UK Announces First Draft of New Online Spying Laws

As the surveillance regime against online users’ activities continue  to get stricter and sterner, UK has come up with its own legal framework for new spying laws governing the internet usage.

After Australia’s Data Retention Law, European Union’s New Net Neutrality Laws, it’s time that the United Kingdom’s government has realized the importance of promulgating new spying laws. The first draft of the law was announced on Sunday.

The new online spying laws are meant to target common users’ online activities, including the usage of social media websites and communication services, such as Facebook, Whatsapp etc.

According to the information available, the laws do not cover, or are not entitled to ban encrypted data. Similarly, the laws, if promulgated, will not give any essential powers to the UK surveillance agencies to check an individual user’s browsing history.

The motive behind the new spying laws is to counter terrorist threats that UK people face, in the wake of activities being carried out by the so-called banned outfits, with political lineage. It is a fact the terrorist organizations tend to make effective use of internet technology to communicate and carry out their planned activities accordingly.

The latest draft of the new spying laws do provide the technology firms an opportunity to keep check on users’ activities over social media websites and WhatsApp, for a period of 12 months only when they have a warrant issued by the government.

The surveillance agencies will only monitor the online activities of common users, only after a second warrant is issued.   Until recently, such warrants to the surveillance agencies and police officers were being issued by the UK Home Department. The new laws will transfer the power of issuing such warrants to the judges.       

As the situation stands, the UK government is trying hard to win the support of other parties within the parliament, but they are facing stern opposition from their junior coalition partners. The coalition partners have termed the draft of the new spying laws as ‘too intrusive’.  

The Investigatory Powers Bill is set to be drafted on Wednesday. Let’s wait and watch.