(11.10.2016) In the coming fortnight, the illiberal Investigatory Powers Bill will pass through Parliament, making it easier for the British Government to spy on citizens entirely innocent of any crime.

The bill will allow the Government to hand UK tech firms top-secret notices to hack their customers; the police will be able to look at your internet browsing history, and your personal data will be tied together so the state can find out if you’ve attended a protest, who your friends are, and where you live. The most authoritarian piece of spying legislation any democratic government has ever proposed has sped through Parliament with only a whimper of opposition.

MORE THAN 16,000 public sector staff have been empowered by Section 4 of the Investigatory Powers Act to snoop on people‘s web browsing records.

And that‘s before the estimated 4,000 staff at security agency MI5, the 5,500 at GCHQ and 2,500 at MI6 are taken into account.

The Canary has already published a guide to help individuals, such as bloggers and online journalists, to protect themselves against state or commercial predators. Now a UK company called Brass Horn intends to go one step further, and provide a comprehensive anti-surveillance service to anyone – individuals, organisations and businesses.

It’s not surprising that many internet users, especially bloggers and political activists, may want to find out in simple terms how to be safe online from predators such as ‘Big Brother’, consumer organisations, and those who simply wish to steal identities. Now is the time to act. But finding the right technology and advice is not always that easy. It appears that Brass Horn is trying to fill that gap.

Deren Abhörgesetz „Snoopers‘ Charter“ brauchte eine unabhängige Begutachtung, also nehmen sie einen GCHQ-Mitarbeiter.

THE SNOOPERS‘ CHARTER will give UK police the same powers of surveillance over web use and telephone communications that are currently available to GCHQ, according to Mozilla.

Raegan MacDonald, senior policy manager and EU principal at Mozilla, made the claim during a Mozilla Privacy Lab event in London yesterday.

For some time now, we‘ve been covering the UK‘s plan — led by Home Secretary Theresa May — to pass a new Snooper‘s Charter that would increase surveillance powers greatly in the UK. There‘s been a growing amount of criticism of the plan in the UK, so rather than respond to it, May has simply moved to fast track the bill, officially called the Investigatory Powers Bill. The bill will officially be „published“ today on March 1, and then will likely be voted on before the end of April.

(13.7.2015) Die Briten hat die sogenannte Snooper’s Charter, zu deutsch Schnüffel-Charta, bislang eher weniger interessiert. Grundsätzliche Datenschutzfragen werden auf der Insel generell weniger gestellt. Doch seit bekannt geworden ist, dass der Gesetzesentwurf mit dem offiziellen Titel Investigatory Powers Bill auch auf beliebte soziale Netzwerke wie WhatsApp, Facebook oder Snapchat übergreifen könnte, sie sogar verboten werden könnten, tobt das Netz.

As numerous Techdirt stories make clear, the particular words used to describe something can make a big difference in how it is perceived. For example, intelligence agencies like to avoid the use of the bad-sounding „mass surveillance,“ with its Orwellian overtones, and prefer to talk about „bulk collection,“ which can be presented as some kind of cool big data project. No one is more vociferous in insisting that they are not engaged in mass surveillance, but merely bulk collection, than the UK‘s Home Secretary, Theresa May. She was pushing that line again last week, during a grilling by a UK Parliamentary committee about her proposed Snooper‘s Charter.

Theresa May, the UK Home Secretary who seems like a comic book version of a government authoritarian, is leading the charge in the UK for its new Snooper‘s Charter, officially called the „Investigatory Powers Bill,“ that is filled with all kinds of nasty stuff for making it easier for the government to spy on everyone. Among the many problematic elements is the demand for basically everyone‘s metadata. May dismissed the concerns about this by saying it‘s nothing more than „an itemised phone bill.“ Given that, Member of Parliament Keith Vaz noted to May that people might be interested to see May‘s itemized phone bill.

The UK‘s „Snooper‘s Charter“ was already terrible. The draft bill, finally released earlier this month, confirmed the UK government would be mandating encryption backdoors and requiring the retention of citizens‘ web browsing history. On top of that, the bill confirmed dragnet surveillance by UK agencies was already in place (unbeknownst to its „oversight“) and, in fact, is looking to legalize the snooping after the fact.

Earlier this week, we wrote about the UK‘s release of its new Snooper‘s Charter bill, where we noted that the government spin on it was fairly dizzying. I noted at the time that while the government kept insisting that it wasn‘t adding a requirement to backdoor encryption, that was misleading because the text of the bill indicated the government believed such a mandate already existed. And that‘s only the least of it. The bill and the discussion around it simply confirmed that the UK government engaged in mass surveillance for many, many years, and until now only a „tiny handful“ of government ministers even knew about it.

Private online communications will be opened-up by the Government‘s „Snooper‘s Charter“ – or the Investigatory Powers Bill, to give the bill its full title – which requires internet service providers, phone companies and technology firms like Google, Apple, Facebook and WhatsApp keep a record of all of your activity.

This troubling database of information (which will include all your Google searches, your Facebook conversations, WhatsApp group messages and SnapChat videos) will be made available to the UK police and Government whenever they require.

Earlier this month, four U.K. lords tried to sneak the text of a rejected piece of legislation popularly known as the Snooper’s Charter into a new anti-terror bill. After debate in the House of Lords produced heavy pushback, the peers withdrew the amendments that would have brought the surveillance law in by the back door.

And now, incredibly, they’re trying it again just days later.

A week ago, we noted that a group of UK Lords were trying to rush through the „Snooper‘s Charter“ that had previously been rejected by the UK. The bill, of course, was about giving the government tremendous levels of access to everyone‘s electronic data with little oversight. Thankfully, despite having little notice, the attempt caused a flurry of attention and the Lords were forced to back off the plan. It seemed like another good „win“ for supporters of privacy and democracy.

Many people still expected the UK government to try again, but few expected it would happen so soon. Yes, less than a week after having the last attempt rejected vocally, the same group of Lords are trying yet again:

Directly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, we cautioned the public and politicians to be „wary of any attempt to rush through new surveillance and law enforcement powers.“ With depressing predictability, we‘ve already seen that happen across the continent. Nowhere, however, has the attempt to bypass democratic debate been more blatant than in the United Kingdom, where a handful of unelected peers has taken the language of an old and discredited Internet surveillance proposal, and attempted to slam it, at outrageously short notice, into the wording of a near-complete counter-terrorism bill.

Remember last year when the UK loudly rejected an attempt by the government to create a „Snooper‘s Charter“ that would give the government much more power to sniff through everyone‘s private data? This was the law David Cameron insisted was needed based on crime dramas he watches on TV (how do these people get elected?).

You may also recall that, earlier this year, the European Court of Justice found that the EU‘s Data Retention Directive was invalid as a breach of „the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data.“ Just a few weeks ago, we noted that the UK government had told telcos to ignore that ruling and to carry on retaining people‘s data. It appears that telcos told the UK government to pound sand, and David Cameron and his friends are now using that as an opportunity to rush through a version of the Snooper‘s Charter, requiring internet companies to retain data.

The communications data bill – dubbed the „snoopers‘ charter“ by critics – would have given GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 much greater powers to gather and save information about people‘s internet activities but it was shelved in the spring amid Lib Dem fears that it intruded too much into privacy.

Brown, a Labour MP, said that it „looks very much like this is what is happening anyway, with or without parliament‘s consent“

A month ago, we wrote about how the UK‘s infamous „Snooper‘s Charter“ had been scuppered by Nick Clegg, the UK‘s Deputy Prime Minister. The Guardian now reveals that top Internet companies may have played a key role in this decision:

In a leaked letter to the home secretary that is also signed by Twitter, Microsoft and Yahoo!, the web‘s „big five“ say that May‘s rewritten proposals to track everybody‘s email, internet and social media use remain „expensive to implement and highly contentious“.

There is dangerous talk of resurrecting the ‚snooper‘s charter‘. But illiberal legislation will never deliver security

(08.05.) Fresh proposals to investigate crime in cyberspace are being promised, after the so-called „snoopers‘ charter“ was dropped from the Queen‘s Speech.

(08.05.) While it looked dead in the water for a while, the Queen‘s speech looks to have breathed new life into the controversial Communications Data Bill.

Britain‘s Communications Data Bill — AKA the Snooper‘s Charter — would effectively eliminate private communications in the UK, giving government and the police the power to spy on virtually everything you do online (which is rapidly merging with everything you do, full stop). The major ISPs in the UK have apparently been turned to the government‘s cause, and have been quietly supporting the bill, which strips their customers of any semblance of privacy.

A group of ten academics has penned a letter to David Cameron warning that the controversial Communications Data Bill is „naïve and technically dangerous“. The letter comes the same week privacy groups have banded together to accuse the UK‘s major ISPs of colluding with the government on the „snooper‘s charter“, to the detriment of its customers‘ rights and privacy. Both letters were published online on 22 April, two weeks before the amended bill — which states that British telecoms and ISPs keep customer communications and web activity on file for a year for police, the chief complaint of both the academics and privacy groups — is expected to be presented in the Queen‘s Speech, on 8 May.