Emma Carr is Deputy Director of Big Brother Watch. Follow Emma on Twitter.
Under the Coalition we have seen some of the most tech-friendly policies in decades. However, the Communications Data Bill poses a
substantial threat to the internet and subsequently, Britain’s social and
economic future. With concerns about its economic effect on business, warnings
from within Number 10, a haphazard consultation process and failures to
scrutinise existing powers, it’s time for this bill to be ditched - as a group of leading academic experts urged
yesterday.
The basic arguments behind the bill are now beginning to
collapse. We were told it was essential to catch criminals using internet
telephone services; it then emerged that British police currently receive more
data from Skype than any other country in the world. More than the U.S, more
than double Germany. This mirrors what we already knew about Google and Twitter
– companies do cooperate with the police. And of course, since when have laws
from Britain applied to companies based in the U.S?
Whether or not it is the same bill that Jacqui Smith proposed in
2008 (when she ruled out a central database), the wider impact could be
catastrophic. The Coalition
for a Digital Economy warned that it would make Britain a much less
attractive place to start and grow a business, for fear of a Whitehall official
one day arriving and saying you had to change the way your business works to
provide the data the Home Office wants.
As well as a badly managed
consultation process, there has been little in-depth scrutiny of existing
legislation and powers. Research
published by Big Brother Watch has shown how
communications data is used across police forces, and makes clear that there are
significant inconsistencies in the way that communications data is being treated. Furthermore,
it emphasises how it is almost impossible to form a measured view of how the
current system is operating, given the huge discrepancies in the way forces are
recording how they use Communications Data.