The Information Commissioner is to be congratulated for taking the side of sanity.

It should be obvious by now, to all interested parties, that the Investigatory Powers Bill is not about fighting terrorism but controlling citizens.

It should be renamed the “Big Brother Bill”, to emphasize the amount of surveillance it would impose on us.

The information commissioner’s office has heavily criticised the draft Investigatory Powers bill for attacking individuals’ privacy, particularly in relation to the apparent requirement on communication providers to weaken or break their data encryption at the government’s request.

The privacy watchdog also told the parliamentary committee responsible for scrutinising the bill that “little justification” was given for one of the most controversial aspects of the proposed legislation: a new requirement on communications providers to store comms data for 12 months.

Weighing in on the long-running debate over security services’ desire to render encrypted communications amenable to interception, it said encryption “is vital to help ensure the security of personal data generally”.

Source: Privacy watchdog attacks snooper’s charter over encryption | Technology | The Guardian

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