The Coalition Agreement that formed the current government clearly stated that IMP-style mass surveillance of the British public was unacceptable, but now the old policy seems to have risen from the grave as the innocuously-named Communications Capabilities Development Programme.
UPDATE: UK mass surveillance bill, the return of a bad idea (Index on Censorship, 15 June 2012)
(Privacy International/IFEX) – 3 April 2012 – The following is a Privacy International blog post:
For the past 18 months, I’ve been investigating the export of surveillance technologies from Western countries to despotic regimes, but I never thought I’d see a democratic government proposing to install the kind of mass surveillance system favoured by Al-Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi. Yet the Home Office’s latest plans would allow the authorities unprecedented levels of access to the entire population’s phone records, emails, browsing history and activity on social networking sites, entirely unfettered by the courts. This is a system that has no place in a country that would call itself free and democratic.
MORE INFORMATION:
Open letter to MPs on Internet surveillance (RSF, 11 May 2012)
