London: The UK on Wednesday unveiled a tough cyber-snooping Bill which will make it compulsory for internet firms to store every citizen’s web history for at least a year as part of new anti-terror measures.
New surveillance powers given to police and security services will allow access to personal web history under the provisions of the draft Investigatory Powers Bill announced in Parliament by UK home secretary Theresa May.
“The task of law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies has become vastly more demanding in this digital age. It is right that those protecting us have the powers they need to do so but it is the role of government and Parliament to ensure there are limits to those powers,” May said in the House of Commons.
The Bill, which will now have to be passed by Parliament to become law, proposes to order communications companies, such as broadband firms, to hold basic details of the services that someone has accessed online.
The details would include forcing firms to hold a schedule of which websites someone visits and the apps they connect to through smartphones or tablets.
Police and other agencies would then be able to access these records in pursuit of criminals and also seek to retrieve data in a wider range of inquiries, such as missing people.
Local councils will retain some investigatory powers, such as surveillance of benefit cheats, but they will not be able to access this online data.
“There should be no area of cyberspace which is a haven for those who seek to harm us to plot, poison minds and peddle hatred under the radar,” May said.
“But I am also clear that the exercise and scope of investigatory powers sho-uld be clearly set out and subject to stringent safeguards and robust oversight, including ‘double-lock’ authorisation for the most intrusive capabilities,” he said.
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