Stop the Snooper's Charter

The proposals, which will compel telecoms companies to retain data about customer calls and internet usage for one year, comes after Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to crack down on encrypted communications over the internet. But encryption is a normal part of internet security. This is dangerous nonsense.

Besides, it doesn't make us any safer. In fact, the recent shocking murder of Lee Rigby was facilitated by the fact that our security agencies have too much useless information to wade through, much of which returns false positives during keyword searches because people talk about what happened in the films or programmes they've seen, or mention that something they bought cost a bomb. They are too busy sifting through all that trying to find any useful data to go about the business of catching criminals and stopping terrorists. Indeed, most of the high profile arrests made lately were for making abusive or foolish comments online. They're not catching terrorists or criminals, they're catching people who make fools of themselves online. We are no safer.

"In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?" he asked rhetorically in justification.

"In our country, do we want to force people to leave their doors and windows open to let the law enforcement and security agencies in as and when required? Do we want to grant them instant access to all our private business without question?"

FIFY, Dave.

Further reading - http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2391667/-snoopers-charter-sneaked-in-to-counter-terrorism-bill

Please sign this petition. We stopped the Snooper's Charter for a reason. They should NOT be allowed to sneak unwanted legislation back in under the guise of amendments to existing laws. It's anti-democratic.

UPDATE:

A last-minute attempt to revive a "snoopers' charter" before the general election has been dropped... The BBC understands they will try again next week unless the Home Office publishes a government redraft of the bill, of which the Lords has been told... In response, the peers withdrew the proposed amendments, which threatened to enshrine the controversial measures in law, and called on the government to produce its draft... A source told the BBC that if the Home Office was to refuse that request, the "snoopers' charter" proposals would be revived once again and added to the draft counter-terrorism legislation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31001575

Can you BELIEVE these people?

Lord King is a former Conservative defense secretary, Lord Blair is a former Metropolitan Police commissioner, Lord West is a former Labour defense minister and Lord Carlile is a former Liberal Democrat reviewer of counter-terror laws. Each of them was around during the Troubles when attacks were taking place in mainland Britain and they weren't calling for mass surveillance then.

Like The Terminator, they'll be back. We need to show them that we know this and that every time they try to put this in, we will be right there to yank it back out.

Please keep signing this and please use https://www.writetothem.com/lords to write to each of the lords involved in this atrocious attempt to undermine our right to privacy.