Pros And Cons Of The Investigatory Powers Bill

If you haven’t heard of the Investigatory Powers Bill (IP Bill), more commonly known as the “snooper’s charter”, don’t fret - you are not alone! According to a recent poll conducted by market research firm ComRes for the privacy campaign group Liberty, 72 per cent of British people have never even heard of the Investigatory Powers Bill or don’t know anything about it. Only 2 per cent of British adults say they have heard of and know a lot about it, and 30 per cent of British adults surveyed say that it is never acceptable for the government to access and monitor records.

This gives great cause for concern because if enacted into law, the snooper’s charter would be a serious blow for British citizens’ right to privacy, and also future generations.

What is the snooper’s charter?

The snooper’s charter will give extensive, indiscriminate surveillance powers to law enforcement and security agencies. Under the snooper’s charter, ISPs and telecoms companies will be required to store, for a year, every British person's communications data including their texts, the websites they have visited, emails, which social media accounts they own, the apps they use, emails, and call records - all analysed without the need for a warrant, according to the Open Rights Group campaign “Snooper’s Charter”.

Director of policy for Liberty Bella Sankey, said: “This bill would create a detailed profile on each of us which could be made available to hundreds of organisations to speculatively trawl and analyse. It will all but end online privacy, put our personal security at risk and swamp law enforcement with swathes of useless information.”

Meanwhile the Open Rights Group say that if the snooper’s charter is passed,“the police only need to get internal sign off to look at this data. Government departments, like the Department of Work and Pensions, can look at this data too”, but also HMRC, GCHQ, the NHS (National Health Service), and the Food Standards

However, the snooper’s charter, if passed, will go one step further to “enhance powers in one area - that of communications data retention”. This basically means bulk collection of people’s data including Internet Connection Records (ICRs) - logs of websites visited, but also prying into people’s online lives. According to the government, they say that ICRs are the same as an itemised phone bill, however, this rightly ruffled a number of feathers with people saying bulk collection of data should be targeted rather than indiscriminate.

Snooper’s charter can be fooled by using a VPN!

Interestingly, the snooper’s charter (at the time of writing), doesn’t mention the use of VPN (Virtual Private Network) which can help internet users around the world to keep snooping eyes off their online activity. Perhaps the UK government doesn’t understand the technology (this wouldn’t be the first time tech has baffled them), or perhaps it falls under the umbrella “telecommunications operator” as outlined in the Investigatory Powers Bill.

Independent UK broadband comparison website, Broadband Genie, recently conducted a survey which found that 40 per cent of those surveyed who don’t currently