Every Website You Visit Could Be Stored By ISPs Under New UK Law
Every website you visit over the past year could be stored by internet companies, if proposed British law is passed.
The proposal comes from home secretary Theresa May, who says the increased internet surveillance powers are designed to help security services fight terrorism.
The draft of the Investigatory Powers Bill, which is currently being unveiled in the Commons, says intelligence services would be able to obtain the personal internet history and phone records of UK citizens.
These records would be stored for the past 12 months, and would be accessible by the police and security services, but only if they get judicial authorisation.
This is a change from the previous arrangement, where the home secretary and senior ministers could sign off on allowing security services to access the online behaviour of suspected criminals and terrorists.
The proposed powers would allow the government to access basic data on domain addresses visited by UK citizens, rather than the specific pages they visited.
This basic domain information is what would have to be stored by ISPs for the past 12 months.
The move allows the government to use data-mining programs it says are vital to tracking terrorists, paedophiles and finding missing people.
However, the draft bill says that councils would not be able to view the records.
The proposals the government has included in this plan – making citizens’ basic browsing data accessible by the government – are banned in the US, Canada, Australia and all European countries.
David Cameron has called the bill “one of the most important this House will discuss”, saying that “we must help the police and security and intelligence services to keep us safe.”
The draft is being revealed by Theresa May in the House of Commons, after which it will be scrutinised and debated before a final bill is created.