|
Many of the people responsible for Blunkett's climb down over the proposals were highly proficient PC users with a thorough knowledge of online communications tools according to FaxYourMP, a web-based service that allows people to send direct messages to their MPs.
The service reported it had relayed 1,789 faxes since last Monday, estimating that around 1,600 of those were related to the s22 RIP Order. The figure means that on average, every MP in Parliament received at least two messages expressing concerns over the proposed measures to extend access to private e-mails, mobile calls and web logs to local authorities.
A spokesman for FaxYourMP said: "We've received mail from constituents saying that their Member of Parliament called them directly to discuss the issue. We've had MPs mail us with advice. We've had TV companies and newspapers contact us after they'd been hassled by their readers and viewers. We've even had MPs writing letters to constituents explaining, mournfully, that there was nothing they could do and then had their own voters explain to them how to attend Standing Committee debates and who to get in contact with to help fight this order."
Making the announcement to hold back further movement over the legislation, Mr Blunkett said: "Whilst we want to provide greater security, clarity and regulation to activities that already go on, our plans have been understood as having the opposite effect and I have therefore decided that it makes sense to withdraw the current proposals to allow calmer and lengthy public discussion before we bring forward new plans in this field. The time has come for a much broader public debate about how we effectively regulate modern communications and strike the balance between the privacy of the individual and the need to ensure our laws and society are upheld."
Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, said: "This is a bad policy, it is a wrong policy and if it is the start of a policy being dumped then I am very glad."
A spokesman for STAND, a campaigning website for digital freedom in the UK, added: "We're regularly taken aback by how positively MPs, editors, civil servants and peers of the realm respond to a personal contact by intelligent and reasonable citizens. It's almost as if they're flattered by the attention. It's almost as if they're touched anyone even cares about what they do.
"At the beginning of this campaign many people, including professional lobbyists, told us it was futile to encourage others to make a fuss, that it was too late; that delegated legislation would be railroaded through; that no-one cared about privacy issues and that U-turns never happen. Clearly this shows this is not always the case."
Twenty-four Government bodies were listed in the Order, however, the total number of public authorities that would have been allowed to issue self-authorising notices (s22s) to access users' private communications would have totalled 1,039 had the changed to the Act been accepted.
The communications data they would have been able to access includes: user's name and address, service usage details, details of who you have been calling, details of who has called, mobile phone location info, source and destination of e-mail and usage of web sites (but not the pages within the sites themselves).
The current bodies allowed to serve RIP s22 notices are: the Police (all the forces, MOD police, NCS, NCIS) Secret Intelligence Agencies (MI5, MI6, GCHQ), Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue.
Other controversial legislation contained within the RIP Act's draft Code of Practices includes: the EU's Copyright Directive and Retention orders and laws against reverse-engineering and software patents.
Ian Brown, Director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), told Shout99.com: "It's hard to tell exactly what the Government is doing at the moment, but it does look like they're going to quietly leave this alone for a while until the mass concern expressed by the public dies down a little. Ideally, the Government would have dropped these amendments altogether, however, we're pleased in the short-term because it has been forced to rethink its attitudes and the public has shown it is very much awake to threats to its privacy."
A report published in January by the Surveillance Commissioner, Sir Andrew Leggatt, suggests the Government already has enough problems coping with the large amount of communications monitoring it currently undertakes.
An extract from Sir Leggatt's report said: 'There are about 950 public authorities (including local authorities and health trusts) which are entitled to conduct covert surveillance under the provisions of the 2000 Act, and the performance of which I must keep under review. I clearly cannot carry out meaningful oversight of so many bodies without assistance.'
The current number staff at the Surveillance Commissioner's office is 22.
The Commissioner continued: "The full extent of the surveillance work carried out by these other public authorities cannot be known without more detailed information than is so far available."
--
Richard Powell, © Shout99.com 2002
|
