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The creators of Tor have said that the UK Government's surveillance bill will "significantly harm" the safety of UK citizens. The threat comes alongside a warning from defence industry experts that the plans will be out of date within five years. "The draft bill should not centre on the false tradeoff between civil liberty and security. While it is undoubtedly not the intention of the Home Office, this draft bill will significantly harm the safety of human rights activists," The Tor Project wrote in its evidence submitted to the committee scrutinising the law.

Tor -- the secure browser that masks users' IP addresses and is commonly referred to as the dark web -- claimed that the Investigatory Powers Bill (IP Bill) -- which critics have dubbed a "snoopers' charter" -- is a physical threat to citizens as it requires the storage of sensitive personal data. If passed, the bill will legislate that companies must store communications data for 12 months.


Tor said this communications metadata is vulnerable to security breaches. And that makes the bill a humanitarian risk -- particularly when it comes to human rights activists and those who "depend on the Internet for their safety".

Large-scale commercial data leaks and security breaches show that companies are not secure enough to store such personal data, according to Tor. "Although there are techniques to protect computer systems from large-scale attacks, there are no effective measures for protecting computer systems from targeted attack by a capable adversary, especially when an adversary with state backing is a possible threat," Tor wrote.

This draft bill will significantly harm the safety of human rights activists

As part of its case Tor citied the 2009 breach of Google's email service and the bugging of 100 high-ranking dignitaries, including the Greek prime minister, through Vodafone's telephone exchange in Greece. "The discussion of the draft bill thus can be framed as a tradeoff between giving additional powers to law enforcement in exchange for taking away the ability of human rights activists and human rights organisations to protect themselves," Tor wrote.


The warning from Tor was accompanied by evidence from the British aerospace, defence, security and space industries that rapid technological innovation in both the commercial and security industries means that the plans will be out of date within five years. "The first smartphone was only introduced eight years ago, but they are now ubiquitous,” the defence and space industry experts said in their evidence submission. Predicting more technological innovation in the next few years they continued, "it will be necessary to revise the law again in the not too distant future."

The need for the bill to be updated in the coming years is one of the softer criticisms that has been waged against it. "This does not mean the legislation is not viable or needs revolutionary change. It simply means it is likely to have a shelf life," they wrote in their evidence. And this time limit is about half a decade, according to the evidence.

Tech giants, Internet Service Providers and the UN's privacy expert, among others, have been more critical of the ramifications of the bill, which is the first major overhaul of UK surveillance laws for 15 years.