Every parent a suspect

March of the state spies: One in 78 adults came under state-sanctioned surveillance last year

Britain's extraordinary march towards a surveillance state is revealed today by shock new figures.

They show that one request is made every minute for officials to spy on someone's phone records or email accounts.

The number of Big Brother snooping missions by police, town halls and other public bodies has soared by 44 per cent in two years.

Spying on the public: One adult in 78 has come under some type of surveillance - from storing petrol without a licence to not quarantining a dog

Last year there were 504,073 new cases - an average of 1,381 a day. It is the equivalent of one adult in 78 coming under state-sanctioned surveillance.

The snoopers are using a law originally aimed at terror suspects. But their targets include people suspected of storing petrol without a licence and bringing a dog into the country without quarantining it.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said last night: 'It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year.

'The Government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, not a blueprint. We are still a long way from living under the Stasi - but it beggars belief that it is necessary to spy on one in every 78 adults.'

The requests to intercept email and telephone records were made under the hugely controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

A total of 653 state bodies, including 474 local councils, are allowed to use its surveillance powers.

CCTV nation: The laws were originally brought in as an anti-terror measure, but are instead becoming a way of life

The Daily Mail has discovered that Sandwell Borough Council checked phone records to locate a bogus faith healer, while Lewisham Council used the anti-terror power to pursue a rogue removal firm and a rogue pharmacist.

Kent County Council carried out 23 phone checks as part of probes into storing petrol illegally and breaking the law over importing a dog.

Other bodies authorised to carry out surveillance include the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and prison governors.

Chris Huhne: 'The state is spying on half a million people'

They are not allowed to find out the content of phone calls and emails, but can access details of when and to whom they were made or sent.

People who are found to have done no wrong have no right to know they were snooped on.

The figure for access requests in 2008 emerged in a report by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy.

In a previous report, based on nine months in 2006, the Commissioner said there had been 253,557 requests, the equivalent of 338,000 over a full year.

The Lib Dems said this shows a 44 per cent increase between 2006 and 2008. The vast majority are understood to have been approved, though no figures are available.

Mr Huhne said it made a mockery of a supposed crackdown on the use of RIPA by the Home Office.

He added: 'We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state but without adequate safeguards. Having the Home Secretary in charge of authorisation is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.'

Alarmingly, in 2008 there were 595 'errors' by public authorities and the private firms who supply them with phone and e-mail information.

One of the most common mistakes was typing in the wrong phone number when making a request - leading to details being disclosed about the wrong person.

Sir Paul said: 'Errors may result in catastrophic consequences for members of the public'.

He cited a police investigation into a paedophile ring in which an address for a suspect was obtained from internet records. It led to the arrest of an entirely innocent man.

Despite the huge number of requests, the Home Office says there is a need to go further than giving public bodies access to phone and internet records.

Under plans unveiled earlier this year, the police and security services would gain access to the public's every internet click and phone call.

This would include, for the first time, monitoring the use of social networking sites such as Facebook. Every internet and phone company would have to allocate an ID to each customer.

They would then have to store details of calls, text messages and internet sites for a minimum of 12 months. The actual content of calls and emails would not be kept.

As well as phone and email checks, councils and other public bodies have been using actual covert surveillance, though undecoveragents or hidden cameras.

Last year, councils and government departments such as benefits officials were given 9,894 authorisations for this, up from 9,535 a year earlier.

The police and the security services were given 16,118 direct surveillance authorisations, giving a total of more than 26,000, or 71 every day.

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Government plans to install CCTV in 20,000 homes

The UK Government’s Children’s Secretary Ed Balls has announced a controversial new CCTV monitoring scheme, in which thousands of problem families are to be monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Balls claims that the £400 million “sin bin” scheme will put up to 20,000 problem families under 24-hour surveillance in their own homes, to ensure children go to bed and school on time and eat proper meals.

“Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction,” reads a report in the Sunday Express.

Family Intervention Projects

Mr Balls wants every local authority to fund such ‘Family Intervention Projects‘, noting that: “This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem.

“There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support.”

Pupils and their families will have to sign ‘Home School Agreements’ which set out parents’ duties to make sure their kids attend school.

However, privacy campaigners are already up in arms over the latest government plans to install surveillance tech within people’s homes.

Source: RINF News

Government allows staff to abuse privacy laws

Councils are failing to prosecute staff caught using a sensitive government database to snoop on celebrities and members of the public, disclosures under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed.

Computer Weekly has established that staff from at least 34 local authorities have misused the Department of Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Customer Information System (CIS) database to look up personal details of the public.

The database, which holds 92 million records on the population, underpins the government’s ID card programme. It stores sensitive data such as ethnicity, relationship history and whether someone is being investigated for fraud.

Nine staff have been quietly sacked from their local authority jobs for abusing the database, nine have been given official warnings, two have been suspended, four resigned and six had their database access privileges removed, Freedom of Information requests lodged by Computer Weekly have revealed.

But none of the local authorities have chosen to bring prosecutions against their staff for abusing their access to the CIS database.

Abuse of access rights

The revelation has promoted accusations that local authorities and the DWP are trying to keep the breaches quiet.

Phil Booth, national organiser for campaign group No2ID, said, “They are reluctant to prosecute because that will give the wrong message that the database is insecure from the inside.”

“These are the people we are supposed to be able to trust,” he said.

“It is the job of the keepers of the National Identity Register to keep external hackers out. The problem is insider access by people already authorised.”

Local authorities are required to sign a Memorandum of Understanding that permits them to access the “restricted data” on the CIS. It contains the threat of criminal prosecution of staff who abuse their access rights.

“DWP will consider prosecuting individuals for misuse of information held on CIS. DWP will support your local authority to ensure appropriate disciplinary or prosecution action is taken in serious cases,” it states.

The Memorandum of Understanding gives the DWP rights to withdraw CIS access from local authorities when “any individual user is suspected of misusing the system”.

Data and the law

But many of the councils told Computer Weekly that their decision not to prosecute staff who have used the CIS database to snoop on members of the public was taken in consultation with the DWP.

Peter Sommer, an expert witness in computer crime cases and visiting professor at the London School of Economics, said the breaches have raised concerns that the law might be too weak.

The Computer Misuse Act could be used to prosecute someone for unauthorised access to a database, he said, but not for looking at information they should not see on a database they are authorised to use.

The Memorandum of Understanding between local authorities and the DWP says that requirements to keep data on the CIS database confidential are “underpinned by legislation” in the Data Protection Act 1998, the Social Security Administration Act 1992 and the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

“[This] binds DWP and your local authority to handle customers’ personal information in confidence… Your local authority has an explicit responsibility for the security of the information and is accountable for the actions of users with access to the CIS,” it says.

The Social Security Administration Act 1992 could be used to send people to prison for snooping on social security databases they were otherwise authorised to access, but only if it were proven they had disclosed their findings to others, say experts.

In at least one instance, a council worker passed on information to a family member. The worker was given a warning.

A DWP spokesman said, “It is the duty of local authorities to consider and enforce what is appropriate, including legal action against their employees.”

National Identity Scheme

A Home Office spokesman said the CIS breaches should not reflect badly on the National Identity Scheme, which is still in development. The CIS might be pegged as the biographical store for the Identity Scheme, he said, but Home Office data would be stored separately from data held by the DWP and protected by “strict access controls”.

“IPS [Identity and Passport Service] will make the systems supporting the National Identity Scheme as secure as possible, building on an excellent track record with the current passport database,” he said.

Source: RINF News

The web needs a highway code

Following the BT/Phorm saga, the government must clear up confusion over consumer protection and monitoring software

BT's announcement that it is dropping its involvement with Phorm "for the moment" is unsurprising. The telecoms giant has a high level of trust among consumers, and pushing forward with the controversial web monitoring and profiling system would have been a very dangerous move for the company. It might have destroyed BT customers' trust in the company had they felt that their web traffic was being intercepted in a way they did not understand. Even with reassurance that there would be an "opt-in" system, Phorm's plans did not take account of public worry of just what this would mean in reality.

The government's role in the affair has been dubious. It has never taken responsibility for ensuring that all players were clear about what protection consumers could expect from the law under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and whether it was enforceable over interceptions of the BT/Phorm kind. Despite constant questioning, the government would only say that "it was a matter for the courts" to decide. The Home Office may have its own use for deep packet inspection for intercepting web traffic, but it is mistaken if it thinks ambiguity in the commercial sector would help the technology develop unhindered.

One of the main opponents of the Phorm-type of monitoring is the web's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, who branded it as "snooping". He has been appointed as a special adviser to the government. Leaving the government is Lord Carter, the erstwhile communications minister who was a Phorm enthusiast. The Information Commissioner's Office remains in its Alice-in-Wonderland position of backing Phorm's technology, provided it complies with data protection laws – which, of course, is the unresolved issue. Another player is Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom. The telecoms watchdog has a regulatory role but also an interest in ensuring some resolution to the parlous position that the media has found itself in regarding advertising.

One of the primary roles for the government is to create certainty for citizens and for business. In this sorry saga it has created uncertainty and it was left to the EU to take a line on the original trials, which were ruled illegal. The government knows that there is now an information superhighway where everyone is busy trying to put up billboards. When roads became very busy with cars, a highway code and a planning system was developed to prevent dangerous situations. What is needed now is a similar clear plan for the web highway.

Source: The Guardian