It looks like UK Internet users are suffering a twin assault on their privacy, something enshrined in the core of human rights legislation, whats going on you ask ?
For answers to one threat we look to this excellent article by Alexander Hanf a former tracker operator and hollywood-hated "bad boy", for his long article, specifying the legal grounds for declaring the BT/Phorm testing and operating methods as illegal
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/15980#comment-476892Alex Hanff is a name that’ll be familiar to regular p2pnet readers.
He was targeted by Hollywood for special attention back in 2005, and more recently, criticised the BBC for locking up content on its iPlayer even though Britons have to pay for TV licences.
He’s also an expert on Phorm. Click here to see a BBC video of Hanff (right) discussing Phorm with its creator, Kent Ertugrul.
Now, “In 2008 BT PLC made public statements admitting to running covert trials of Deep Packet Inspection technologies for the purpose of behavioural profiling,” he says.
"The trials included more than one hundred thousand of their customers during 2006 and 2007. Key public authorities, privacy experts, the press and the public have voiced concerns over whether or not the trials were legal. The controversy rests in whether or not the trials constituted unlawful interception of communications as a result of not obtaining informed consent from relevant parties.”
Hanff has now published a paper analysing a wide range of legislation including but not limited to: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Fraud Act 2006, Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and Data Protection Act 1998 to investigate the requirements with regards to consent, the core issue of this debate.
“After careful analysis of relevant EU and UK laws, statutes and directives it can be interpreted that fundamental legal requirements were not met, making the covert trials illegal under criminal law and unlawful under common law,” he states
You can read his paper on the p2pnet.net site with multiple legal references noted in the discussions index.
If this sort of commercial privacy invasion wasn't bad enough it now looks like the government want to play the "big brother" role too and expose the entire contents of your whole online activity and confidential emails etc, open to its secret staff, who answer legally to no one.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1990999/Home-Office-plans-to-create-'Big-brother'-database-for-phones-calls,-emails-and-web-use.htmlThe Home Office will create a database to store the details of every phone call made, every email sent and every web page visited by British citizens in the previous year under plans currently under discussion, it has emerged.
The Government wants to create the system to fight terrorism and crime. The police and security services believe it will make it easier to access important data as communications become more complex.
The plans will raise concern from data protection and civil liberty campaigners and fuel objections to the perceived rise of a "Big Brother" state. There will be worries about the Home Office's ability to safeguard the data from loss or theft, after recent incidents such as when the child benefit information of every family in Britain with a child under 16 were mislaid.
There will also be doubts about its capacity to manage such a large volume of information. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated three billion emails are sent every day.
The plans are being considered for inclusion in the draft Communications Bill to be published later this year.
They are at an early stage and have yet to be passed to ministers.
This is a serious attack upon democratic rights of privacy in the UK and its time to wake up and call this assault what it is, the "theft of freedom".
It seems the real terrorists are those who attack our traditional rights with impunity and hide behind "we are taking your rights away for your own good " rhetoric, there is no reason to implement an abusive trawling scheme such as this one and as with any government plan despite a mixed history of abuse of power, we are told to trust blindly in those tasked to watch over our lives and trust them with our most confidential information, this begs the question, who watches the watchers ?
