UK Government To Revise Snooping Bill

megla writes "The BBC is reporting that the Draft Communications Bill is going to be re-written following widespread opposition. The hugely controversial bill would, as it stands, require ISPs to retain vast amounts of data and grant broad powers to authorities to access it, in some cases without needing any permission at all. For those who are interested in the gritty details the first parliamentary report into the legislation is sharply critical at times. This is good news for anyone in the UK who values their privacy, but it may not be enough. Many would prefer to see the bill scrapped entirely." Opposition to the bill, at least in its original form, isn't just from crazy civil libertarian types, either; reader judgecorp points out that it even includes Deputy prime minister of Britain Nick Clegg.

No to big brother!

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't need to be revised, it needs to be scrapped!

Re:Clegg's making a stand against it.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

For those not familiar with UK politics, I'll just point out here that some of the claims in the parent AC post are objectively wrong. For example, not all Lib Dem MPs reneged on the tuition fees commitment (the pledge mentioned by the parent poster).

And the apology [youtube.com] was funny...

Re:Crazy civil libertarian types?

[megla]

I'm sincerely hoping the submitter was being sarcastic about that. Because civil liberties shouldn't be a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue, it should be an every-wing issue. It's the fundamental idea of modern democracy, and should never be negotiable.

As the submitter, I'd like to point out that the final paragraph was added by the editor and I also think the "crazy libertarians" line is a little weird, especially for somewhere like Slashdot which has generally liberal views on technology and privacy.

Re:Clegg's making a stand against it.

[TheRaven64]

For those unfamiliar with UK politics, Nick Clegg is the member of a minority party that gained power as part of a coalition. A lot of people who voted for them are unhappy that, in joining the coalition, they've had to make some compromises and have only managed to achieve some of their objectives. These people would, presumably, much rather that they'd stayed out and achieved none of them, allowing smug LibDem voters to keep claiming that things aren't their fault.