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The new law enables UK security services to demand records of Internet traffic and view the content of encrypted messages. Due to take effect in October the law will require British Internet service providers to set up secure channels to a new surveillance centre, named the Government Technical Assistance Centre, so they can transmit information about Internet traffic.
A number of amendments to the original bill were aimed at allaying fears about
privacy and cost. These included a Government financial contribution to ISPs to assist with the installation of the additional technology required to set up the secure channels and safeguards to ensure that security services cannot view logs of Web sites visited or the content of individual messages without a warrant.
Civil libertarians are worried that access to the information is a dangerous erosion of privacy and the right to freedom of expression. The UK government, on the other hand, says the law is needed to crack down on cybercrime.
In a separate development US Attorney General Janet Reno has announced a
process to review Carnivore, the new FBI Internet-wiretap system that has
raised privacy concerns.
Amid concerns that the system allows for widespread surveillance of e-mails,
Reno said that a group of academic experts will conduct a detailed review
of the computer program's source code. "Those experts will report their
findings to a panel of interested parties, people from the telecommunications and computer industries, as well as privacy experts," Reno told her weekly Justice Department news briefing.
"I'm very anxious to get this review under way. The FBI is working on it,
and representatives of the bureau are meeting with privacy advocates and
representatives of the telecommunications and computer industry to pursue it and to develop a protocol for the review," she said.
Carnivore will allow the FBI to intercept the e-mails of a criminal suspect much in the same way as they can already tap their phones. The FBI claims that it will only use the system for specific suspects following court
orders.
Privacy campaigners, however, claim that the system will be used to
cast a much wider net and intercept the e-mails of people without the
permission of the courts. The examination of the source code by the panel of experts is aimed at assessing the potential of the system to do this.
These are just the latest developments in a long-running Internet spying
war. Echelon, the Cold War system for intercepting satellite communications,
has long been used for snooping on Internet and data communications while
Enfopol 98, an Enfopol 98, the controversial European Union plan to require ISPs to build "interception interfaces" inside their premises for the purposes of instant police surveillance is still under consideration.
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