UK Gov passes Investigatory Powers Bill, citizen's internet history viewable upon request - Search histories will be kept for a year by ISPs.

Belfast Telegraph

Organisations including the PSNI, Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to see UK citizens' entire internet browsing history in weeks.

The Investigatory Powers Bill, which was all but passed into law this week, forces internet providers to keep a full list of Internet Connection Records (ICRs) for a year, and make them available to the government if it asks.

Those ICRs effectively serve as a full list of every website that people have visited, not collecting which specific pages are visited or what's done on them but serving as a full list of every site that someone has visited and when.

And those same ICRs will be made available to a wide range of government bodies.

Those include expected law enforcement organisations like the police, the military and the secret service – but also contain bodies like the Food Standards Agency, the Gambling Commission, council bodies and the Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust.

The full list of agencies that can now ask for UK citizen's browsing history, which is laid out in Schedule 4 of the bill and was collected by Chris Yiu, is below:

Metropolitan police force

City of London police force

Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996

Police Service of Scotland

Police Service of Northern Ireland

British Transport Police

Ministry of Defence Police

Royal Navy Police

Royal Military Police

Royal Air Force Police

Security Service

Secret Intelligence Service

GCHQ

Ministry of Defence

Department of Health

Home Office

Ministry of Justice

National Crime Agency

HM Revenue & Customs

Department for Transport

Department for Work and Pensions

NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England that provide ambulance services

Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service

Competition and Markets Authority

Criminal Cases Review Commission

Department for Communities in Northern Ireland

Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland

Department of Justice in Northern Ireland

Financial Conduct Authority

Fire and rescue authorities under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004

Food Standards Agency

Food Standards Scotland

Gambling Commission

Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority

Health and Safety Executive

Independent Police Complaints Commissioner

Information Commissioner

NHS Business Services Authority

Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust

Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board

Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation

Office of Communications

Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland

Police Investigations and Review Commissioner

Scottish Ambulance Service Board

Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission

Serious Fraud Office

Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust

The same part of the act also includes the minimum office or rank that each person within those organisations must be if they want access to the records.

In the police, any viewer must be an inspector or a superintendent, for instance.
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For fellow Brits: Petition to repeal (you'll probably end up on a list just for doing this)
 
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Yeah, that's not going to get misused or anything.

Hey, at least your government has the courtesy to look you in the eyes while they fuck you make their snooping intentions public knowledge. We had to wait for some disgruntled neckbeard to fill us in on the shenanigans here in the US
 
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I'm not surprised that this got through, this was Theresa May's pet project when she was Home Secretary, the thing is this is a toned down version of the disaster that she originally had planned.

Also I'd like to have her and anyone else who pushed this through explain just how the ISP's are supposed to keep all this data, and how they are going to Police people who use VPN's and does this extend beyond anything HTTP or HTTPS? How about when I use SSH is that logged? This is a prime example why politicians shouldn't legislate technology unless they have a understanding of how it works.
 
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MayMay said:
Worth noting on that thought, they're also planning to ban 'non-conventional' porn. The party that was championed by a guy who fucked a dead pig will ban spanking because it's 'too obscene'.
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Back to the victorian age, I guess...
Ravenor said:
the thing is this is a toned down version of the disaster that she originally had planned.
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Wait what... I am almost afraid to ask, but what did they originally demand if this outrageous monument to stupidity and surveillance is what they ended up with in a watered down version?
 
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RomanesEuntDomus said:
Wait what... I am almost afraid to ask, but what did they originally demand if this outrageous monument to stupidity and surveillance is what they ended up with in a watered down version?
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Longer retention and a the list of organisations that have access to it wasn't to be public, there was also talk of it being used by the government for "Data analysis" but that was stripped out of the very first version and didn't get readded.

The British Government has really really jumped the shark with this one, it's not even funny anymore.
 
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Good, this is exactly the kind of government the British deserve to have.
 
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KotAGoR VIII said:
It sure would be unfortunate if some evil hackers released the complete Internet histories of prominent Tories.
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It'd mostly be Margaret Thatcher speeches since most Tory MPs verbally fellate her at every opportunity.
 
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