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Firefox creator Mozilla has criticised planned surveillance laws as "broad and dangerous" proposals that would be a "harmful step backward for the interests of Internet users".

The organisation's critical comments attack the proposals put forward in the draft Investigatory Powers (IP) Bill and come in response to a call for evidence on whether the legislation would be technically practical.


Mozilla warned that the IP Bill would "create an environment of legal and practical uncertainty" for itself and other open source software developers around the world. The evidence it submitted calls for the government to rethink the provisions of the proposed bill and highlights several perceived technological and ethical issues.

In November Home Secretary Theresa May unveiled the draft law which seeks to reform the way that the security services gather intelligence. As it stands the wide sweeping bill is set to create judicial oversight of surveillance powers, force communication companies to store user internet records for a year, and codify powers to hack into computers and devices. The Home Office says the law aims to be transparent in its aims and is needed to improve security.

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The bill also includes provisions that state that technology companies must be able to access communications sent by their users -- which could mean companies left unable to use end-to-end encryption that protects the contents of messages.

Mozilla said it wanted to see "a fully encrypted web in order to protect users everywhere". "While some Web traffic remains unencrypted, the overwhelming majority of online traffic belongs to law-abiding citizens, and has no connection to any legitimate governmental purposes," the company said in its evidence to Science and Technology Committee. "We believe that all Internet users have an expectation of privacy in the network exchange of their communications, and companies and technologists continue to support this expectation through policy and through technology." The organisation also said it encrypts 100 billion web transfers a day and if it was required to change its systems it would be "placing their [users'] private data at risk".

Mozilla was one of 46 groups and individuals to submit written evidence to the government committee that is looking at the technical aspects of the proposed law.

Previously internet services providers have given oral evidence to the committee and said the new law would cause broadband prices to increase -- which has subsequently been nicknamed a snooper's tax -- as customers would have to pay for their data to be stored by the companies.


Mozilla responded to the committee officials by saying that forcing communication companies to store user information would increase the chances of it being hacked.

It said: "As the nearly daily parade of data breaches make clear, amassing the personal information of everyone exposes those data to breach, theft, misuse, and abuse. Data acquired are data at risk, and such threat to user security and privacy is not warranted."

This article has been updated to reflect the number of groups and individuals that submitted evidence to the Committee.