Is Liberty and or the Law Society working on those parallel reconstruction arguments?
C > William Waites <mailto:wwai...@tardis.ed.ac.uk> > 4 May 2016 at 15:31 > To follow this up, this amendment was debated yesterday (p. 679 > [1]). Apart from a technical point, the Minister for Security was > worried that it would have unintended consequences: that criminals > would seek out small providers to avoid surveillance. > > This argument is of course specious. There are many ways that > criminals can avoid surveillance and this is the case regardless of > whether the provider is large or small. The purpose of the amendment > is to limit the damage the Act does to small providers. > > There is another aspect of this bill that seems to be little > understood: the relationship between the product of bulk interception > not being useable in court on the one hand and the requirement for > data retention on the other. The entire setup appears designed to > facilitate parallel construction: a technique of construction a > separate trail of evidence for use in court by cherry picking specific > data retained by providers in order to conceal the true course of the > investigation. This is deeply problematic because it means we may not > question the conduct of the sercurity services in such criminal > cases. > > We'll be at the Southsider on West Richmond St. in Edinburgh from > about 18:00 as usual, please join us! > > Cheers, > -w > > [1] > http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmpublic/InvestigatoryPowers/160503/pm/PBC_Investigatory%20Powers%2016th%20sit%20%28pm%29%203.5.16.pdf > > > William Waites <mailto:wwai...@tardis.ed.ac.uk> > 28 April 2016 at 21:30 > Greetings everyone. > > There are many problems with the new suspicionless spying bill as we > all know very well. Some of you who know me may also know that I am > the network operator of HUBS [1] which is made up of several small > community ISPs in rural Scotland. Whatever else is wrong with the > bill, it is clear that it would be particularly burdensome for these > small providers to have to do data retention and indeed in that > context it even takes on a really insidious aspect of requiring people > to spy on their neighbours for the government, as I outlined in my > evidence to the committee [2]. > > Over the past while, together with Adrian Kennard, who I believe also > subscribes to the org-discuss list, we came up with an amendment which > would go some way towards mitigating at least this aspect of the > bill. It was put onto the agenda today by Joanna Cherry MP QC who is > leading the SNP's response. It can be found on page 49 of [3]. It > says, > > An operator who has not been designated as the operator of an > electronic communications network or service according to section > 34 of the Communications Act 2003; or whose service has fewer than > 50,000 subscribers, shall not be required to comply with a > retention notice under section 78 of this Act. > > This means if you're too small to have a requirement of reporting to > Ofcom (currently a turnover of less than £5 million annually) or have > a small number of subscribers, you're exempt. I am trying to get a > similar exemption into the debate about section 217 which is about > notices for maintenance of technical capabilities. > > So it tries to carve out at least some space for service providers to > operate without being conscripted into spying for the government. > > The committee only has another week to run, and after that the bill > goes back to the house. It is now of vital importance to let MPs know > that there is support for this. Doubly so if your MP is on the > committee [4] or happens to be the Secretary of State for Scotland > [5] or represents a rural constituency. Please write to them and let > them know if you support this. It would be great if ORG could support > this as an organisation as well. > > Best wishes, > -w > > [1] http://hubs.net.uk/ > [2] > http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmpublic/investigatorypowers/Memo/IPB53.htm > [3] > http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0143/amend/investigatory_day_pbc_0427.pdf > [4] > http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/investigatorypowers/committees/houseofcommonspublicbillcommitteeontheinvestigatorypowersbill201516.html > [5] http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/david-mundell/1512 > -- Christian de Larrinaga FBCS, CITP, ------------------------- @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 c...@firsthand.net ------------------------- -- Please support ORG's work - join and help fund our future: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join To unsubscribe, send a blank email to org-discuss-le...@lists.openrightsgroup.org or use https://lists.openrightsgroup.org/listinfo/org-discuss
