UK Government Proposals Would Allow It to Mass Surveil ALL Users of an Internet Service Within Specific Timeframe

If you’re tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The UK government has presented draft amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) – otherwise known as “Snoopers Charter,” a highly controversial piece of legislation allowing for wide-scale spying by intelligence agencies. The plan now is to specify that the authorities have the right to carry out mass surveillance of an internet service within a specific timeframe – and do so “dragnet-style,” by spying on all users of that service during a given time. The first comparison that springs to mind is that this is a purely digital version of another very controversial mass surveillance practice known as “geofencing,” which involves obtaining data from service providers on all persons who happen to be within a physical perimeter. The amendments were introduced in the British parliament on November 8, and separate from the bill on amendments itself, the UK Home Office has released “explanatory notes” that are not in fact a part of the proposed legislation. The example they use is when “a public figure has been subject to sustained online threats and abuse via a number of internet facilities such as an overseas hosted email facility, social media platform or constituency website. In such circumstances investigators would wish to identify subjects accessing those internet resources at relevant specified times coincidental to the abuse occurring and threats having been made.” From this, citizens can learn that in case one user of a network is designated…UK Government Proposals Would Allow It to Mass Surveil ALL Users of an Internet Service Within Specific Timeframe