Today’s impressively short Queen’s Speech contained two nuggets of interest for Index readers. Firstly, there was the mention of intellectual propety:

A further Bill will make it easier for businesses to protect their intellectual property

The debate over copyright and free speech has been fraught, with widespread criticism of governmental attempts to create laws on copyright on the web. (Read Brian Pellot on World Intellectual Property Day here here and Joe McNamee’s “Getting Copyright Right” here.)

This is something the government will have to treat very carefully, and the consultation should be fascinating.

Further in, the speech addressed crime in cyberspace:

In relation to the problem of matching internet protocol addresses, my government will bring forward proposals to enable the protection of the public and the investigation of crime in cyberspace.

Here’s more detail from the background briefing:

The Government is committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public and ensure national security. These agencies use communications data – the who, when, where and how of a communication, but not its content – to investigate and prosecute serious crimes. Communications data helps to keep the public safe: it is used by the police to investigate crimes, bring offenders to justice and to save lives. This is not about indiscriminately accessing internet data of innocent members of the public.

As the way in which we communicate changes, the data needed by the police is no longer always available. While they can, where necessary and proportionate to do so as part of a specific criminal investigation, identify who has made a telephone call (or
sent an SMS text message), and when and where, they cannot always do the same for communications sent over the internet, such as email, internet telephony or instant messaging. This is because communications service providers do not retain
all the relevant data.

When communicating over the Internet, people are allocated an Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people. In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the
police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them.

The Government is looking at ways of addressing this issue with CSPs. It may involve legislation.

Eagle-eyed observers will note that this echoes what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told LBC listeners on 25 April, after announcing that the dreaded Communications Data Bill (aka the “Snooper’s Charter”) was to be dropped. Clegg suggested then that IP addresses could be assigned to each individual device.

As I wrote at the time, “New proposals for monitoring and surveillance will no doubt emerge, and will be subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as the previous attempts to establish a Snooper’s Charter.”

Well, here we are.

Padraig Reidy is senior writer for Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy

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Speaking on his regular “Call Clegg” slot on London’s LBC radio, Clegg told presenter Nick Ferrari that the government would not pass a law allowing authorities to monitor individuals’ web traffic, describing the idea as neither “workable” nor “proportionate”.

(Watch at 19 minutes)

Clegg went on to suggest that a “middle way” could be found, possibly including the assignment of an IP address to each web-enabled device, to allow police to “do their job”.

This would appear to be a victory for the many, including Index on Censorship, who expressed concerns over the sweeping powers proposed in the Communications Data Bill. In an August 2012 policy note, Index said:

Population-wide collection and filtering of communications data is neither necessary nor proportionate. Monitoring and surveillance of this kind impacts directly and in a chilling manner on freedom of expression, inhibiting and restricting individuals in how they receive, share and impart information and encouraging self-censorship.

So we will celebrate the apparent end of the Communications Data Bill in its current form. But it is clear from Clegg’s words, and those of his Conservative coalition partners including Home Secretary Theresa May, that this is not an issue that will be dropped.

New proposals for monitoring and surveillance will no doubt emerge, and will be subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as the previous attempts to establish a Snooper’s Charter.

Padraig Reidy is Senior Writer at Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy

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The £1.8 million plan — known as “the Snooper’s Charter” by opponents — would require that all telecommunications companies monitor the phone, e-mail, and web usage of citizens. Index has previously called the draft bill “unacceptable”, and said last year that “the decisions the UK Parliament takes on this bill will impact on human rights both in the UK and beyond, not least in authoritarian states.”

Write to your MP to and let them know that the bill should be dropped.

Plus read Index on Censorship on the Communications Data Bill

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The coalition’s plan to store information on every citizen’s use of email, the web, and phones have been dealt a serious blow by a parliamentary committee report. Padraig Reidy reports

Home Secretary Theresa May’s plan to store information on every citizen’s use of email, the web, and phones have been dealt a severe blow by a parliamentary committee report.

In a report seen by Index on Censorship, the Joint Committee on the Communications Data Bill described the proposed new law as “too sweeping”, and going “further than it need or should”.

The committee was particularly concerned by a clause in the bill that would give the Home Secretary the power to extend the remit of the law at any time, without putting the changes before parliament. The government claimed that this was needed in order to “future proof” the legislation, saying it would otherwise be impossible to keep pace with digital communications innovation.

But critics of the Communications Data Bill, including Index, said the clause was unacceptable, allowing huge levels of surveillance and storage without any democratic oversight. The committee today endorsed that view, while acknowledging the need for governments to be able to carry out limited surveillance.

Currently, communications service providers store data on communications traffic for one year. The government’s proposal would oblige them to hold it indefinitely. The Home Office defines “communications data” as: “[T]he information about a communication. It can include the time and duration of a communication, the number or email address of the originator and recipient and sometimes the location of the device from which the communication was made.”

The cross-party committee of lords and MPs also criticised the government’s consultation on the bill, saying: “Meaningful consultation can take place only once there is clarity as to the real aims of the Home Office, and clarity as to the expected use of the powers under the bill.”

The bill’s proposal for a “request filter”, allowing government agencies to search stored information, also came under fire. While acknowledging the capacity would have certain benefits, the report warns that safeguards should be introduced to minimise the risk of “fishing expeditions”, by restricting search criteria.

Index on Censorship welcomed the report: Head of Advocacy Mike Harris said:

“The Joint Committee report supports what Index has been saying all along: that the draft Communications Data Bill would threaten the privacy and free expression of British citizens, effectively reversing the presumption of innocence and potentially chilling the information that we share. If enacted in its current form, it would mean that the UK had one of the most draconian data laws in the western world, giving justification to surveillance tactics carried out by authoritarian states such as Belarus and Kazakhstan.”

Comms Data Bill Index Submission 22 August 12

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This shift has profound implications for the UK, the US and any country that claims to be committed to rule of law and the protection of fundamental freedoms.

This isn’t the first time that an Executive has seized the general authority to search through the private communications and papers without individualized suspicion. To the contrary, the United States was founded in large part on the rejection of “general warrants” – papers that gave the Executive (then the King) unchecked power to search colonial Americans without cause. The Fourth Amendment was adopted in part to stop these “hated writs” and to make sure that searches of the papers of Americans required a probable cause showing to a court. Indeed, John Adams noted that “the child Independence was born,” when Boston merchants unsuccessfully sued to stop these unchecked powers, then being used by British customs inspectors seeking to stamp out smuggling.

The current warrantless surveillance programs on both sides of the Atlantic return us to the policies of King George III only with a digital boost. In both, our daily digital “papers” — including intimate information such as who we are communicating with, what websites we visit (which of course includes what we’re reading) and our locations as we travel around with our cell phones — are collected and subjected to some sort of datamining. Then we’re apparently supposed to trust that no one in government will ever misuse this information, that the massive amounts of information about us won’t be subject to leak or attack, and that whatever subsequent measures are put into place to government access to it by various government agencies will be sufficient to protect our privacy and ensure due process, fairness and security.

On that score, at least the UK government is willing to discuss the proposal publicly and allow Parliament to vote on it.  But this puts the onus on the British people to tell their representatives to soundly reject it.  The message to the Executive should be clear: general warrants were a bad idea in 1760, and they are still a bad idea today.

Cindy Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as well as its General Counsel

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