Extreme surveillance' becomes UK law with barely a whimper

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 12:51 PM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] 'Extreme surveillance' becomes UK law with barely a
whimper
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


'Extreme surveillance' becomes UK law with barely a whimper

Investigatory Powers Act legalises range of tools for shopping and hacking
by the security services

By Ewen MacKaskill

Nov 19 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-surveillance-becomes-uk-law-with-barely-a-whimper



A bill giving the UK intelligence agencies and police the most sweeping
surveillance powers in the western world has passed into law with barely a
whimper, meeting only token resistance over the past 12 months from inside
parliament and barely any from outside.

The Investigatory Powers Act, passed on Thursday, legalises a whole range
of tools for snooping and hacking by the security services unmatched by any
other country in western Europe or even the US.

The security agencies and police began the year braced for at least some
opposition, rehearsing arguments for the debate. In the end, faced with
public apathy and an opposition in disarray, the government did not have to
make a single substantial concession to the privacy lobby.

US whistleblower Edward Snowden
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/edward-snowden> tweeted: “The UK has
just legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western
democracy. It goes further than many autocracies.”

Snowden in 2013 revealed the scale of mass surveillance – or bulk data
collection as the security agencies prefer to describe it – by the US
National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ
<https://www.theguardian.com/uk/gchq>, which work in tandem.

But, against a backdrop of fears of Islamist attacks, the privacy lobby has
failed to make much headway. Even in Germany, with East Germany’s history
of mass surveillance by the Stasi and where Snowden’s revelations produced
the most outcry, the Bundestag recently passed legislation giving the
intelligence agencies more surveillance powers.

The US passed a modest bill last year curtailing bulk phone data collection
but the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election is
potentially a major reverse for privacy advocates. On the campaign trail,
Trump made comments that implied he would like to use the powers of the
surveillance agencies against political opponents.

[snip]



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