Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

Great – now I’m worried that #CCDP / #CDB is going to get horse-traded against #Leveson …

… but in which direction I have no idea.

The Lib Dems might withdraw their support for government plans to give the police new powers to monitor email and internet use, the BBC has learned.

Party sources say leader Nick Clegg is ready to use a parliamentary report, due out next week, to oppose the plans.

The draft Communications Data Bill would allow police access to details of people’s email and internet use, which many Lib Dems oppose.

But Home Office sources insist the bill would become law by 2014.

At the moment, the police and intelligence services can get access to information about people’s mobile phone use.

The bill would extend those powers to cover email and the internet. The authorities would be able to see details of who communicated with whom, and when and where, but they would not be able to see the content of the message.

via BBC News – Lib Dems 'may ditch' Communications Data Bill.

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Comments

2 responses to “Great – now I’m worried that #CCDP / #CDB is going to get horse-traded against #Leveson …”

  1. Dave Walker

    CCDP’s dead anyway. Legislation coming out of Leveson *could* be implemented – to much justifiable public outcry – whereas CCDP could not. When the political “art of the possible” comes up against the engineering “facts of the feasible”, politics is never going to come out very well.

    Thought experiment (based in part on some realisations from an “Internet of Things” preso I gave at IAAC the other week): Take a blank sheet of paper. Design an internetworking system completely from scratch, where the overriding design requirement is that CCDP criteria can be fulfilled. Attempt to give it equivalent communications capabilities to the Internet.

    I can’t get anywhere close, even to a point where parties are able to communicate meaningfully, unless the network is circuit-switched rather than packet-switched; and we all know where that leads…

    Reply
  2. Dave Walker

    …Even in the existing circuit-switched world, you can go an awfully long way to breaking CCDP (and RIPA) by putting a PABX somewhere the UK doesn’t have appropriate diplomatic relations with, and configuring a hunt group on it.

    Reply

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