Study says British surveillance laws need streamlining

UK surveillance laws need streamlining according to new study

A new report issued on Thursday claims that new laws are needed to simplify the investigative powers of British spying and intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, reports Vice News.

“Britain’s laws governing the intelligence agencies and mass surveillance require a total overhaul to make them more transparent, comprehensible and up to date, parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has said in a landmark report prompted by the revelations of Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor,” reported by The Guardian.

When asked whether Snowden, whose leak about American security services triggered the report Hazel Blears, a leading labour member on the ISC said: “The committee would take the view that stealing classified information and releasing it across the world is not helpful. But this report is not about Edward Snowden.”

The results of the 149-page study are controversial. The investigation was released by the ISC, which supported the right of intelligence agencies to continue intercepting data such emails and monitor communications between lawyers and clients, they said.

The report found: “The legal framework has developed piecemeal and is unnecessarily complicated. We have serious concerns about the resulting lack of transparency, which is not in the public interest. The lack of clarity in existing laws and the lack of transparent policies beneath them has not only fuelled suspicions and allegations but has also meant the agencies could be open to challenge for failing to meet their human rights obligations.”

The report noted also that “lawful bulk interception of data and interception of legally privileged material must be clearly enshrined within a single parliamentary act.”

Finding that existing laws have not been broken, the committee said in a statement that UK intelligence agencies "do not seek to circumvent" the rules.

The main issue centers on current legislation being “unnecessarily complicated.”  One way to resolve it would be to create a single act of parliament.

The report is the result of an 18-month inquiry examining the legal framework under which Britain’s intelligence agencies operate.

However, current legislation is "unnecessarily complicated," and should be replaced by a single act of parliament, concluded the committee's 149-page report — the product of an 18-month inquiry into the legal framework governing the powers of Britain's intelligence agencies.

 “While ‘sympathetic’ to the argument that certain professions require privacy to carry out their jobs, Britain's intelligence agencies must have the ability to intercept such communications,” the report noted.

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 The committee suggested, however, that "specific professions" may justify "heightened protection" and "statutory protection should be considered."

Hazel Blears, said: “What we’ve found is that the way in which the agencies use the capabilities they have is authorised, lawful, necessary and proportionate.“

But what we’ve also found is there is a degree of confusion and lack of transparency about the way in which this is authorised in our legal system. It is that lack of transparency that leads to people reaching the conclusion that there is blanket surveillance, indiscriminate surveillance.”

Not unlike recent controversial revelations by Edward Snowden about surveillance and collection of data about Americans, one of the single most important revelations is that British intelligence agencies have had the capability to trawl through personal records and examine “bulk personal datasets” without any statutory oversight.

David Cameron, the UK prime minister, responded immediately with a statement saying the intelligence services commissioner, Sir Mark Waller, would be given “statutory powers of oversight of use of bulk personal datasets.”

Not all of the report, however, was available for public review, as portions of it were censored, according to the Guardian.  Datasets containing personal information about British citizens vary in size from a few hundred to millions of records.  And astonishingly, there is no legalities governing constraint on the storage, restrain, retention, sharing or destruction. Surveillance agencies do not require ministerial authorisation to access the information.

 “The lack of clarity in existing laws and the lack of transparent policies beneath them has not only fuelled suspicions and allegations but has also meant the agencies could be open to challenge for failing to meet their human rights obligations,” the report said.

The ISC calls this report a landmark for ‘openness and transparency’ – but how do we trust agencies who have acted unlawfully, hacked the world’s largest sim card manufacturer and developed technologies capable of collecting our login details and passwords, manipulating our mobile devices and hacking our computers and webcams?

“No doubt it would be simpler if we went along with the spies’ motto of ‘no scrutiny for us, no privacy for you’ – but what an appalling deal for the British public.”

Resources

https://news.vice.com/article/uk-needs-complete-revamp-of-surveillance-laws-official-report-finds

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/12/uk-surveillance-laws-need-total-overhaul-says-landmark-report-edward-snowden