The rising public cost of communications surveillance

It's moderately interesting to see that the money that the Home Office spent on ‘sponsoring systems to enable communications service providers to store communications data that they are required to retain [...] or retain voluntarily’ under a couple of security-related laws has increased from £84,582.23 in 2004–5 to £10,175,527.73 in 2008-9. So public spending is about 120 times greater now than it was five years ago.

I wonder how much ‘bigger’ the communications world has grown in five years.

See Hansard for 9 July 2009. NB times, locations and people – and not content – are stated as being stored. The mandatory storage requirement comes from European Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC and not from the UK’s own legislation.

UK spooks lectured

GHCQ had the benefit of these twelve succinct slides on privacy, trust and biometrics delivered by Ian Brown of Oxford Internet Institute. A useful experience, I hope.

Via @monkchips.

Less security please: IIa

So the UK Government Home Office now likes to offer ‘comfort’ to a company that intercepts network traffic for commercial gain? Steady on, Jacqui!

Via @monkchips.

Less security please: II

Well, the UK Government lumbers on, taking the very ease with which social media has come to prominence as a licence to rack up the surveillance powers it gives to the authorities on our behalf. NO2ID’s press release reports that the proposals, announced today and weighing in at a bargain recession-beating price of £12 billion, will include ‘probes’ in all datacentres allowing officials to sample whatever they choose. Slow down Jacqui!
Thanks to ORG for notification, via @tobybryans.

Barcamp Transparency in Oxford

Just a pointer to this putative event in the Summer. Its scope is, as I understand it, the full gamut of digital rights. Could be quite something.

Less security please

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/19/civil-liberties-terrorism. "One thing I can tell you is that if you ask the British people they will always choose more security." Do we still think this is true?