Govt snooping plan ‘hacker’s dream’

Government plans to build a giant database of the emails, texts and website visits of every person in the UK – outlined in the Communications Data Bill – have been branded a “hacker’s dream” by industry experts.
The Bill will force telecoms companies to store details of Internet use for a year to help combat crime.
Home Secretary Theresa May has claimed that the data will not be held on a single Government database, but security chiefs told the cross-party committee it would operate in a similar way, sparking warnings of the hacking threat.
One industry source said: “Everyone knows the public sector has an atrocious record on keeping data secure. Hardly a month goes by without some council or another losing highly sensitive personal information. It will be a hacker’s dream – they love nothing more than a challenge – even the Serious Crime Organisation has already been hacked.”
Privacy groups have also baulked at the plan. Internet freedom campaigner Jim Killock, of the Open Rights Group, said officials would be able to build up a complex map of individuals’ communications by examining records of “their mobile phone, their normal phone, their work email, their Facebook account and so on”.
He said this could increase the risk of personal details being hacked, as they would be held on a variety of databases with multiple access points.
And Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles claimed the filtering provisions – which would enable the authorities to drill down into the data – “are so broadly worded and so poorly drafted that it could allow mining of all the data collected, without any requirement for personal information”.
The campaigners called on the committee to recommend scrapping the Bill, rather than making suggestions to improve it as they have been tasked to do by the Government.
Rachel Robinson, policy officer for Liberty, said: “The blanket retention of data about individuals as opposed to targeted surveillance, with which we have no problem, should not be a feature of a liberal society.”
The UK is thought to be the only country in the world attempting to gather communications data in this way, although the Bill is underpinned by EU directives and the methods included in it could eventually be adopted across all 27 member states, the committee was told.

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