Proposed UK Communications Law Could Be Used To Spy On Physical Mail 125
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that the UK's Draft Communications Bill includes a provision which could be used to force the Royal Mail and other mail carriers to retain data on all physical mail passing through their networks. The law could be used to force carriers to maintain a database of any data written on the outside of an envelope or package which could be accessed by government bodies at will. Such data could include sender, recipient and type of mail (and, consequentially, the entire contents of a postcard). It would provide a physical analog of the recently proposed internet surveillance laws. The Home Office claims that it has no current plans to enforce the law."
Re:What are Brits control freaks? (Score:4, Informative)
they are happily extraditing any of their fellas to any country claiming IP infringement
That's news to me. Scary if true.
In a country with a lot of parliamentary direct democracy (they vote individual people, not party lists, and the one with most votes wins)
I'm guessing you aren't a Briton, because people do tend to vote for parties. Hell, I'd be surprised if more than one in ten voters could actually name their MP a week after the election; the only reason I can (it's Chi Onwurah, by the way) is that I read Hansard a lot. When I last checked there were less than a dozen independent MPs. Britain has representative democracy, not direct democracy.
This is completely ILLEGAL under the UDHR (UN) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is completely ILLEGAL under the UDHR (UN) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Informative)
It is enabling legislation - a statute that allows particular laws to be passed by secondary legislation (also called a statutory instrument - basically legislation that is 'passed' by a minister or a committee of ministers rather than the entire Parliament). It may sound undemocratic but it's inevitable - Parliament could not possibly scrutinise and pass enough legislation to deal with the pace at which the world changes. The power has to be devolved somewhere, and devolving it to Ministers at least has the advantage that someone visible is accountable for it, which means that the power is generally used sensibly and sparingly.
In this case the power, to my mind, seems more extensive than is appropriate for secondary legislation - I'm not defending it, just explaining why it is being done the way it is. There is some comfort in the fact that the Bill is still in the very early stages of the process and extensive secondary powers are the sort of thing that are often removed or curtailed during the debates.
Re:What are Brits control freaks? (Score:3, Informative)
It used to be the Liberal Democrats, then they finally got some power and decided that civil liberties weren't so desirable once they were in the government.