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Council snoopers to get new powers to seize phone and email records - with taxpayers footing the £50m bill
Last updated at 15:17pm on 13.08.08
Tory concerns: Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve
Council snoopers will be given even greater powers to pry into our phone, email and internet records - landing the taxpayer with a bill of almost £50million.
Town halls, along with the police, security services, health authorities and other public bodies, will have access to ' communication' records of anyone suspected of involvement in even the most minor crime.
The powers, which stem from an EU directive supposedly designed to catch terrorists, will even allow police to track down those who have told friends they are planning to harm themselves.
But it will cost the taxpayer £46.58million over eight years to compensate mobile phone companies and internet firms for storing and providing the data.
Critics said the measure took Britain a step closer to becoming a surveillance state.
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'Yet again the Government have proved themselves unable to resist the temptation to take a power quite properly designed to combat terrorism to snoop on the lives of ordinary people in everyday circumstances.
'It is typical of this Government that they also intend to make the taxpayer pay extra for the privilege.'
The controversy centres on an EU directive passed in the aftermath of the July 7 terror attacks, in London, in 2005.
Britain said it was crucial for terrorism investigations that police and security services could access times, dates and recipients of a suspect's landline, mobile phone, email and internet communications.
Young woman on the telephone. Model Released VARIOUS PHONE TELEPHONE TECHNOLOGY COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATIONS EMERGENCY SUPPORT ASSISTANCE HOLDING HANDSET RECEIVER LANDLINE
A deadline was set for implementing the powers by March 2009. And yesterday the Home Office published proposals for how this will be done.
It is intending to give public bodies covered by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 - including local councils - the power to access communications data.
The rules will not be limited to detecting terrorism and serious crime - they will be applied to any offence.
Town halls can already request some of the data, and have used it to try to trace minor offenders.
But these rules will make it compulsory for phone and internet companies to hand over personal information from the previous 12 months.
At the moment, arrangements are largely voluntary. Public bodies will not be able to read emails nor listen to phone calls.
Examples given by the Government include someone who tells a friend by email, or via the internet, they are intending to harm themselves.
If contacted by the friend, the police would use their powers to locate a home address and visit the property.
Phil Booth, of the NO2ID campaign, said: 'No one would ever say that surveillance is not required for the most serious crimes and terrorism.
'But to extend such powers and make it so simple for any official to peek into your private affairs shows we are now entering into a database state.'
However, a Home Office spokesman defended the move. 'This data is a vital tool to investigations and intelligence gathering in support of national security and crime.'
It will 'enable UK law enforcement to benefit fully from historical communications data' and 'enhance our national security', he added.
Reader views (17)
Yet more of our privacy and freedoms are being eroded by the state under the guise of anti terrorism. We will all soon effectively be living in an island open prison, continually monitored and watched. Sadly there is not even a hint of concern from the electorate at large which makes it doubly depressing.
- Steve, Hereford
I am personally not bothered one jot about this particular bit of alarmist news twaddle,- I am however more concerned that Dominic Grieve facially resembles a spectacle wearing battery chicken,"what right has a battery chicken got to spread silly rumours"?
- Jacob, Canterbury England
What worries me most is that these council employees are just that - council employees. They are not part of the judiciary and are neither trained nor learned enough to have access to such sensitive data. Surely a magistrate would have to sign a warrant giving the right to obtain this information as anything else would be a form of trespass. Will council workers also be granted the right to open a persons mail? I personally see no difference between forms of mail except for the method of transmission.
- Jane Bewick, London
We have been a Communist State since Chairman Tone set up his first Politburo to govern rather than through cabinet.
But it is not as bad as it sounds. The Stasi recorded ever telephone call ever made in East Germany but the reality was that they never had the time or manpower to listen.
- Bj, London
Couldn't agree more with Neil Airstrip One. This is an outrageous and frightening development. The government blatantly believes that it can get away with pulling the fear-of-terror card anytime and infringe people's liberty to an extent that hasn't been seen before except in totalitarian regimes. Time has come to get organised and do something. If something like this was suggested in countries like Germany, people would be out in the streets, and it would most certainly spell the end of the government...
- Matt, London
Another victory for the IHNTHSIHNTF Brigade. (I have nothing to hide so I have nothing to fear) Come on Britain wake up you are sleep walking into a totalitarian state. Do you really want all those unelected jobsworths to run your lives and dictate how you must live?
- Ayliff A Mcnab, Orihuela Costa, Alicante, Spain
"A step towards a surveillance society"? If this does not define that term then what does? This is an outrageous infringement of our privacy. How on earth can they justify these powers for such petty reasons. The state has to be stopped or they will continue to take control of our entire lives.
- Mark, London, UK
Remember you're all terrorists now!
Any public servant who uses these terrorist laws for something trivial, such as an overfull dust-bin for example, ought to be locked up, as they're the real terrorists.
- Threaded, Roskilde, Denmark
Our freedoms, our precious liberties and the presumption of innocence have been thrown in the bin. Whilst this was happening, most people were demanding ever more "zero tolerance", tougher sentences etc etc, more cameras and so on. Now that even Eastenders-watchers can see what a prison has been built around us, it is apparent that the only way out of this prison is to smash down the walls. I would like to suggest civil disobedience, the destruction of surveillance cameras and peaceful non-cooperation with the authorities; and the withdrawal of our taxes ie non-payment. If enough of us disrupt the system then we can destroy it and reclaim our birthright: the right to be ignored.
- Neil, london uk, Airstrip ONE .
You could always use one of the products on the market to allow anonymous internet browsing, emails could be sent using pgp encryption and using an internet phone with encryption would give you anonymity should you require it, meaning that should you want to you can hide from the powers that be.
- Anne Onnymouse, London
This is an absolutely frightening attack on our personal privacy.
- Teddy, Islington, London
Big Brother has arrived. We are watched on the street and now in out homes. A step to far, time to say farewell to this country.
- Ian Makin, Twickenham
There goes another few thousand Labour votes. But have they thought this through? Why would anyone involved in terrorism have an E-mail account based in the UK? So easy to have a free email account in so many other countries. How are they going to force service providers outside of the UK to give up these details? And mobile phones: Pay As You Go is pretty well unrelated to a name or address if you want it to be.
Also anyone seriously into terrorism would hardly now risk using such detectable modes of communication...not how we have just told him we are going to monitor them.
- Naomi Sajeri, Manchester
Have any of these snoopers actually been elected to the office of timewasters, or are they self-appointed? If so, then let them pay their own wages, and watch them vanish in the breeze. And the sooner the better.
- Lezl, London
Once again the dead hand of the European Union plays a key role in the step towards the authoritarian state, centralised on Brussels. It's very easy for new rules to just 'appear' as by magic through the EU, rather than to have to go through proper parliamentary and press scrutiny...why else does one imagine that politicians of all parties support the control by the EU of our law making structures. It's all very well for Tories to tut tut, but what will THEY do in power? - they have to obey EU Directives too. Directives from the EU are Orders, not something you can buy into.
- Damian Hockney, London, UK
This government is sick. Give me Communism I will probably be safer.
- Mr S.Port, London
No No No! The only people that should be allowed access to this information are the legitimate forces of law and order i.e the Police, HMRC and the security service and only under the supervision of the judiciary with a proper audit trail.
There is absolutely no reason for any other agency to have access to this information; all of their reasons for justifying such access can be addressed via the above.
This is precisely the kind of instrument of state control that totalitarian regimes are so fond of. That it comes from the EUromonster is of little surprise to anyone who has seen through the thin veneer of democracy that surrounds this pernicious socialist juggernaut.
- Keith Lonsdale, Doncaster
