Draft investigatory powers bill scrutiny committee warned by security and defence companies as ‘big five’ US web giants urge home secretary to rethink law

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The accelerating pace of technology means the government’s landmark snooper’s charter bill will only have a limited shelf life and will need to be revisited within five years, Britain’s defence and security industry has told MPs and peers.

They have warned that there are serious questions over whether fundamental parts of the new law that will overhaul of surveillance powers will be relevant in the near future as the technological landscape changes.



The new draft investigatory powers bill is the first major overhaul of Britain’s surveillance laws for 15 years, and follows the disclosure of the scale of mass digital surveillance by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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“The first smartphone was only introduced eight years ago, but they are now ubiquitous,” says the submission from the British aerospace, defence, security and space industries to the parliamentary scrutiny committee on the draft investigatory powers bill.

“Increasingly, communications service providers simply act as ‘dumb pipes’, transferring data that they cannot process or understand.

“This does not mean the legislation is not viable or needs revolutionary change. It simply means that it is likely to have a shelf life. There are likely to be such significant shifts in the technological landscape over the next few years … that it will be necessary to revise the law again in the not too distant future.”

The warning came as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft joined forces to urge the home secretary, Theresa May, to reconsider substantial parts of the proposed new surveillance law.

They argue it will have far-reaching implications for the rest of the world as other countries emulate its requirements of the global technology industry.

The criticism follows a warning from Apple in its submission that the new law could paralyse much of the technology sector and even lead to “serious international conflicts”.

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Their submissions are among 1,000 pages of written evidence published by the scrutiny committee, which reveal for the first time the wide spectrum of criticism of key provisions of the draft laws that will allow the security agencies to track every citizen’s web and phone use.

The criticisms include serious concern from the United Nations that the bill’s provisions “unduly interfere with the rights to privacy, freedom of opinion and expression ... both inside and outside the United Kingdom” to demands from the Local Government Association that local councils must not be excluded from access to individuals’ communications data.

Vodafone, the UK telecoms company, said the government’s bill risked “significantly undermining trust” and rejected any move to require them to hand over data passing over their networks from outside the UK,.

The criticism from the Silicon Valley internet giants is perhaps the most serious for Home Office ministers as it was their rejection of proposed British government requests to require them to hand over their customers’ confidential web data which lay behind the Liberal Democrats’ veto of the last snooper’s charter bill in 2012.

The American web companies in particular have mounted strong campaigns to regain their customers’ trust in the wake of Snowden’s disclosures of the bulk data-collection programmes conducted by Britain’s GCHQ and the US’s NSA.

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Their concerns include:

• Rather than requiring web companies to choose which country’s laws to violate, the US companies back a new international agreement to resolve these conflicts, as recommended by former UK ambassador to Washington Sir Nigel Sheinwald

• As a general rule, users should be told when the security agencies seek access to their data, tracking their web and phone use, except in cases involving public safety and to preserve the integrity of a criminal investigation

• They reject demands for weaker encryption to allow the security agencies and the police access to their services

• They say, in particular, cooperating with British state computer hacking of their users’ phones, tablets and computers would “be a very dangerous precedent to set” and would undermine trust in their technology.

The home secretary has described the draft bill as a significant departure from her previous attempt to introduce communications data legislation and has said its safeguards and oversight protections will be the strongest anywhere in the democratic world.