As the passage of the UK's technologically illiterate Digital Economy Act in 2010 demonstrated, many UK politicians are completely at sea when it comes to modern technology. But even they recognize that the digital world forms a crucial part of modern life, and that any political party hoping to enter government needs to have policies for issues the Internet raises. That said, the different political parties have very different views and priorities when it comes to legislating for the digital world.

Ahead of the UK's General Election on May 7, Ars has put together a guide to what the manifestos say on a number of key topics: surveillance; privacy and data protection; copyright and patents; web blocking; freedom of speech; digital rights; and various forms of openness—open data, open standards and open government. The policies come from the following manifestos (in alphabetical order): Conservatives, Green Party of England and Wales, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Pirate Party, Scottish National Party, and UKIP. The Open Rights Group has usefully collected statements on these and a few other areas in the form of a single web page, organized by party.

Surveillance

Reflecting the continuing debate initiated by Edward Snowden's revelations of massive online surveillance conducted by the UK's GCHQ and the US' NSA, the main parties' manifestos all make statements about their views and future plans in this area. Keeping pace with technological changes is a common theme. Labour says: "We will need to update our investigative laws to keep up with changing technology, strengthening both the powers available, and the safeguards that protect people’s privacy."

The Conservatives try to draw a distinction between content and metadata: "We will keep up to date the ability of the police and security services to access communications data—the ‘who, where, when and how’ of a communication, but not its content. ... We will maintain the ability of the authorities to intercept the content of suspects’ communications, while continuing to strengthen oversight of the use of these powers."

Unfortunately, this ignores the fact that metadata can be more revealing than content: that's because metadata is already in a machine-readable form whereas content needs to be parsed—a hard problem that makes it far less useful for automated analysis.

The reference by the Conservative's manifesto to intercepting communications shows a clear intent to bring back the Snooper's Charter, aka the Communications Data Bill, which was vetoed by the Liberal Democrats the last time it was proposed—something they promise to do again: "We blocked the draft Communications Data Bill and would do so again. Requiring companies to store a record of everyone’s internet activities for a year or to collect third-party communications data for non-business purposes is disproportionate and unacceptable."

The Scottish National Party takes the same view: "We do not support Tory plans for the reintroduction of the so-called ‘snoopers’ charter’, which would see all online activity of every person in the UK stored for a year. Instead, we need a proportionate response to extremism." The Green Party of England and Wales is also in favor of a proportionate approach: "specific surveillance should be proportionate, necessary, effective and within the rule of law, with independent judicial approval and genuine parliamentary oversight."

The Pirate Party, which places digital issues at the heart of its manifesto, wants "specific warrants to be issued by a court before communications traffic is monitored," and, like the Greens, calls for the main UK legislation governing surveillance, the outdated Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), to be replaced. Specifically: "sections 49 & 54, which can force people to hand over encryption keys, and prevent them from telling anyone about the request"—two of its more problematic powers.

The Pirate Party recognizes the central role that encryption plays in the post-Snowden society and wants to "ensure that the freedom to encrypt data and communications is not abridged or limited, and that access to encryption tools is not restricted." So do the Liberal Democrats, who say they will "Uphold the right of individuals, businesses and public bodies to use strong encryption to protect their privacy and security online."

UKIP, by contrast, is keen to re-jig the machinery of surveillance. It wants to create a new role of "Director of National Intelligence," who will be responsible for "bringing all intelligence services together; developing cyber security measures; cutting down on waste and encouraging information and resource sharing."

Privacy and data protection

Two areas closely related to surveillance are privacy and data protection. Indeed, the only mention of these topics in the Labour manifesto is in that context, as quoted above. For the Conservatives, the key issue here is health records: "We will give you full access to your own electronic health records, while retaining your right to opt-out of your records being shared electronically." That's doubtless in response to the hugely embarrassing Care.data fiasco last year. On this issue, the Green Party says it would: "Oppose the sale of personal data, such as health or tax records, for commercial or other ends."

The Liberal Democrats are very strong in this area, with a long list of concrete proposals, including those regulating health records, fingerprints, DNA, facial biometrics, and bringing in "increased powers and resources for the Information Commissioner," including "custodial sentences for egregious breaches of the Data Protection Act." The LibDems also want to ensure "privacy is protected to the same extent in telecoms and online as in the offline world," something clearly not the case in the light of GCHQ's mass surveillance of the UK public.

The Pirate Party is also keen to strengthen data protection laws: "We will make it easier to apply to a court for compensation where data protection laws have been breached, and increase the penalties for any breaches of data protection laws." The main concern of the Green Party in this area is resisting attempts by US companies to weaken data protection laws at the European level. It promises to "Support the EU’s proposals to strengthen data protection laws against opposition from large US data-driven companies"—an evident reference to Facebook, Google, and the like.

UKIP once more takes a rather different tack here. On the one hand it wants to ensure "Britain’s police forces comply with the law and do not retain booking photographs, fingerprints, DNA, or biometric data of individuals who have not been convicted of a crime." On the other: "DNA testing and retention of DNA data results will be reinstated for all convicted foreign criminals."

Copyright and patents

Copyright has a disproportionately large effect in the online world because of the inherent clash between a 300-year-old intellectual monopoly that seeks to prevent copying and a modern digital communications technology that is built on it. So it's disappointing to see little awareness in the party manifestos of the problems this tension causes. The Liberal Democrats say they are: "supporting modern and flexible patent, copyright and licensing rules," without specifying what that might mean. The Greens want to "Make copyright shorter in length, fair and flexible, and prevent patents applying to software," which is slightly better defined.

It falls to the Pirate Party to come out with the most concrete suggestions here. That's hardly a surprise: the Pirate Party came into existence largely as a reaction against copyright laws that were ill-suited to the Internet age. Here's what the UK Pirates say: "We will work for copyright reform and reduce copyright terms to 10 years to balance everyone's needs." That's a dramatic reduction from the current copyright term of life plus 70 years, but could be tricky to implement: the UK was one of the original signatories of the Berne Convention, which requires a minimum 50-year copyright term.

The other major proposal of the UK Pirate Party concerns anti-circumvention measures—DRM, in other words. Currently, it is unlawful to circumvent "effective technological measures" that restrict access to copyrighted material, even if doing so is required for some lawful use. "The Pirate Party seeks to abolish these laws, making it legal both to circumvent “effective technological measures” and produce, distribute, and possess tools to aid in doing so. This would not change existing copyright law, merely remove the extra layer of illegality." However reasonable that might be, it too is problematic because the European Union's Copyright Directive contains a section explicitly forbidding such circumvention of DRM and distribution of tools to do so, even when the use is legal. That's an indication of just how hard it will be to create what the Pirate Party calls "A fair and balanced copyright regime that is suitable for the 21st century."

Web blocking

Although the Conservative party has nothing to say about fixing some of copyright's problems in the digital age, it is more vocal about enforcing copyright through online censorship of sites that are alleged to be infringing in some way, even indirectly: "We will protect intellectual property by continuing to require internet service providers to block sites that carry large amounts of illegal content, including their proxies." That seems to be a reference to The Pirate Bay, which has spawned hundreds of "proxies" that have proved impossible to stamp out. It seems that the Conservatives want to try anyway.

Their manifesto continues: "we will build on progress made under our voluntary anti-piracy projects to warn internet users when they are breaching copyright. We will work to ensure that search engines do not link to the worst-offending sites." These "voluntary" schemes are extremely problematic, because they are ill-defined—what exactly does "worst-offending site" mean?—and have no legal safeguards or checks as formal schemes would. Since those who are required to implement such voluntary schemes—ISPs or search engines—have no official texts to help them and their lawyers decide where to draw the line, they typically err on the side of caution, which means blocking legal content or threatening users for actions that are perfectly permissible.

The Liberal Democrats address this issue along with that of net neutrality—otherwise not mentioned in the other manifestos—saying that they will "Safeguard the essential freedom of the internet and back net neutrality, the principle that internet service providers should enable access to lawful content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites." The Greens want to "Limit the censoring or takedown of content or activity to exceptional circumstances, clearly set out within a comprehensive legal framework," while the UK Pirate Party "will stop the imposing by government of censorship tools such as so-called "web filtering" or site blocking as blanket tools."