What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

The Lib Dems today accused Labour of 'sitting on their hands' as Theresa May rams through a bill that threatens to erode your civil liberties.

The Investigatory Powers bill - dubbed the snooper's charter - hands the police and security services wide ranging powers to hack phones and snoop on the web-browsing histories of ordinary people.

Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham revealed this morning that Labour MPs would abstain on the bill.

The Home Secretary says the measures in the bill are essential to keep the British people safe from terrorists, paedophiles and serious criminals.

Even David Cameron called it "one of the most important pieces of legislation" set to go on the books in this parliament.

But critics say the powers it would grant to government, police and security agencies licence them to invade the privacy of anyone in the country with little oversight to whether the snooping is justified.

Here's why you should be worried about the snooper's charter.

1. It gives the police and spies the power to see what websites you've been looking at without a warrant

Under the new rules, every internet service provider and mobile phone network will be required to store a list of the websites you've visited and the messaging apps you've used, and when you've used them, for a year.

Spooks won't be able to get the content of your messages without a warrant - but they'll be able to see what websites you've visited

And the latest version of the bill quietly extends this beyond the security services to police forces.

They'll be able to see internet connection records without a warrant, as long as they get the approval of a "senior officer".

Cops will also be given the power to hack into phones, tablets, laptops and computers in any situation they believe could prevent injury or death “or damage to a person's mental health”.

2. That's not the same as them looking at your phone bill - it's more like them following you around 24 hours a day

(Image: Getty)

David Cameron has argued that the new powers are a natural update of powers the police have always had to look at the phone records of suspects.

But the internet isn't the same as making phone calls.

In 2015, we do almost everything online. We do our work online. We meet our friends online. We learn, read and watch TV online. We get medical advice, meet potential sexual partners and build relationships online.

The ability to follow your every movement online isn't like someone seeing who you've made phone calls to, it's like someone following you around 24 hours a day and checking the addresses on every letter you send.

Even Orwell's Telescreens didn't work in the dark...

3. Experts say collecting everything is a really stupid idea

Theresa May today admitted finding useful information in such a large body of data would be tricky - but still claims it's definitely worth a try.

"You can't find the needle in the haystack if you don't have the haystack", she said, mind-bogglingly.

But former NSA whistleblower William Binney says the strategy of collecting everything so you can look through it later is dumb.

He told the committee: "It's not helpful to make the haystack orders of magnitude bigger, because it creates orders of magnitude more difficulty in finding the needle,"

And he added: "using a targeted approach would give you the needles and anything closely associated to the needles right from the start."

4. It'll be really expensive for internet companies, which will probably put your broadband bill up

(Image: PA)

The Government has set aside £175m to subsidise companies who have to store the massive amounts of data required.

But experts say that's a fraction of what the true cost will be.

Matthew Hare, chief executive of internet service provider (ISP) Gigaclear told the Commons science and technology committee the amount of data they would need to store is phenomenal.

He said: "On a typical 1 gigabit connection we see over 15TB of data per year passing over that connection … If you say that a proportion of that is going to be the communications data, it’s going to be the most massive amount of data that you’d be expected to keep in the future.

“The indiscriminate collection of mass data is going to have a massive cost."

5. It's not just the police that'll be able to do it

(Image: Getty)

Let's make one thing clear. The Investigatory Powers Bill is not just intended to stop terrorists, paedophiles and serious criminals, regardless of what David Cameron and Theresa May say.

As well as the police and security services, the very same powers will be available to local councils and the taxman.

The new bill replaces the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which was introduced in the last parliament in a climbdown from the original snooper's charter, which was vetoed by the Lib Dems.

And as with the old law, the powers in the new snooper's charter will be available to 38 public bodies, for the purposes of "detecting or preventing crime".

6. Your browsing data could be vulnerable to hackers

(Image: Getty)

Your emails and browsing history will have to be held by internet companies for a year.

Not by the government, by the internet companies.

That'll be safe, right? Teenagers are hardly ever arrested on suspicion of hacking internet companies' data .

Incidentally, Theresa May came up with some fantastically circuitous logic for why this isn't anything to worry about.

On the BBC's Andrew Marr show, she said the very fact that police will have access to the data will make it easier to catch anyone who steals it. Genius.

7. It will almost certainly be abused

(Image: Metropolitan Police)

History shows us governments can't be trusted with this much power.

According to a report by Big Brother Watch, local councils committed data breaches, on average, four times a day over the last four years. That's council workers looking at people's private data illegally, for their own personal interest.

Or putting personal information on laptops and leaving them on trains.

Then there's the surveillance of journalists - often using the aforementioned "watered down" RIPA powers. The Metropolitan police, it was revealed in 2013, kept files on journalists - including details of sexual preferences, childhood and family medical history - who were simply doing their job.

The National Union of Journalists described the snooping as "outrageous".

And of course there's the case of the family of Stephen Lawrence, who had done nothing wrong, and who the police spied on and tried to smear in public in the wake of his death.

"Trust us," says Theresa May.

But the good news is, it won't ban Snapchat and Whatsapp after all

(Image: Getty)

The Government wanted to include a ban on certain kinds of encryption in the bill - the kind of encryption used to keep messages sent using WhatsApp, Snapchat and iMessage private.

They don't want to ban encryption outright, but they did want to ban so-called 'end-to-end' encryption - which can only be decoded by the sender and receiver.

Not even Apple can read your iMessages, and the cops don't like that.

But after pressure from committees and campaigners - many of whom pointed out that even Theresa May didn't seem to understand what end-to-end encryption actually was - the latest version of the bill brings a little clarity.

Security services will be able to ask providers for a "key" to encryption added by service providers, but not encryption added by users. It's thought that'll mean end-to-end, which is technically added by the user, will be safe.