarke - all the
serious
commentators with whom we have engaged...
- Computing
13/7/00: Government bills Rarely Inspire Public
- ZDNet UK
13/7/00: Big Brother in the black box Pt II
- ZDNet UK
13/7/00: Big Brother in the black box
- Independent
13/7/00: Peers defeat moves to let police read e-mail (??)
- Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers...backed amendments
insisting on a statutory body to oversee setting up an Internet interception
system, and a formal commitment for ministers to pay for "black
boxes", which would allow authorities to tap the traffic.
- Guardian
13/7/00: 36% rise in reports of data misuse
- Guardian
13/7/00: Lament of the cheesed-off chiefs -
Bob Brace, vice-president of channel marketing for Nokia, said the RIP bill
was a waste of time. "Most government officials are not IT literate and
do not understand what the bill actually means," he said,... organised
criminals would find ways of circumventing the snoopers. "We cannot
implement this sort of policy and expect international business to have
confidence to invest in the UK"
- Silicon.com
13/7/00: ICL pleads for two-month 'Snooping Bill' re-think
- ComputerWeekly
13/7/00: ISP threatens departure over government Web-snooping bill
- Contractor UK
12/7/00: RIP Bill may force businesses overseas
- BBC Online
12/7/00: E-mail Bill 'threatens human rights'
- Data Protection
Commissioner Elizabeth France...said: "We are
particularly concerned that the Bill appears to allow access to encrypted
electronic information without a warrant simply on the basis of a notice
issued by a specified law enforcement agency"....Her report
said,
"It is the view of the Working Party on Police that the routine
long-term preservation of data by ISPs for law enforcement purposes would be
disproportionate general surveillance
of communications"
- Register
12/7/00: Minister slams RIP objections as 'ill founded'
- Ananova
12/7/00: Anti-crime e-mail snooping 'could breach human rights'
- Ananova
12/7/00: RIP Bill faces crunch Lords debate
- Telepolis
12/7/00: UK: RIP-Gesetz einstampfen
- ZDNet UK
12/7/00: Economic concerns as ISPs flee snooping bill
- BBC Online
12/7/00: 'Snooping' bill protests stepped up
- The451
12/7/00: Lawyers, minister's letter uphold e-spying claim
(registration required) - Lawyers have backed the claim that Britain's
controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill contains a loophole
that would allow mass domestic surveillance of telephone and Internet
traffic by the country's international listening center, the Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)...The contention is that with the
combination of powers granted under two different parts of the bill – one
of which is carried over from the existing Interception of Communications
Act and governs external traffic – protection
from GCHQ trawling British residents' traffic can be overridden
- Wall
Street Journal 12/7/00: Blair's Internet-Police Bill Threatens to Cool
Britannia
- Financial Times 12/7/00: Tinkering tailors a bill for
spies - A powerful alliance between Jack Straw
and Sir Richard Wilson, the cabinet secretary, overcame the
Department of Trade and Industry's objections to the contentious legislation
allowing the interception of private e-mails....One Blair ally said:
"All prime ministers are impressed by spies and Tony is no exception.
They were Jack's trump card." Furthermore Mr Blair was unwilling to
overrule his home secretary twice...One DTI insider said: "With
hindsight we should have realised that we were surrendering our voice in
this. It's hardly a surprise that a Home Office bill is tailored
to spies rather than businessmen."
- Financial Times 12/7/00:
Uunet/Nokia attack e-mail plan - NOKIA
and UUNET join campaign against controversial government
powers to intercept data - "It would be tragic if by imposing a new requirement on ISPs,
the UK were to make itself uncompetitive in the provision of internet
services. We would ask the government to step back and re-think the whole
bill," Uunet said
- Financial Times 12/7/00: Discontent in group talking about digital
revolution (search
here)
- Telegraph
12/7/00: Peers block e-snooping Bill
- Telegraph
12/7/00: LETTER: Withdraw dangerous Bill (see full
list of signatories)
- Telegraph
12/7/00: Simon Davies: How your privacy could soon RIP
- ZDNet
Fr 12/7/00: Londres coincé par son projet de surveillance de l'internet
- Silicon.com
12/7/00: Snooping Bill enters last lap as opposition unites
- Silicon.com
12/7/00: 'Snooping Bill' won't hurt UK ecommerce, says e-envoy
- VNUnet
11/7/00: Alliance wants RIP Bill dead
- BBC Online
11/7/00: ISPs RIP warning - net
expert Esther Dyson also called for the bill to be scrapped. She said the
powers it gave the government were more like those seen in repressive
regimes.
- NetImperative
11/7/00: Claranet joins overseas threat
- Register
11/7/00: ISPs fly to continent to escape RIP
- San Jose Mercury News
11/7/00: Draconian cyber-surveillance near in Britain -
Everywhere you go in Britain, you see video cameras in public places. Their
pervasive presence is testament to the British public's acceptance of
surveillance, at least of a certain kind. Why will such people care if their
e-mail is pervasively scanned and analyzed, or if their encryption keys are
demanded, by government snoops?
- (not RIP but...) Wall
Street Journal
11/7/00: FBI 'Carnivore' system can scan "millions of e-mails per
second"
- Silicon.com
11/7/00: Claranet to join UK exodus over 'Snooping Bill'
- Financial Times 11/7/00: Codes fail to allay fears over e-mail decryption
bill (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Silicon.com
11/7/00: 'Snooping Bill' sends another company into exile
- Times
11/7/00: Move to calm fears over e-mail secrets
- New
Statesman 10/7/00: Alex Allan interview - "...I
don't believe the provisions in the bill are a threat to the success of
e-commerce in the UK"
New
Statesman 10/7/00: Guide to best official and unofficial websites
- New
Statesman 10/7/00: The global view
- New
Statesman 10/7/00: Meet the regulators
- Irish Times
10/7/00: Legislation strong on privacy for Internet users -
The Irish approach can be contrasted to that of the UK where the Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Bill is currently before the House of Lords.
- Salon.com
10/7/00: Interview with Mike Lynch of Autonomy
A fair bit of your work is done for the
police. In the context of the current debates about the British Regulation
of Investigatory Powers bill, do you worry about the privacy consequences of
the kind of profiling and traffic analysis your products enable?
It's a debate that's sadly a bit sound-bite
based at the moment. One of the things we started with at Cambridge
Neurodynamics is technology that searches fingerprints. That system has put
a series of rapists and serial murderers away, and I don't lose any sleep at
all about that. Technology-based evidence actually makes it very hard to
convict someone falsely. As long as a test is done correctly, it's
incredibly powerful.
I'm actually very sympathetic to the other
point of view, but the issue is not the technology but the kind of society
you want to live in. Having a basically honest government is the issue, not
the technology.
- Telegraph
10/7/00: Concessions offered on RIP Bill
- [.TV]
10/7/00: ISPs threaten to leave the UK
- VNUnet
10/7/00: ISP considers quitting UK over RIP bill
- Silicon.com
10/7/00: Editorial: Will the last one to leave please switch off the server
- BusinessZone
10/7/00: ISP poised to move offshore as RIP Bill moves on
-
| SPIN vs. SUBSTANCE
- Ask the Home Office Press Office what the
RIP Bill actually says - Tim Watkinson -
(020) 7273 4610
5(3)b
- "for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime"
79(2)
& 79(3) "references to serious crime are references to crime
that...is conduct by a large number of persons in pursuit of a common
purpose."
|
Silicon.com
10/7/00: Snooping Bill drives first ISP abroad
- A spokesman for
the Home Office said he was disappointed by Poptel's reaction. "The
powers of interception are only directed at those suspected of involvement
in a threat to national security, a threat to the economic well being of the
nation or involvement in serious organised
(??) crime...we urge them to examine
the face of the Bill (!??!!?!??!) again"
- ZDNet UK
10/7/00: RIP: Government claims no mass surveillance -
The definition of serious crime includes the phrase "those
gathered for a common purpose" which some civil liberties experts claim
would include anyone organising a demonstration or anti-government protest.
"That is not the case," reassures the Home Office spokesman.
"It means those gathered for a common purpose to commit a serious
(??) crime and we are talking serious and organised (??!!)."
- ThisIsMoney
9/7/00: Firm's threat over 'net-spying' Bill
- Register
9/7/00: ISP RIPs up UK domicile
- Telegraph
9/7/00: ISP flees UK to evade e-mail snoops
- A spokeswoman for the TUC said: "It would be quite
easy for unions to hook up with an internet provider which can guarantee
e-mail won't be intercepted." The Transport and General Workers Union
said that if the TUC sourced its internet services outside the UK, it would
follow. A spokesman said: "We would certainly want to be assured that
in legitimate industrial disputes this would not infringe on the civil
liberties of members of the union."
- Observer
9/7/00: Nick Cohen - Right is wrong - ...an
anti-terrorism Bill, which treats ordinary demonstrators as if they are
Carlos the Jackal, and a Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, which will
make every computer user a legitimate target for unconstrained state
surveillance
- (not RIP but..) Independent
9/7/00: Revealed - 30 more nations with spy stations
- (not RIP but..) Sunday Times
9/7/00: Straw signs five bugging orders a day
- Daily Express
8/7/00: Security clamp on order at cyber cafe -
Closed-circuit television, proof
of identity and a greater emphasis on recording users are options being
considered by the National Crime Intelligence Service. Mark Castell, head of
the NCIS's hi-tech crime unit, said: "It is obvious the anonymity
offered by cyber cafes for criminals. The cafes have to recognise criminal
exploits."
- (not RIP but..) BBC Online
7/7/00: Crackdown on computer criminals - Some
use encryption techniques to scramble data that could be intercepted. Mr
Castell cited the example (!!) of David Copeland who anonymously surfed the
web for bomb-making instructions from a cyber-café
- UK.Internet.com
7/7/00: UK pressue mounts to kill RIP Bill
- VNUnet
7/7/00: Police email snooping powers tamed (wrong)
- Financial Times
7/7/00: £20m subsidy likely over e-mail bill
- Guardian
7/7/00: Internet spy bill set at £20m
- Financial Times 7/7/00: LETTER
from Lord Strathclyde - Would the regulation
of investigatory powers bill, of which the dire potential effects for civil
liberties and the UK as a base for e-business were rightly castigated by the
FT, have been rewritten if it had gone to a small committee
"upstairs"? I doubt it. It went through the Commons like an e-mail
through the ether (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Computing
6/7/00: Concern over RIP Bill continues
- BBC Online
6/7/00: Net laws 'still allow snooping' - FIPR has
found a loophole in section 15.3
of the bill that lets the security forces obtain a three-month blanket
warrant to look for "any referrable factor"
- Register
6/7/00: RIP will turn Britain into police state - Clinton Web guru
- Times
6/7/00: E-mail snooping will create police state, guru warns -
Esther Dyson, who advises President Clinton and heads an
international agency charged with setting policy for the Internet, urged
ministers to abandon the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill....at
an Anglo-American enterprise conference in London attended by Gordon
Brown, John Prescott, and Stephen Byers
- Silicon.com
6/7/00: Trades Unions call for urgent Snooping Bill clarification
- ComputerWeekly
6/7/00: RIP Bill amendments are not far reaching enough
- Silicon.com
5/7/00: Roland Perry (LINX regulation officer) streaming
4m 32s
- Network News 5/7/00: Lords seek to put another nail
in the coffin of the RIP Bill
- Silicon.com
5/7/00: Pressure groups and unions hold Snooping Bill summit
- ZDNet UK
5/7/00: French kill anti-privacy law
- Financial Times 4/7/00: LETTER - Computer-literate criminal is master of
disguise (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Journalism.co.uk
3/7/00: RIP bill mocked for passing 'complexity pain barrier'
- Federal
Computer Week UK
3/7/00: Intercepts - the UK solution
- ZDNet UK
3/7/00: Jane Wakefield: These days everybody's playing a spying game...
- Financial Times 3/7/00: Business still remains
worried (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Independent
2/7/00: Blair pledge on e-mail snooping
- Observer
2/7/00: Ken Follett - Blair's blackest art -
When this Government stumbles, it is usually over the rock of a moral
question: ...The latest example is the Regulation of Investigatory Practices
(RIP) Bill, with its breathtaking insouciance toward civil liberties. (Home
Office Minister Charles Clarke last week promised a rethink.) In private
conversations, Tony says issues don't matter to the average voter...
- Observer
2/7/00: Climbdown on e-snooping Bill
- Internet Magazine 1/7/00:
Locked in the crypt - Bill Thompson
- Telegraph
1/7/00: LETTER - on Steganography
- NTK
30/6/00: e-Envoy breaks silence on RIP, news from planet Miller
- AnaNova
30/6/00: Changes fail to convince civil liberties groups over cyber surveillance
bill
- Register
30/6/00: Drunks should fear RIP bill
- Silicon.com
30/6/00: on Govt. RIP amendments streaming
7m 57s
- BBC R4 Law in Action 29/6/00 -
Real Audio (5m
48s)
- uk.internet.com 29/6/00:
Straw backs down on RIP Bill, but battle not over yet
- Telegraph
29/6/00: LETTER - Bill of wrongs
- Telegraph
29/6/00: Lords seek further changes to RIP Bill
- Telegraph
29/6/00: Does Straw know what he's taking on?
- ZDNet UK
29/6/00: A solution to the RIP bill may lie in a 20 year old technology
- ZDNet UK
29/6/00: E-envoy tells government to lay off the Net (...just
fancy that!)
- Financial
Times 29/6/00: LETTER - Decryption will not help fight Crime
- Computing
29/6/00: House of Lords slows progress of RIP Bill
- Financial
Times 29/6/00: E-mail bill concessions mollify opposition peers (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Financial Times 29/6/00: LETTER from Chris Humphries (BCC)
(if
FT link expired search
here)
- Silicon.com 29/6/00: Snooping Bill goes back under the Lords'
microscope
- Silicon.com 29/6/00: Anti-RIP lobby wins changes to Snooping
Bill
- ComputerWeekly
29/6/00: Tapping law could push work abroad
- ComputerWeekly
29/6/00: Government to ease RIP Bill powers
- ComputerWeekly
29/6/00: No refuge from RIP Bill
- Independent
29/6/00: Ministers limit plan to snoop on e-mail
- Financial Times 28/6/00: Changes to e-mail bill fail to satisfy
industry (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Telegraph
28/6/00:
City Diary: Behind the internet snooper Bill -
Nigel Hickson, the CBI's head of e-business...is on secondment from the
DTI..."There is a slight irony, to be on the other side of the fence
over a similar Bill"
- Telegraph
28/6/00: City Editor comment: Shadow of Straw's dogs remains over the net
- AnaNova
28/6/00: Tory chief says e-mail bill is snoopers' charter
- ZDNet UK
28/6/00: Snoopers' charter - changes are not enough
- Birmingham Post 28/7/00: Tighter Rein For Web
Watchers
- BBC Online 28/6/00:
Net snooping bill 'harms business'
- Network News 28/6/00: MP to launch RIP Bill
investigation - Select committee chairman to head
parliamentary inquiry into RIP weakness
- Times
28/6/00: Fears over e-mail Bill prompt climbdown
- Times
28/6/00: LETTER from FIPR (sent 14/6/00)
- Independent
28/6/00: Government tones down e–mail intercept bill
- Wired
27/6/00: Brits Tone Down Email Bill
- USA Today
27/6/00: 'Big Browser' would let U.K. spy on Net
- Register
27/6/00: Govt bows to pressure on RIP
- ZDNet UK
27/6/00: Government backtracks on Internet surveillance
- Telegraph
27/6/00: LEADER: An e-unfriendly act
- VNUnet
27/6/00: Industry unimpressed by RIP Bill changes
- ComputerWeekly
27/6/00: RIP climbdown leaves users wary
- ABC News
27/7/00: British govt amends e-mail bill to avoid revolt
- BBC Online
27/6/00: Ministers amend e-mail bill
- Guardian
27/6/00:
RIP bill no match for technology
- Guardian 27/6/00:
Ministers back down on email 'spy charter'
- Financial
Times 27/6/00: Ministers to offer concessions on e-mail bill
- CNN.com
26/6/00: U.K. pulls back on cybersnoop bill
- Daily
Telegraph 26/6/00: Government could back down on 'net snooping'
- Independent
25/6/00: Home Office shift on 'black boxes' boosts internet firms
- Mail on Sunday 25/6/00:
'Snooping'
Bill to be watered down - Straw bows to pressure
on bugging of e-mails
- Observer
25/6/00: LETTERS - in response to John
Carr 18/6/00
- " If (he) really believes the opposition to the RIP Bill is
Thatcherite, élitist and anti-democratic, perhaps he should get out
more..."
-
YES |
Observer
25/6/00: COMMENT - Big browser is watching the web -
Is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers
Bill a licence for state snooping? |
NO |
|
Caspar Bowden - director
of FIPR
Type a few words into a web
search-engine and you can find information on any subject in
seconds. What happens next depends what one is thinking about and
one's reaction to that information. RIP's proponents say the
internet is like a public space, and just as the police don't need a
judge's warrant merely to keep an eye on someone in the street,
they must be allowed to track any person's movements as they click
from website to website.
As drafted, RIP gives the police
and other government bodies authority to access a person's 'clickstream'
- the virtual record of his or her train of thought; no formal
investigation need be underway, no warrant is required. Last Monday
the Government asked the House of Lords to believe that this was
some kind of drafting mistake, but when pressed would not deny that
their intention all along was for Big Browser to be Watching You.
RIP can require internet service
providers to install 'black boxes' which see every scrap of data
traversing their networks, all under the control of a monitoring
centre in the MI5 building. There is obviously a problem of
oversight here, but the director of the National Criminal
Intelligence Service (who will operate it) last week knocked down
the straw man that they 'would or could monitor all emails'. The
issue is that nobody will know for sure what the boxes are doing,
and RIP is drafted so that their operation is lawful without even
serving warrants on the ISP.
The real trouble with RIP is that
it won't work - and the reason is encryption. On an open system like
the internet, the only way to keep data safe is to scramble it, so
if a fraudster or industrial spy hacks into your system, the data is
unintelligible without the right password or 'key'. Encryption will
be ubiquitous - it's already built into the fabric of the next
technical standard for the internet, and serious e-commerce
applications will never be trusted without it.
RIP proposes to deal with the
problem of criminal use of encryption by giving any public authority
power to demand any key or password to any data there is some lawful
authority to obtain - whether intercepted under warrant, seized in a
search, or held by an innocent party. People forget passwords and
lose keys all the time, but if you find yourself in this situation
you could go to jail for two years. Serious criminals will obviously
plead a bad memory, so NCIS wants the sentence to be as long as
whatever crime someone is suspected of.
There is also a secrecy condition
that can prohibit someone from disclosing that a key has been
divulged - on pain of a further five years. But RIP can be evaded by
taking elementary countermeasures, and will plainly be impotent
against serious criminals.
There is an alternative, but the
Government refuses to discuss it. Interception is useless if the
data is encrypted, but even the strongest code is useless if the key
is stolen. All computers have bugs in the software that allow
hackers to break in, and developing a battery of such techniques
would allow keys to be stolen covertly (under warrant) when
required. The police say this is too difficult and unfortunately for
us all, it probably is too difficult for the current management.
The Government's case reduces to a
plea without evidence that the powers are
'necessary' and assurances that 'the innocent will not suffer', and Ministers
increasingly resort to caricaturing opponents as libertarian
absolutists. But RIP won't work, and the danger is that after the
'black boxes' go in and interception has been stymied by encryption,
the police will look to compensate through automated mass
surveillance of online behaviour. Instead it is time for law
enforcement to develop alternatives to interception, and to stop
pretending that sweeping executive discretion is a credible way to
regulate internet surveillance.
Meanwhile other countries look on
in horrified fascination. In any democracy with a written
constitution, a law that locked people up for failing to prove they
had forgotten something would not get very far. A leading investment
bank, fearful that master-keys could be secretly suborned for
economic intelligence gathering, has already moved security
operations to Zurich, and Britain can expect to be treated as a
pariah once company lawyers savour the possibilities. RIP is both a
cock-up and a conspiracy - some intelligence agencies understand the
internet well, but Ministers and most senior policy officials don't
use the internet, don't understand its technology or economics, and
don't think that that matters. |
Charles Clarke MP - Home
Office Minister
The regulation of Investigatory
Powers Bill is attacked by some as a 'snooper's charter'. Such
epithets may make for snappy headlines. But they do not reflect the
reality.
One of the primary drivers behind
this Bill is the protection of an individual's privacy. This
Government passed the Human Rights Act 1998, which will shortly
incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law.
This includes a right to privacy. But this, in any democratic
society, is not an absolute right. The ECHR permits interference
with an individual's privacy but only where it is in accordance with
the law and necessary, for example, to prevent crime. These are
precisely the sort of strictures the Bill puts in place. We
recognise that some of the powers in the Bill are particularly
intrusive. That is precisely why they should, as the Bill proposes,
be closely regulated.
Criminals have always been quick to
seize on new technologies. We are seeing this now. The internet
offers huge legitimate benefits. It is rewriting the rules about how
we communicate, how businesses operate and how governments function.
But alongside these opportunities come powerful opportunities for
criminals to abuse new technologies. So there is a delicate balance
to be struck. We need to give due weight to all the interests
involved - individual privacy, business expedience and law
enforcement. We would be justifiably criticised if we did nothing to
prevent the new media becoming tools of drug smugglers, paedophiles
or people traffickers.
Contrary to its critics, the Bill
does not usher in an era of mass email interception. There is no
intention to routinely monitor communications or fit 'black boxes'
to all internet service providers. Some may be required to maintain
a capability. Interception now and in the future is reserved for use
only in the most serious cases - a threat to national security, the
nation's economic well-being, or in pursuit of serious crime - and
every warrant must be authorised personally by the Secretary of
State. There are, we know, crucial cost and technical issues here
for industry and we are discussing these now with the relevant
players. We have no intention of imposing unreasonable burdens on
anyone - we have every intention of ensuring we can fight crime in
the twenty-first century.
There have been suggestions that
the Bill would allow unfettered access to communications data (eg,
itemised billing records). In fact, the Bill introduces
comprehensive statutory controls for the first time, strictly
governing access to such information. Access must be properly
authorised, for specified purposes, and subject to independent
oversight. Some have suggested that as many as 28 different public
authorities will be authorised to access communications data. Not
so. The Bill lists six authorities and police forces. And, as we
announced last week, we are looking again at whether we have got the
definition of communications data in the Bill quite right.
There is also much hyperbole about
the provisions relating to the use of encryption. This technology is
vital to the e-commerce revolution, but also a boon to criminals
eager to hide their activities. These measures do not give law
enforcement agencies any new powers to obtain material - just the
ability to understand the contents of material that they can
lawfully obtain.
Again, we are looking to see
whether changes can be made which provide reassurance while
maintaining the balance we seek.
The RIP Bill has been described as
'Orwellian' and 'Kafka-esque'. Instead of reaching for the clichéd
literary descriptors, some critics may do better to look at what the
Bill actually says, and consider the reality. This is an important
Bill - and not just for those who know their symmetric from their
asymmetric encryption keys. The powers in the Bill, simply put, are
essential to help keep the UK a safe place for everyone to live and
work. |
- Daily
Express 23/6/00: How can we trust a man who gives promises so freely and then breaks them so
shamelessly?
- NTK
23/6/00: A defender for RIP!
- Scientific
American 6/00: Orwell Awards
- Financial
Times 23/6/00: 'E-snooping' measure pits government
against apprehensive business leaders (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Financial
Times 23/6/00: LETTER from Richard Stallman - RIP bill is
bad for more than business
- Times
22/6/00: Anatole Kaletsky - How Blair could turn victory into defeat - millions
of voters ... cannot see any difference in principle between a government
that demands records of Internet correspondence and one that decrees that
the post office should steam open all letters and keep copies in its vaults.
- ZDNet UK
22/6/00: Home Office to retreat on cyber-spying bill
- VNUnet
22/6/00: Lords say RIP Bill can be defeated
- Financial
Times 22/6/00: LETTER from Caspar Bowden -
The government still maintains that asking an innocent person to prove they
have forgotten a password does not amount to a presumption of guilt. However
Lord Bassam recently chose to rectify a less severe reverse-burden in the
Terrorism bill. Unless he can persuade the Lords next week that there is no
inconsistency here, another foundation of RIP will shatter. Real progress
will not be made until government recognises that respect for civil
liberties is indissoluble from the prosperity of e-commerce.
- ComputerWeekly
22/6/00: Government forced to rewrite RIP definitions
- The Government admitted this week
that its definition of "communications data", which underpins
its controversial RIP Bill, is so flawed that it will have to be rewritten...However,
despite this last minute climb-down, Lord Bassam refused to say whether
the intent of the new definition would exclude search engine requests and
logs of individual Web pages from being intercepted without a warrant.
- Times
22/6/00: Fury over law on e-mail
- Computing 22/6/00: Government 'in retreat' over RIP
Bill
- ComputerWeekly
22/6/00: Labour fails to grasp e-business
- Daily
Telegraph 22/6/00: Michael Bywater - We don't expect honesty from
governments
- Silicon.com
22/6/00: Government hints at 'Snooping Bill' climb-down
- A Home Office spokeswoman denied that changes were in
the offing..."...we are not drawing up amendments to the Bill."
- Daily
Telegraph 22/6/00: Charles Clarke - Why only criminals should fear the Bill
- Daily
Telegraph 22/6/00: What it means to you
- Register
22/6/00: Waugh hits out at RIP
- Network News 21/6/00: Big Browser need not be
watching you
- Network News 21/6/00: Government stands firm over RIP
Bill - The government's new e-envoy Alex Allen has defended its controversial RIP bill.
Speaking at the summer reception of the Associated Parliamentary Internet Group,
Allen said the bill's intention was good and its application would be regulated through a code of practice.
"You need safeguards, but the concerns of civil rights groups are
exaggerated," he said. "They talk about reversed burden of proof, but the prosecution must still prove that network managers had encryption keys to start
with."
- Register 21/6/00:
RIP Bill needs 'a very big knife taking to it'
- AFX 21/6/00: "online businesses are pushing for major amendments"(if
FT link expired search
here)
- Financial Times 21/6/00: Ministers preparing retreat on e-mail
intercepts (if
FT link expired search
here)
- PC Dealer 21/6/00: City view - keep a close eye on
surveillance bill (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Yorkshire Post
21/6/00: E-privacy? You can RIP
- Financial Times 21/6/00: Taskforce to serve up unpalatable
offering (if
FT link expired search
here)
- BBC
Online 20/6/00: Charles Clarke on Net surveillance: Your questions answered
- Computer Weekly
20/6/00: Ministers split on RIP?
- VNUnet
20/6/00: Net tapping Bill fatally flawed
- Silicon.com 20/6/00: Snooping Bill goals slammed by EC
powers
- Independent 20/6/00: Letter - Offshore E-crime (if
FT link expired search
here)
- InternetWeek
19/6/00: A Haven For Net Lawbreakers?
- Steptoe
& Johnson E-Commerce Law Week: Will RIP be laid to rest ?
- Daily
Telegraph 20/6/00: LETTER from Simon Davies, Ian Brown, Gus Hosein
- Times
19/6/00: Industry bodies oppose RIP Bill
- YouGov
19/6/00: People's Parliament - Vote on RIP
- Daily
Telegraph 19/6/00: LETTER from Jack Straw
- BBC Online
19/6/00: Peers examine email tapping
- Financial Times 19/6/00: LETTER from Jack Straw (if
FT link expired search
here)
- BBC2 Newsnight 19/6/00
- Daily
Telegraph 19/6/00: Web's pointer to privacy
- Guardian
19/6/00: Straw braced for defeat over RIP bill
- Guardian
19/6/00: The issues explained - the RIP Bill
- Observer 18/6/00
| John
Carr:
it is a very unattractive opposition
whose hallmark is elitist, largely Thatcherite, and
contemptuous of the encroachment of 'non-expert' democratic
politicians...
(if
key not handed over, guilty if) a
court was...convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the
accused's failure was deliberate. (?!?)
So
who will speak for civil society in this space? We truly want a
'people's internet'. We need...to start to take charge of an
agenda which had been creeping up on us by stealth...
|
John
Naughton:
The Bill is being shepherded through
by...Lord Bassam...and...Bach. Neither of them appears to know
anything about the technology of the internet, though M'lord Bach
seems to rely heavily on the advice of a Baroness
Thornton,
who in real life is Mrs John Carr, and thus the spouse of a
well-known campaigner against child pornography on the internet.
|
Net watchdog Bill faces axe -
Jack Straw's much
criticised Bill to regulate the freedom of the internet is facing
disaster in the Lords as critics organise a guerrilla campaign
against the Government. More than 48 pages of amendments have been
proposed to block the Home Secretary's proposals to increase the
powers of the police and MI5 to intercept emails and access personal
information kept on computers |
| Nick
Cohen:
The Home Office has a new sneer for
those who question its assault on rights...In the past, we have been
Old Labour 'dinosaurs' ignorant of the authoritarian necessities of
hard times. Without contradiction, we then metamorphosed into
'woolly Hampstead liberals'...Jack Straw has ruled that all who
regard him as a public menace will henceforth be known as
'paranoids'. The cause of
the linguistic shift is the reaction to the extraordinary Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Bill..
|
New web spy system is not up to the job, say the
experts
"..more worrying is that the
Government have yet to tell us exactly how they intend to implement
this surveillance system. After several years of discussion, this is
ridiculous. This is going to cost a lot more than the Government are
currently saying" Tim Pearson, ISPA Council |
- Independent
18/6/00: Big Browser will watch your every move
- New Scientist
17/6/00: LEADER: Spooks out
- Guardian
17/6/00: LEADER: A devil at every door - Crime,
disorder and libertinism are rife. Unless "the authorities" (a
satisfying Home Office term, that) are given vast new powers to eavesdrop,
discipline and investigate, chaos will ensue.
- Guardian
17/6/00: LETTERS: Liberty RIP
- eYada 17/6/00: Johnny Rotten and Chris Bailey on
RIP streaming
Real
Audio (begins 2h 42m)
- Transfert.net
16/6/00: Big Brother loge à Big Ben
- Times
16/6/00: Big Brother is reading you
- NTK
16/6/00:
RIP tide turns - Jack Straw took up the shaky
defence: the idea of "black boxes" sending data to the new
interception centre from ISPs was ridiculous, he wrote to the Times. Hmm.
Given that the Home Office's own commissioned report described the nature of
these boxes in some detail, what replacement does he have in mind? Encrypted
pigeon post? On a second front in the Financial Times, his letter
pooh-poohed the British Chamber of Commerce's estimate of up to 46 billion
UKP lost by e-commerce skiddadling abroad post-RIP. Nonsense, he said:
e-commerce only amounts to 0.6% of GDP: less than five billion. But the
Chamber was talking about over five years, Minister; and they were
using *your* estimates of a global e-commerce marketplace of 800UKP
billion by 2005, with a 5% hold in the UK (2.5% with RIP in place).
- Evening Standard:
16/6/00: Cyber-police are watching you - there's
absolutely no assurance - beyond a general Home Office promise that the new
powers won't be misused - that this Government or a future one won't use
MI5's GTAC to monitor anything ... its citizens do
- Financial
Times 16/6/00: Byers lobbies Straw on e-mail bill fears
- Independent
16/6/00: Climbdown on plan for e-mail snooping
- VNUnet
16/6/00: DTI says snooping bill should be reviewed
- Computing
16/6/00: RIP will 'cost UK economy £46 billion'
- Register
16/6/00: Home Office kept busy defending RIP
- Financial
Times 15/6/00: Straw attacks critics of e-mail intercept bill -
In a forceful public intervention, Mr Straw put
him self full square behind MI5 the security service, and the police in
insisting the bill was strictly a law enforcement issue...He was flanked by
John Abbot, and Barry Penrose, the directors of the National Criminal
Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad, who together with MI5
have lobbied strongly for the bill.
- Financial
Times 15/6/00: LEADER: Straw man -
it could in principle give
any government official access to the private transactions of any citizen or
corporation. That could include bank account details, commercial secrets,
and private e-mails. These are powers that Joseph Stalin would have used
with relish. Mr Straw protests that he would interpret them narrowly in
pursuit of organised crime. But the regulations explaining the
government's intentions have not yet been published.
- Financial
Times 15/6/00: LETTER from Jack Straw: Bill will not cause e-commerce to
decamp - "The Government Technical
Assistance Centre will handle material intercepted under warrant. It
will not be used to access communications data"
- Guardian
15/6/00: LETTERS from John Abbott & Charles Clarke - "Conspiracy
theorists must not be allowed to get away with the ridiculous notion that
law enforcement would or even could monitor all emails. The intelligence
agencies have neither the inclination nor the resources, nor the legal
ability to monitor the massive amounts of electronic communications that
flow through the UK every day. It does not happen with letters or telephones
and it will not with emails." - John Abbott, Director general
of the National Criminal Intelligence Service
- ZDNet UK
15/6/00: Straw enters bitter row over RIP Bill
- ZDNet UK
15/6/00: Data protection chief swipes out at spying Bill
- Accountancy
Age15/6/00: Critics hope snooping Bill will rest in peace
- ComputerWeekly
15/6/00: Users voice fears on RIP Bill - Invasion
of privacy, breaches of confidentiality and extra costs are all concerns
raised by users in response to the imminent RIP Bill
- ComputerWeekly
15/6/00: Labour's Net policy crisis
- Independent
15/6/00: REPLY from Charles Clarke
- Telegraph
15/6/00: Report calls it RIP for RIP bill over human rights law breaches
- Telegraph
15/6/00: Privacy battle rages on
- Times
14/6/00: LETTER from Jack Straw: Internet regulation
- Times
14/6/00: ONLINE: The 'Big Brother' Bill: what do you think?
- Ninfomania
14/6/00: Waking up to RIP
- Silicon.com 14/6/00: Lords maul 'Snooping Bill'
- Guardian
13/6/00: Internet monitoring 'time bomb' for e-commerce - Allowing
MI5 to monitor people's internet habits goes further than George Orwell's
worst nightmare
- Guardian
13/6/00: Lords to fight email tap bill
- Irish Independent
13/6/00: IT firms voice fears about UK e-mail bill
- Independent
13/6/00: LEADER - The threats to e-commerce that will cost us all dear
- "The
Government's crass attempt to claim draconian powers to monitor electronic
communications, the (RIP) Bill, would stifle the development of
e-business, e-government or e-anything in the UK."
- CNN.com
13/6/00: Concern over U.K. e-mail surveillance bill grows - "It's
a good question why this bill passed through the Commons so easily, but
perhaps lawyers in the House of Lords can cause enough anxiety for them to
send it back to the Commons for better consideration" Tony Benn MP
- ZDNet
13/6/00: Jeremy Westbrook: Please let this Bill RIP
- Independent
13/6/00: Peers may block e-mail snooping law
- BBC Online
13/6/00: Net laws could cost business
- Financial
Times 13/6/00: UK Bill under increasing fire
- Daily
Telegraph 13/6/00: Government faces attack on e-code Bill
- VNUnet
13/6/00: Snooping bill will cost £46bn, claims report
- Daily Mail
13/6/00: Exodus threat over e-snooping
- ComputerWeekly
13/6/00: UK business hits out at Government's Internet surveillance
bill
- KableNet
13/6/00: DTI's e-commerce man joins industry - ...Nigel
Hickson, who is being "loaned" by the Department of Trade and
Industry to the Confederation of British Industry, played an unprecedented
role in a behind-the-scenes e-mail consultation...
- ZDNet UK
13/6/00: Report says snooping bill expensive and useless
- Times 12/6/00: LEADER: The Key to E-Commerce - Britain will lose its lead if this Bill
passes - "...so misguided as to be
practically unamendable. It would be better for 'the economic wellbeing of
the United Kingdom' to throw it out."
- Guardian 12/6/00: LEADER: Kick out this legislation -
"Tony Blair was given a mild drubbing by the Women's
Institute last week. But that is nothing to what ought to happen this week
as the RIP (regulation of investigatory powers) bill enters its committee
stage in the Lords"
- Financial
Times 12/6/00: Leaders say no to e-snooping - ministers
have been told they have
"about 10 days" to head off peers' concerns or risk defeat on a
number of opposition amendments.
- BBC Online
12/6/00: Criticism of net snooping bill grows - Business
groups and politicians are queueing up to criticise the RIP bill
- ZDNet UK
12/6/00: RIP comes in for roasting from former government adviser
- ZDNet UK
12/6/00: Encryption law is one bad spud
- ZDNet UK
12/6/00:
Report to Lords will show extra cost of snooping bill
- BBC Online
12/6/00: Talking Point:Is net surveillance prying or policing?
- BBC Radio 4 Today 12/6/00
Real
Audio (6m 3s)
- The
Times 12/6/00: New MI5 unit to crack criminal computer codes
- VNUnet
12/6/00: Industry urges rethink on UK snooping Bill
- ITDirector
12/6/00: Encryption: Should the RIP bill rest in peace?
- Ananova
12/6/00: Cyber surveillance bill faces rough ride in lords
- ZDNet UK
12/6/00: Father of the Web lambastes cyber snooping bill
- Silicon.com 12/6/00: Snooping Bill - Law faces 229 amendments before
Lords
- Silicon.com 12/6/00: Snooping Bill - silicon.com submits "Kill the Bill" plea to Home
Office
- Silicon.com 12/6/00: Snooping Bill - Critics gain Chamber of Commerce support"
- Observer
11/6/00: Father of the web lashes snooping Bill - Tim
Berners-Lee, regarded as the father of the world
wide web, has launched a blistering attack on government plans to give the
security services sweeping powers to intercept emails and monitor traffic on
the internet
- Independent
on Sunday 11/6/200: RIP: computer tapping bill faces death sentence
- Observer
11/6/00: Why papers won't say our freedom is in peril
- Times
10/12/00:
ONLINE: Change RIP Bill before it's buried
- Computer
Weekly 8/6/00: LEADER: Stop the Bill - "the
best thing the House of Lords could do for UK e-commerce in the next few
days is to torpedo the Bill completely and ask Jack Straw to start
again"
- Sky News 8/6/00 Business Report: CB on RIP
- Computer
Weekly 8/6/00: What stage is the Bill at?
- The
Journal 8/6/00: RIP Bill has to be killed off, says North Chamber
- Computer
Weekly 8/6/00: RIP Bill creates legal dilemma for IT chiefs -
IT directors will face a choice between breaking the law or breaching
commercial confidentiality
- Computing 8/6/00: RIP Bill faces a fresh attack
- ZDNet UK
7/6/00: Pressure grows on government to scrap snooping bill
- Guardian
7/6/00: Cold water poured on Sealand security
- FT
6/6/00 LEADER: Online Crime - "the UK
government should scrap this ill-considered bill in its entirety"
- Silicon.com
6/6/00: 'Kill the Bill' - a silicon.com campaign
- Silicon.com
6/6/00: Home Office stands firm on 'Snooping Bill'
- E-Commerce Times
6/6/00: UK Snoop Bill Faces Formidable Foe
- Register
6/6/00: RIP could wreck UK business, Chamber of Commerce realises
- Daily
Telegraph 6/6/00: Alert over email probes
- Wired
6/6/00: British E-Commerce to RIP?
- Guardian
6/6/00: BCC attacks Straw 'licence to snoop'
- The Site
6/6/00: RIP - Cyber-snooping or legitimate surveillance?
- Independent
6/6/00: Investors flock to help internet tax haven go it alone - Yesterday,
after initially saying Sealand was outside British territorial waters, the
Home Office joined the Foreign Office in saying it did not recognise the
sovereignty of Sealand. A spokesman said the company would have to comply
with new laws under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill and it may
be required to "provide an intercept capability" – a box that
allows eavesdropping – for the intelligence services
- Excite
6/6/00: 'Snooping bill' concerns voiced too late, says campaigner
- BBC Radio 4 World Tonight 5/6/00
Real
Audio (4m 24s)
- uk.internet.com
5/6/00: Government attacked over RIP "own goal" as business
leaders press for amendments
- KABC Los Angeles 5/6/00 - interview on RIP
Real
Audio (14m 4s) - "I never associated the British Government
with paranoia; if this story was coming out of Moscow, I would get it"
- John and Ken morning show
- Reuters
5/6/00: Britain's Web Spying Bill Could Inhibit E-Commerce
- BBC1
TV News 13:23 5/6/00 - Rory Cellan-Jones reports on
business opposition to RIP RealVideo
streaming 1m 31s
- Silicon.com
5/6/00: BCC condemns 'Snooping Bill'
- FT
5/6/00: Business lobbies against e-mail intercept plans
- BBC Online
5/6/00: Snooping bill 'will harm business'
- LA Times
4/6/00: British Government Wants to Play Online Big Brother - Big
Brother is not only watching Britons, soon he may be demanding their
computer passwords and perusing their e-mail from a new, $40-million
cyber-surveillance center in the headquarters of the MI5 domestic spy
agency. Under a bill making its way through Parliament, the government
would have the right to monitor all online activities--some of them without
a warrant (also carried by International
Herald Tribune and Chicago
Sun-Times)
- Observer
4/6/00: Your privacy ends here - while MI5 may
need a warrant actually to read your email, many other people will have
essentially unregulated access to logs of the websites you access, the pages
you download, the addresses of those with whom you exchange email, the
discussion groups to which you belong and the chat rooms you frequent - in
short, a comprehensive record of what you do online and with whom
- Press
Gazette 2/6/00: We have been
watching... - it spells
RIP not only for the future of e-commerce industry in the UK, but also for
the ability of journalists to protect their sources when using email.
- FT
1/6/00: The price of policing e-business - John
Smith sometimes gets e-mails at work from someone suspected of tax evasion.
The police, armed with a warrant from the Home Office, demand Mr Smith hands
over either the key that will allow them to decrypt the messages or plain
text versions of them. If Mr Smith refuses, he faces up to two years in
jail. If he says he has forgotten the key and a court does not believe him,
he could also be jailed. If he complies and hands over the key, the police
may be able to access all the e-mails sent on that system. If the police
lose the key, the company's entire security system could be put at risk. But
if Mr Smith warns his employer or anyone else about the police's request, he
again faces a stiff jail sentence.
- Guardian
1/6/00: LEADER: Hooked on secrecy
- FT
1/6/00: LETTER: RIP bill will make no impact
(on professional criminals)
- Guardian
31/5/00: "Government tapping of phone calls between UK and Ireland challenged"
- Telepolis
30/5/00: Die Briten als Avantgarde einer besonderen Art
FT 29/5/00: LETTER from Charles Clarke: Bill will help make UK safest place for
e-commerce (if
FT link expired search
here)
- Guardian
27/5/00: Jeremy Hardy - Private means
- Newsbytes
26/5/00: UK E-Commerce Legislation Stirs Up Privacy Angst
- Reuters
26/5/00: "Britain Defends Plan to Snoop on Web Surfers"
RETRACTED
!: After initial refusals, following
persistent enquiries from FIPR, today (1/6/00) Tim Watkinson of the Home
Office Press Office - (020) 7273 4610 - formally retracted the deliberately
withheld quote reported by Reuters, describing it as a "slight
mis-brief".
??!! "The
police have to prove the encryption key was deliberately
withheld," the spokesman said... ??!!
RIP
Bill S.49 (1) A person is guilty of an offence if (a) he fails
to comply... and (b) he is a person who has or has had possession
of the key. (2) ...it shall be a defence...for
that person to show- (a)
that the key was not in his possession...
- Metro
(London) 26/5/00: MI5 to lead world in e-snooping
- Silicon.com
26/5/00: LEADER: silicon.com says no to Snooping Bill
- BBC Online
25/5/00: Watching while you surf - "PCs might
soon be watching people surf on their PC"
- Computer
Weekly 25/5/00: No rest over RIP
- Computer
Weekly 25/5/00: Cool response to Love Bug raises spook role questions
- The Journalist
24/5/00: All Kafka'd up
- Time Out 24/5/00: Taking Civil Liberties
- Channel
4 News 24/5/00: report on RIP, Tom King MP and Simon Davies RealVideo
streaming 11m 15s (and
text report)
- Computeractive
24/5/00: EDITORIAL - Delays hit email privacy law
- FT
23/5/00: UK e-guru attacks interception plans
- Guardian
22/5/00: "Newspapers challenge widening of police, security agency powers"
- "Lawyers say that the bill has enormous
implications for journalists...since they would not be able to guarantee the
confidentiality of the information on...supplied by their sources."
- Guardian
22/5/00: Four threats to the public's right to know
- Bills going through parliament will hinder watchdog role of press and
bolster state secrecy
- NBC Nightly News 21/5/00: report on RIP (anyone see
it ?)
- VNUnet
19/5/00: Is New Labour delivering on its ecommerce promises?
- WSWS
18/5/00: New Internet spy agency to be set up in Britain
- Computer
Weekly 18/5/00: The late show
- Computer Weekly
18/5/20: Minister in spat with Computer Weekly over RIP bill
- Network News 17/5/00: Government RIPs into more
controversy - "..If you visit sites or get mail from users
that the police think are dodgy, then that will be reason enough to get a warrant," said Bowden.....this was backed up by the Data Protection Registrar. "One form of data could
be used to inform the decision to intercept another. There's nothing in the new bill to suggest that it
couldn't"...
- Silicon.com
16/5/00: Prying or protection "As controversy over
the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers Bill ('Snooping Bill') heats up, is
the government on a collision course with industry? Sally Watson visits the
Internet and Power conference in Cambridge to find out..." (RealVideo
streaming 3m 45s)
- West Australian 16/5/00: BRITONS SUSPECT ORWELL TRUTH IN BID TO TACKLE CYBER
CRIME
- Business & Technology 12/5/00: ISPs furious as snooping costs go
through the roof
- Computing 11/5/00: Government forces through Net spy bill
- Computing 11/5/00: They could be watching you too!
- ComputerWeekly
11/5/00: Firms quit UK over RIP Bill - "Firms fear
the breadth of powers it provides to various groups to intercept
confidential commercial data. They are not trying to fight any more. They're
just going. They fear the UK simply isn't a safe place for confidential
data."
- ComputerWeekly
11/5/00: Firms move operations abroad to avoid RIP Bill
- AP 10/5/00: "Britain plans cyber-center to spy on the Internet"
(AP unlinkable - search here
or look at Chicago
Tribune story)
- Network News 10/5/00: RIP threat to e-mail privacy
- VNUnet 10/5/00: Snooping bill under attack
again - "It is repugnant at law to require
someone to prove his innocence. It goes against the golden thread that runs
through English justice." - Oliver Heald MP
- CNN TV report on RIP 10/5/00
- BBC Online
9/5/00: Tories demand tougher computer penalties
- ZDNet UK
9/5/00: Cyber-snooping Bill through House of Commons
- BBC Online
8/5/00: Computer crime plan 'bad for business'
- BBC Radio 5 Nicky Campbell phone-in 8/5/00
Real
Audio (2m 52s) http://www.fipr.org/rip/R5_Nicky_Campbell_CB_RIP_8.05.2000.rm
- BBC
TV Business Breakfast 8/5/00 07:45 - Max Foster reports on RIP Bill
(RealVideo
streaming 2m 55s) "...MI5
could potentially read every e-mail sent and received in Britain..."
- BBC Radio 4 'Broadcasting House' 7/5/00,
Dan Damon
Real
Audio (6m 57s streaming)
- Sunday Times
7/5/00: The net closes in
- Dawn (Pakistan)
7/5/00: UK lays plans to snoop on all e-mail messages
- Observer
7/5/00: Coming to a screen near you
- Silicon.Com
5/5/00: Behind the Headlines....criminals taking the RIP (video)
- Independent
5/5/00: Freedom of information must mean just that
- "The interception of e-mail is something we are going
to be hearing a lot more about in the future" - Phil Harding (BBC
controller of editorial policy)
- Christian
Science Monitor 5/5/00: UK moving to open all (e-)mail
- NTK 5/5/00:
"...Nick Palmer MP, who claimed on Channel Four news
that plans were already far advanced for a law that would stop ILOVEYOU ever
happening again. Yes, it's that darn RIP bill, still struggling to find
supporters in the real world"
- Daily
Telegraph 4/5/00: Fool Britannia
- Daily Express
4/5/00: THE ESSEX GIRL E-MAIL TRAP
- Daily Express
4/5/00: Where's the sense in Big Brother snooping on our e-mail?- "It sounds like the kind of thing George Orwell
might have written in 1984, except that it's no longer science fiction.....
MI5 is building a £25million surveillance centre so that it can spy on
e-mail and Internet traffic."
- The Register
4/5/00: "RIP - Lib Dems wade into cyber rights debate"
- Silicon.com
4/5/00: 'Snooping Bill' will not deter criminals, say experts
- Computing 4/5/00: Critics launch fresh attack on Net bill
- "Foreign companies will look at the letter of
the law, and say the UK is a dodgy place to do business because of the
unknown liabilities. They will go somewhere else." - Chris Sundt, EURIM
- Guardian
3/5/00: Spider in the web
- Guardian
3/5/00: Francis Wheen: MI5's e-mail snoops - "Jack
Straw has reversed the usual burden of guilt: all encrypted files on your
computer are presumed to be incriminating unless you can prove otherwise.
Oh, and if you make any public complaint about your treatment, another five
years will be added to the sentence. Only a home secretary as ingenious as
Straw could invent a new crime of forgetting one's password..."
- BBC Radio 2 'Johnnie Walker' 3/5/00 17:15 - RIP interview with Caspar
Bowden.
- Financial
Times 3/5/00: LETTERS: Foreign investors will
be scared off (if
FT link expired search
here)
- ABCnews
2/5/00: Britain to Build E-Mail Surveillance System
- “I think that in the balance between privacy and
fighting drugs, that fighting drugs is more important than privacy”- Tam
Dalyell MP
- Telepolis
2/5/00: Tony Geraghty - Irish War: British Disease
- Financial
Times 2/5/00: State surveillance plans are 'worrying leap in dark' -
"Government plans to intercept internet messages and
e-mails are heading towards a 'big brother' regime matched only by
Russia..." (if
FT link expired search
here)
- ZDNet 2/5/00:
MI5 to build new email and surfing surveillance
centre
- British Forces Broadcasting Service 2/5/00 11:15 - RIP interview with
Caspar Bowden
Real
Audio http://www.fipr.org/rip/CB_on_BFBS_2.5.2000.rm
- E-Commerce
Times 1/5/00: British Plans for E-Mail Snoop Center Revealed
- Austrian Broadcasting Corporation FM4 2/5/00 11:50 - RIP interview with Caspar
Bowden.
- BBC Radio 5 Live 1/5/00 12:40 - RIP interview with Caspar Bowden
Real
Audio http://www.fipr.org/rip/CB_on_R5_1.5.2000.rm
- CNN.com
1/5/00: U.K. plan to open Internet spy center draws criticism
- ITN 1/5/00:
MI5 to spy on email
- BBC Online
1/5/00: Spy centre to spread its web
- Independent
1/5/00: Watchdog slams Net snooping
(sic)
- Macworld
1/5/00: Beware Big Browser
- PA News
1/5/00: Watchdog highlights internet security fears
- Slashdot
30/04/00: UK Building Eavesdropping infrastructure
- Yahoo 30/4/00: MI5 plans to build Internet surveillance
centre
- PA News
30/4/00: Spy centre to target hi-tech crime
- BBC Online
30/4/00: Computer cloaks and digital daggers
- Sunday Times
30/4/00: MI5 builds new centre to read e-mails on the net
- "The arrival of this spy centre
means that Big Brother is finally here" - Norman Baker MP
- Scotsman
28/4/00: WHEN RIP WILL NOT MEAN REST IN PEACE
- NTK 28/4/00: ...civil rights lunatics opposed to RIP Bill...include the Data
Protection Commissioner, ISPA/LINX, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition...
- Silicon.com
27/4/00: ...furore over the UK's RIP Bill still growing......what's the US
high-tech industry's perspective?
- Computer Weekly
27/4/00: Government told to pay set-up RIP Bill costs
- Computer Weekly
27/4/00: ISPs step up attack on RIP Bill
- BBC Radio 4 'You and Yours' 26/4/00: RIP discussion with e-Minister
Patricia Hewitt, Caspar Bowden, and Clive Feather 7m 43s
Real
Audio or Windows
Media
- VNUnet 26/4/00: Industry slams cost of UK snooping
bill
- ZDNet News
26/4/00: Wiretapping may cost ISPs £17m says new report
- Silicon.com
26/4/00: Snooping Bill report attacks 'one size fits all' policy
- KableNet
25/4/00: RIP Bill to cost ISPs more than £30m
- The Register
25/4/00: RIP Bill - ISP costs mount up
- Financial
Times 25/4/00: Whitehall 'should pay to set up e-mail intercept' (if
FT link expired search
here)
- The Register
19/4/00: RIP: Tories attack from the Right
- Observer
16/4/00: Jack Straw wants the keys to your office. Don't let him in ...
- "The RIP Bill is such a crazed piece of legislation
that one wonders if the Government hasn't taken leave of its senses. Bemused
MPs say they don't understand this encryption stuff and hide behind the
assumption that the Home Office must know what it's doing. Big mistake."
- Silicon.com
14/4/00: Data protection watchdog slams Snooping Bill
- Daily
Telegraph 13/4/00: DIALOGUE BOX: What the Bill actually
says...
- Network News 12/4/00: Bowden puts paid to the RIP Bill
- Silicon.com
11/4/00: Analysis of Survey: RIP and you
- Telepolis
11/4/00: Echelon in Holland
- Times
11/4/00: RIP privacy?
- Silicon.com
10/4/00: 'Snooping Bill' slammed by Silicon.com viewers
- Herald
7/4/00: Part-time sheriffs to be introduced
- Times
7/4/00: Take a stand on freedom
- Irish Times 7/4/00: E-Commerce Bill aims to enhance Ireland's
Position
- Daily
Telegraph 6/4/00: Raising the stakes
- KableNet
6/4/00: INSIGHT - RIP it up and start again
"Conceivably the RIP bill makes sense for a country
putting itself on an infowar footing. Conceivably, it makes sense for a
law-enforcement community which believes it will know, because of extensive
covert intrusive surveillance, exactly who is doing what and who the major
criminals are.
Under RIP, it can then demand keys from people it already knows to be
criminals, and incriminate them with their own evidence. This leaves the
state's own investigative methods in the dark. While this conforms to the
intelligence doctrine of protecting methods at all costs, it implies
developing the capability to put anyone under such close surveillance that
the government will indeed know when you are guilty. Perhaps this explains
how the Home Office can be so confident that the innocent will not suffer.
But if we are moving towards a maximum surveillance society we will need
much better safeguards than offered by RIP, which seems to assume infallible
policing perpetually free of abuse or corruption"
- Network News 5/4/00: The politics of crypto access
- Daily
Express 5/4/00: Internet prowlers using a secret code
- Independent
2/4/00: E-mails that could return to haunt you
- IMIS Journal
April: Security Column (Kevin Townsend)
- BBC Online
31/3/00: Website campaign to derail legislation
- Schnews 31/3/00:
WAKE UP! WAKE UP! YER PRIVATES ARE UNDER ATTACK!
- Guardian
30/3/00: Three exchanges of letters between FIPR and Charles
Clarke MP
"How do you demonstrate that you've lost or forgotten
a key? You explain what has happened and the court will decide whether, on
balance, you're telling the truth." - Charles Clarke MP, Minister of
State at the Home Office.
"You assume everyone prosecuted will be a villain,
refuse to say how they can prove they are not guilty, and then assure us
that the innocent will not suffer! That's not the job of a politician. We
have a judiciary to sort out the innocent from the guilty, on the basis of
evidence.The trouble with your 'statutory defence' is that there
is no evidence when someone forgets something, so criminals with a lot to
hide will always plead a bad memory." - FIPR
- Computing 30/3/00: New law opens up private data to
MI5
- Silicon.com
30/3/00: Government accused of 'hopelessly underestimating' RIP costs
- Computer Weekly
30/3/00: FEI warns Government RIP faces huge hurdles
- Open
Letter 29/3/00: from Oliver Heald MP, Opposition spokesman on RIP
- Network News 29/3/00: Bill imperils cheap net access
- Ananova
27/3/00:
Minister defends web surveillance bill
- Guardian
27/3/00: MI5 bugging exempt from privacy act
- Sunday People
26/3/00: FORGET YOUR PASSWORD... END UP IN JAIL - "BIG
Brother wants to know your computer password - and he'll throw you in jail
if you don't tell him. Home Secretary Jack Straw aims to make it a criminal
offence to refuse to tell police or secret services the way into your
personal computer. And you could go down for two years, even if you've only
forgotten the vital word."
- Observer
26/3/00: It's RIP basic human rights
as 'worst UK legislation ever' looms
"Ah, that magic phrase, 'balance of probabilities'.
And how, pray, is that to be assessed? By the use of lie-detectors in
British courts? Clarke was repeatedly pressed on this at the conference, but
declined to be drawn. Instead he intoned the 'balance of probabilities'
mantra like a speak-your- weight machine on valium"
"A chap who is responsible for the security and
integrity of the networks of several large banks and financial institutions...
can be required to disclose those keys to a duly authorised goon - but he is
also legally forbidden to reveal to his clients that their secrecy has
thereby been compromised. As he spoke, you could see Clarke opening and
shutting his mouth like a stunned carp. The only sound to be heard was the
noise of online banks stampeding to leave the country."
- Irish Times
25/3/00: British bill may 'drive' e-commerce to Republic
- BBC Radio 4 'PM' 24/3/00: Branwen Jeffreys reports on RIP 5m 13s
Real
Audio or Windows
Media
- Financial
Times 24/3/00:Legal fears over e-mail tapping (if
FT link expired search
here)
- NTK 24/3/00: Minister in charge of Not Being Scared by The Crypto Freaks
- KableNET.com
24/3/00: E-bugging bill gets a slating
- VNUNet 24/3/00: Snooping powers could harm cheap net
access
- The Register
23/3/00: RIP: even Big Brother is confused
- Wired.com
23/3/00: Ripping into U.K. Privacy Bill
- ComputerWeekly
23/3/00: Banks snub bill to spy on IT data
- VNUNet 23/3/00: UK government answers snooping bill
critics
- Silicon.com
23/3/00: Internet 'Snooping Bill' fails human rights audit
- ZDNet News 22/3/00:
RIP Bill comes under fresh attack
- VNUNet 22/3/00: Industry tackles UK government over snooping
bill
- Network News 22/3/00: Industry insiders challenge RIP Bill
- Register
21/3/00: "MPs get 1000 anti-RIP faxes"
- Financial Times 21/3/00: Letter from Charles Clarke MP (if FT
link expired search
here)
- ZDNet 21/3/00:
RIP bill gets buried under fax mountain
- Communications
Week International 20/3/00: ISPs condemn expensive 'spy tax' proposal
- NTK 17/3/00: RIP Bill and
external communications, Freedom servers
- Computer
Weekly 16/3/00: Why the RIP Bill should R.I.P.
- Computer
Weekly 16/3/00: City banks urged to air grievances over Bill
- Computer
Weekly 16/3/00: WAKE UP CALL: the RIP Bill, what is it ?
- Business & Technology (March): Big Brother demands keys to e-mail
doors (177kB .jpg)
- Daily
Telegraph 16/3/00: Regulation Bill carries 'tipping off' offence
- Guardian
15/3/00: Letter from Caspar Bowden in reply to Charles Clarke MP
- Register 14/3/00:
What the hell is... the UK's RIP Bill
- Financial Times 14/3/00: LETTERS -Threat to internet ambitions, Tom
Wills-Sandford,
FEI (if FT
link expired search
here)
- Independent
14/3/00: Investigatory Powers Bill is `Big Brother
charter', warn objectors
- The Register
13/3/00: Big Brother Bill faces Select Committee storm
- Open Letter 13/3/00 from Charles Clarke MP and reply
thread on ukcrypto
mailing list
- Observer
12/3/00: Encryption bill has to be last straw
- Guardian
10/3/00: Letter from Charles Clarke MP
- Computer User
9/3/00: E-Mail Tapping Bill Hits Problems
- Daily
Telegraph 9/3/00: LEADER:...@intrusion-newlab.com
- "..there is absolutely no reason to believe the
new powers would be effective. Why on earth would terrorists or paedophiles
obey the new law and meekly surrender their encryption key when
challenged?"
- Guardian
8/3/00: LETTER from John Carr - Your leader (March
7) ... was wrong on one important count: there is no presumption of guilt
- BBC Online
8/3/00: Big Brother delves into your inbox
- ComputerUser
8/3/00: Opposition Against Encryption Bill
- Newsbytes
7/3/00: Opposition Growing Against UK's Encryption Bill
- Financial
Times 7/3/00: LEADER: Spies in the web - "Yesterday Jack Straw introduced a bill in Britain's House of
(Commons that would give the authorities more intrusive powers than in any
other western democracy....a presumption of guilt if anyone failed to give
up an encryption key when legitimately asked, potentially give the
authorities enormous additional powers." (if FT
link expired search
here)
- Guardian
7/3/00: LEADER: RIP for basic liberties
- "If you encrypt data on your home computer
and forget the key ... you are presumed guilty until proved innocent. Straw
says that courts will easily distinguish between genuine memory lapses and
criminals withholding information - but why should there be a presumption of
guilt in the first place?"
- BBC
Online 7/3/00: Computer crime plans attacked
- Times
7/3/00: How secure is your e-mail?
- Times: Changing world of the snoopers, March 7,
00.
- Wired.com
7/3/00: U.K. Crypto Law a Key Issue
- vnunet.com 7/3/00: UK
email interception bill stumbles
- The Register
6/3/00: Opposition mounts against UK's Big Brother Bill
- Financial Times 6/3/00: Bill could affect cost of accessing the internet
(if FT link expired search
here)
- Radio 4 'Today' 6/3/00: interview with Caspar Bowden
Real
Audio or Windows
Media
- Sunday Times
5/3/00:Fighting for online privacy
- Irish Times: UK RIP Bill Is Killer Blow To E-Commerce, March 5,
00.
- NTK 3/3/00:
RIPping yarns
- Federation
of Small Business Policy Brief (March 00) on RIP: "..threatens
to deter businesses from using the internet due to its regulatory
impact"
- Guardian
Online 1/3/00: Government surveillance bill arouses alarm
- ZDNetUK: Government Snooping will cost taxpayers millions, March 1,
00.
- IEEE Internet Computing March/April 00: British Encryption and
Surveillance Bill Raises Concerns
- Network News 28/2/00:
Encryption at the mercy of the law
- BBC World Service radio
Insight (26/2/00)
(13m 53s STREAMING) Joanne Episcopo examines the debate on the individual's right to privacy in the light of a new parliamentary bill in Britain that increases the powers of surveillance by the intelligence
services. Requires Real Audio.
- BBC Radio 5 Live 26/2/00: Interview with Nicholas Bohm
Real
Audio or Windows
Media
- Daily
Telegraph 24/2/00: Bill revives attack on privacy
- Computer Weekly
24/2/00: LEADER: Folly of draconian law on decryption
- "Even more worrying, for the average IT
director, is the prospect of being embroiled in a three-way fight between a
defendant, the British government and the European Court of Human
Rights"
- Daily Express
23/2/00: How US spies opened Windows on the world
- Irish
Times 18/2/00:UK RIP BILL IS KILLER BLOW TO E-COMMERCE
- Wired: Irish, UK Crypto Regs Far Apart, February 16,
00.
- ZDNetUK 14/2/00:
Jane Wakefield: Bullies, teenagers and Net giants
- Guardian 11/2/00:Leader: All eyes and
ears
- The Register
11/2/00: "UK gov't reveals Big Brother bill"
- Financial Times 11/2/00: BIG BROTHER: Government unveils e-mail surveillance law
- "Britain had become 'the only country in the world to publish a law
which could imprison users of encryption technology for forgetting or losing
their keys'" (if FT link expired search
here)
- Guardian
11/2/00: Ministers seek wide bugging powers
- TechWeb 10/2/00:
E-Spying Bill Called 'Escrow By Intimidation'
- ZDNet UK 10/2/00:
New surveillance bill comes under
fire
- BBC
Online 10/2/00: Surveillance bill under fire
- Computer Weekly
27/1/00: Peter Sommer - Investigating cyberspace
"NCIS can claim to be good at research, co-ordinating
with other police forces, industry and overseas law enforcement agencies,
but it is not an operational organisation....also a prime candidate to 'own' the
new encryption-related Government Technical Assistance Centre (GTAC) with
set-up funds of £25m...Whitehall rumours suggest that the centre may take
advantage of the offer of secure accommodation, not at NCIS but at Thames
House, headquarters of MI5. In any event, expertise and resources would
inevitably have to come from Cheltenham."
- Times
25/1/00: John Wadham - When is a human right not a human right?
- ZDNet
17/1/00: IT Week: Decryption centre mooted
- Financial Times 11/1/00: LAW: Ministers rush through e-mail powers (if FT
link expired search
here)
- Financial Times 21/12/99: Caspar Bowden (personal view): Decrypt with care
"(the) interception of communications commissioner, makes spot-checks on interception paperwork, but has no technical staff and depends on the police or spy agencies to tell him what is happening.
The efficacy of current safeguards is already dubious, and almost certainly insufficient to cope with the bewildering complexities of internet surveillance.
Powerful new techniques will be used to analyse patterns in web sites
visited and e-mail contacts, and flag suspicious associations in traffic logs that record the activity of the innocent and guilty alike...Modernising
the authorisation of surveillance must be accompanied by effective technical
and legal safeguards."
20/4/00
