GCHQ, Ministry of Defence

A year after it was first proposed, and with the government mired in a Brexit fuelled crisis, the UK’s new mass surveillance regime last week passed its third reading in the House of Lords and is soon to become law.

The Investigatory Powers Bill – aka the Snooper’s Charter – is reminiscent of the US Patriot Act, which was hastily passed 45 days after 9/11 in the name of national security. This conservative government finds itself in a not too dissimilar crisis and, with a distracted public and media, this fundamental curtailment of legal rights is quietly working its way onto the UK statute books.

The bill is a comprehensive surveillance law that was drafted after three inquiries highlighted flaws in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (‘RIPA’), the existing UK surveillance framework. According to The Home Office, the law is needed to allow the authorities more oversight than ever before for national security reasons.

Open Rights Group’s executive director, Jim Killock, commented after the bill was passed by the House of Lords that the UK was ‘one step closer to having one of the most extreme surveillance laws ever passed in a democracy’. ‘Despite attempts by the Lib Dems and Greens to restrain these draconian powers, the Bill is still a threat to the British public’s right to privacy,’ he said. According to the Open Rights Group, the new Bill ‘fails to restrain mass surveillance by the police and security services and even extends their powers’.

The Snooper’s Charter sets out an all-encompassing framework for legal surveillance of equipment and data in the UK and abroad. Couched in the widest possible language, the Investigatory Powers Act will give the security and intelligence agencies, and law enforcement chiefs, extensive powers to ‘obtain communications, equipment data or other information’ for the ostensible purposes of national security and tackling crime.

The opportunities for abuse are rife and the new law risks entrenching an already present culture of mass intelligence gathering operations in violation of human rights law. The law will extend from monitoring mobile phones, computers, email systems, and their users to surveilling private residences and vehicles. Telecommunications companies, including major tech companies like Facebook and Google, will be duty bound to provide user data to the authorities pursuant to the Act.