Form an orderly queue for snooping data

Today’s Daily Telegraph reports on the ‘rush’ from public bodies to gain access to the data collected under the Home Office’s Communications Data Bill.

According to information uncovered by Big Brother Watch, “Council staff, health and safety inspectors and even Royal Mail want to harness the Government’s proposed “Snoopers’ Charter” to monitor private emails, telephone records and internet use.”

As soon as the details of what websites we look at and who we communicate with online is stored, it’s a honey pot of information that every bureaucrat, hacker and rogue government is going to try and gain access to.

This is exactly what happened under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The public are told the powers are essential for catching terrorists and then they find out the Health and Safety Executive have them. The fact that these organisations have been invited to make a business case for access suggests that the Home Office is more concerned about the cost than the massive privacy implications this plan entails.

This creep is an inevitable consequence of introducing a surveillance law that would pay private companies to monitor how their each and every one of their customers use the internet and who they talk to. We can only hope that as the true scale of what is being proposed becomes public knowledge people will make clear that it is not a law a civil society should be considering.”

As Dominic Raab MP told the Telegraph, ‘This scheme is Orwellian. Intrusive surveillance powers should be limited to pursuing terrorists, paedophiles and villains – not enabling jobsworth inspectors at the Health and Safety Executive or council busybodies from snooping into the private lives of ordinary citizens.”

And he's a Tory ! My god, it must be bad. Of course it may just be that he makes embarressing emails and internet use.

More, plus the full list of agencies who want access, here:
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2013/04/form-an-orderly-queue-for-snooping-data.html