Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom
The use of electronic surveillance by the United Kingdom grew from the development of signal intelligence and pioneering code breaking during World War II.
[1] In the post-war period, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was formed and participated in programmes such as the Five Eyes collaboration of English-speaking nations.
In particular, access to the content of private messages (that is, interception of a communication such as an email or telephone call) must be authorised by a warrant signed by a Secretary of State.
[14][15][16] Other independent reports, including one by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, also came to this view although they found past shortcomings in oversight and disclosure, and said the legal framework should be simplified to improve transparency.
[17][18][19] However, notable civil liberties groups and broadsheet newspapers continue to express strong views to the contrary,[20] while UK and US intelligence agencies[21][22] and others[23] have criticised these viewpoints in turn.
The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 includes several provisions related to controlling or restricting the collection, storage, retention, and use of information in government databases.
[27][28][29] Privacy and civil liberties advocates such as Liberty and Privacy International, who brought a legal case against the government to force the judgement, continue to oppose to the temporary bulk collection of data, powers to access this and retain selected data, as well as intelligence sharing relationships; they intend to appeal the judgement to the European Court of Human Rights.
[35] The tribunal found that from its inception in 1998 until its public acknowledgement on 4 November 2015, this bulk collection was in breach of article 8 of the European convention on human rights.
The ECJ ruled that general and indiscriminate retention of emails and electronic communications by governments was illegal, opening the way to challenges against the UK's new Investigatory Powers Act (2016), which replaced DRIPA.
New oversight procedures would be introduced, including a requirement for a judge to review a warrant signed by a Minister for interception of communications, that is reading the content of messages.
The European Court of Justice found it violates two basic rights, respect for private life and protection of personal data.
[58][59] No additional powers were granted by the legislation, but it did make clear that the requirements also apply to foreign companies, based abroad, whose telephone and internet services are used in the UK.
In circumstances when the Home Secretary issues a warrant for intercepting the content of private messages, the Act clarifies the law with which internet services providers must comply.
As privacy is an essential pre-requisite to the exercise of individual freedom, its erosion weakens the constitutional foundations on which democracy and good governance have traditionally been based in this country.
[68] In 2004 the Information Commissioner, discussing the proposed British national identity database gave a warning of this, stating, "My anxiety is that we don't sleepwalk into a surveillance society.
As part of the new measures announced by the government in 2010, the national identity database, including ContactPoint (and the Citizen Information Project), was scrapped.
[64] In addition, the Draft Communications Data Bill, which would have extended powers, for example to include web browsing history, was abandoned by the government in 2013 after opposition from the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and his party, the Liberal Democrats.
[70] The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 includes several provisions related to controlling or restricting the collection, storage, retention, and use of information in government databases, specifically:[71] Part 2, Chapter 1 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 creates a new regulation for, and instructs the Secretary of State to prepare a code of practice regarding the use of closed-circuit television and automatic number plate recognition.
[78] RIPA imposes constraints to ensure the activities authorised meet the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), in particular that they are necessary and proportional.
[79] The use of the Telecommunications Act 1984 for communications data collection, and the lack of oversight of this capability, was highlighted in the April 2014 report of the Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons on Counter-terrorism.
[18] Section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 allows a Secretary of State to give providers of public electronic communications networks "directions of a general character… in the interests of national security", which may be protected from disclosure.
[83][84] A series of media reports in 2013 revealed bulk collection and surveillance capabilities involving GCHQ in the United Kingdom such as Tempora and its component programmes Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation.
During World War II, staff including Alan Turing worked on decoding the German Enigma machine,[87] and many other foreign systems.
[90] A special report on Privacy and Security, published by the ISC in March 2015, found that although GCHQ collects and analyses data in bulk, it does not conduct mass surveillance.
Under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, legal provisions exist that control and restrict the collection, storage, retention, and use of information in government databases.
[95] Across the country efforts have been increasingly under way to track road vehicle movements, initially using a nationwide network of roadside cameras connected to automatic number plate recognition systems.
The database would retain record of names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat bookings, travel itineraries and credit card details, which would be kept for 'no more than 10 years'.
"[108] The vast majority of CCTV cameras are not operated by government bodies, but by private individuals or companies, especially to monitor the interiors of shops and businesses.
[109] An article published in CCTV Image magazine estimated the number of private and local government operated cameras in the United Kingdom was 1.85M in 2011.
[111] This figure does not include the smaller surveillance systems such as those that may be found in local corner shops and is therefore broadly in line with the Cheshire report.
