SurveillanceLegislation would give U.K. police powers to access U.K. computer users’ browsing history

The U.K. police and intelligence service, ahead of the publication this coming Wednesday of legislation on regulating surveillance powers, have urged the government to give them the power to view the Internet browsing history of British computer users.

The Times reports that senior officers were pressuring the government to revive measures which would require telecommunications companies to retain for twelve months data which would reveal Web sites visited by customers.

The Telegraph reports that police argued that such measures are necessary because the scale of online activity has made traditional methods of surveillance and investigation less useful.

In September, MI5 chief Andrew Parker, in an unprecedented live broadcast interview with the BBC, called for “the cooperation of the companies who run and provide services over the internet” to help tackle the use of encrypted communications by terrorists.

Parker added: “MI5 and others need to be able to navigate the internet to find terrorist communication, we need to be able to use data sets to be able to join the dots to be able to find and stop the terrorists who mean us harm before they are able to bring plots to fruition. We have been pretty successful at that in recent years but it is becoming more difficult to do it as technology changes faster and faster [and] encryption comes in.”

Richard Berry, the National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman for data communications, told the Guardian that the police were not looking for anything beyond what they could already access through telephone records.

Berry, assistant chief constable at Gloucestershire police, said: “We want to police by consent, and we want to ensure that privacy safeguards are in place.

“But we need to balance this with the needs of the vulnerable and the victims.”

Explaining the powers police want, he said: “We essentially need the ‘who, where, when and what’ of any communication – who initiated it, where were they and when did it happened. And a little bit of the ‘what’, were they on Facebook, or a banking site, or an illegal child-abuse image-sharing Web site?

“Five years ago, [a suspect] could have physically walked into a bank and carried out a transaction. We could have put a surveillance team on that but now, most of it is done online. We just want to know about the visit.”

He agreed, though, that it would be “far too intrusive” for officers to be able to access content of Internet searches and social media messaging without additional safeguards, such as the requirement for a judicial warrant.

A similar measure was considered by the previous government, but was shelved blocked by the Liberal Democrats, then coalition partners in the government, over to privacy concerns.

Internet service providers have warned that the new surveillance and investigative powers allowing broader surveillance of citizens’ Web browsing must be accompanied by adequate oversight to protect civil liberties.

The Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has sent a checklist of five key principles to MPs, which it believes any new legislation must adhere to.

“We encourage parliamentarians to be wary of arguments that the investigatory powers bill will merely update existing powers and fill a gap in data availability. The nature of surveillance, investigatory powers and technology have changed as communications have evolved from phone and post to online communication, leading to even existing powers becoming more intrusive over time,” reads the section on transparency and oversight.