CyberLaw Blog

Archive for October 30th, 2009

EU – Telecoms: Commission steps up UK legal action over privacy and personal data protection:  (RAPID)
The Commission has moved to the second phase of an infringement proceeding over the UK to provide its citizens with the full protection of EU rules on privacy and personal data protection when using electronic communications. European laws state that EU countries must ensure the confidentiality of people’s electronic communications like email or internet browsing by prohibiting their unlawful interception and surveillance without the user’s consent. As these rules have not been fully put in place in the national law of the UK, the Commission will send the UK a reasoned opinion. Specifically, the Commission has identified three gaps in the existing UK rules governing the confidentiality of electronic communications: 1) There is no independent national authority to supervise interception of communications 2) The current UK law ? the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) ? authorises interception of communications not only where the persons concerned have consented to interception but also when the person intercepting the communications has ‘reasonable grounds for believing’ that consent to do so has been given. These UK law provisions do not comply with EU rules defining consent as freely given, specific and informed indication of a person’s wishes 3) The RIPA provisions are limited to ‘intentional’ interception only, whereas the EU law requires Members States to prohibit and to ensure sanctions against any unlawful interception regardless of whether committed intentionally or not.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

Mandelson’s piracy tactics leave Tories with a dilemma: James Blunt, who wrote to Lord Mandelson on the vexed subject of internet piracy, called the internet service providers ‘drug pushers’ in an e-mail that the minister saw fit to publish this week.

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)

Police log ‘domestic extremists’:

Thousands of activists monitored on network of overlapping databases

Police are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases.

The hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor ‘domestic extremists’, the Guardian can reveal in the first of a three-day series into the policing of protests. Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime.

Senior officers say domestic extremism, a term coined by police that has no legal basis, can include activists suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience.

Three national police units responsible for combating domestic extremism are run by the ‘terrorism and allied matters’ committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo). In total, it receives £9m in public funding, from police forces and the Home Office, and employs a staff of 100.

An investigation by the Guardian can reveal:

• The main unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), runs a central database which lists thousands of so-called domestic extremists. It filters intelligence supplied by police forces across England and Wales, which routinely deploy surveillance teams at protests, rallies and public meetings. The NPOIU contains detailed files on individual protesters who are searchable by name.

• Vehicles associated with protesters are being tracked via a nationwide system of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. One man, who has no criminal record, was stopped more than 25 times in less than three years after a ‘protest’ marker was placed against his car after he attended a small protest against duck and pheasant shooting. ANPR ‘interceptor teams’ are being deployed on roads leading to protests to monitor attendance.

• Police surveillance units, known as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and Evidence Gatherers, record footage and take photographs of campaigners as they enter and leave openly advertised public meetings. These images are entered on force-wide databases so that police can chronicle the campaigners’ political activities. The information is added to the central NPOIU.

• Surveillance officers are provided with ’spotter cards’ used to identify the faces of target individuals who police believe are at risk of becoming involved in domestic extremism. Targets include high-profile activists regularly seen taking part in protests. One spotter card, produced by the Met to monitor campaigners against an arms fair, includes a mugshot of the comedian Mark Thomas.

• NPOIU works in tandem with two other little-known Acpo branches, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Netcu), which advises thousands of companies on how to manage political campaigns, and the National Domestic Extremism Team, which pools intelligence gathered by investigations into protesters across the country.

Denis O’Connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, will next month release the findings of his national review of policing of protests. He has already signalled he anticipates wide scale change. His inspectors, who were asked to review tactics in the wake of the Metropolitan police’s controversial handling of the G20 protests, are considering a complete overhaul of the three Acpo units, which they have been told lack statutory accountability.

Acpo’s national infrastructure for dealing with domestic extremism was set up with the backing of the Home Office in an attempt to combat animal rights activists who were committing serious crimes. Senior officers concede the criminal activity associated with these groups has receded, but the units dealing with domestic extremism have expanded their remit to incorporate campaign groups across the political spectrum, including anti-war and environmental groups that have only ever engaged in peaceful direct action.

All three units divide their work into four categories of domestic extremism: animal rights campaigns; far-right groups such as the English Defence League; ‘extreme leftwing’ protest groups, including anti-war campaigners; and ‘environmental extremism’ such as Climate Camp and Plane Stupid campaigns.

Anton Setchell, who is in overall command of Acpo’s domestic extremism remit, said people who find themselves on the databases ’should not worry at all’. But he refused to disclose how many names were on the NPOIU’s national database, claiming it was ‘not easy’ to count. He estimated they had files on thousands of people. As well as photographs, he said FIT surveillance officers noted down what he claimed was harmless information about people’s attendance at demonstrations and this information was fed into the national database.

He said he could understand that peaceful activists objected to being monitored at open meetings when they had done nothing wrong. ‘What I would say where the police are doing that there would need to be the proper justifications,’ he said.

Data-losing companies may be forced to spill to public: “

European Commission mulls beef-up of law

The European Commission will consider passing new laws forcing organisations that lose personal data to go public with that loss. The Commission has until now been opposed to the creation of wide-ranging data breach notification requirements.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

More than 5 million people now on DNA database: “

Still growing despite court ruling

The estimated number of people whose DNA profile is stored by the government has broken the five million mark for the first time.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

UK gets final warning over Phorm trials: “

Change the law, or we’ll see you in court

Updated The UK government today came a step closer to international embarrassment over its failure to act against BT and Phorm for their secret trials of mass internet snooping technology.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

I love the title of this article

Government to protect children from zombie paedophiles: “

The dead may walk – but they can’t work in teaching

The Vetting database will protect children not only from living predators – but from dead ones too.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

DEFRA loses tapes – and plot: “

Situation normal – usual staggering government incompetence

It has been revealed that the UK’s Rural Payments Agency (RPA) lost tapes five months ago which contained the payment details of more than 100,000 farmers in the UK. It told DEFRA and DEFRA told nobody else, certainly not the farmers.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

German rail firm pays €1.1m fine over employee snooping: “Germany’s national rail company has agreed to pay a €1.1 million for spying on its employees for more than a decade.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Pirate Bay Founders Banned From Running The Site:

In August the bandwidth supplier to The Pirate Bay was ordered by a court to disconnect the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker from the Internet.

Within hours the site had relocated to a new host, which immediately received similar threats. After periods of downtime, the Pirate Bay eventually regained stability in recent days.

Although these attempts failed, the authorities weren’t about to give up in their quest to shut down the site.

The Stockholm District Court has now ordered that two of the site’s founder members – Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij – are now banned from operating the site. Failure to comply with the court’s decision will result in fines of 500,000 kronor ($71,600) each.

Ex-Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde, who appears to be excluded from the decision, is notably annoyed, noting that neither the founders nor the site are located in Sweden.

‘The Stockholm City Court is located in Stockholm. Stockholm is in Sweden. Swedish borders apply. Frederick and Godfrid live outside Sweden, even outside the EU. The Pirate Bay is outside the EU,’ he told SR.

‘How then can the Stockholm District Court, Sweden, get to decide that people abroad must not work on a site in another country?’

This is a breaking news story, to be updated