UK spy agencies ‘privacy invasions’
p2pnet.net news:- Secret agencies and other authorised bodies made almost 450,000 requests to spy on people’s telephone calls, emails and post by in just over a year, says Britain’s Interceptions of Communications Commissioner.
The first report of its kind, ‘also revealed that nearly 4,000 errors were reported in a 15-month period from 2005 to 2006,’ says The Times Online. ‘While most appeared to concern ‘lower-level data’ such as requests for telephone lists and individual e-mail addresses, 67 were mistakes concerning direct interception of communications.”
Human-rights campaigners said the revelations are signs of a, ‘creeping contempt for our personal privacy,’ says the story, going on:
‘The disclosures came as Tony Blair admitted that the fingerprints of everyone obtaining identity cards could be checked against nearly a million unsolved crimes.’
The ’spy watchdog’ monitored 795 bodies empowered to seek out communications data. They included MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, the signals intelligence centre in Cheltenham, as well as 52 police forces, 475 local authorities and 108 other organisations such as the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Services Authority, says the story, and, ‘Between them they made 439,000 requests for communications information over the 15-month period, says the story.
‘This is a massive move away from the presumption in Britain that a man is innocent until proven guilty,’ The Times Online has shadow home secretary David Davis saying. ‘Tony Blair has admitted that the authorities will go on a fishing expedition through the files of innocent people to try to match them up to unsolved crimes.
‘This is completely contrary to undertakings given throughout the course of the Bill in the Houses of Parliament and would be a major invasion of privacy. Mr Blair clearly does not realise that fingerprint technology is not infallible. With the vast number of crimes involved it is virtually guaranteed there will be errors and massive miscarriages of justice in a number of cases.’
The commissioner, Sir Swinton Thomas, also says it’s time to lift the ban on tapping the phones of MPs and peers, introduced by the government of Harold Wilson 40 years ago, but, ‘rejected the suggestion of allowing intercept material on terrorists and organised criminals to be used in evidence in trials’.
Also See:
The Times Online – Privacy row as checks on phones and e-mails hit 439,000, February 20, 2007
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