DEADLINE FRIDAY: Responding to draft CoP RIP Pt.I Ch.II (was RE: ZDNet UK 26/10/2001: "Home Office admits data retention plans")

[Roland Perry]

In message <005801c160c4$35c9d200$0300a8c0@aki>, Caspar Bowden
<cb@fipr.org> writes

>I suppose that with such an amazingly turgid
>document,

It's rather too much copied in huge chunks from the Act, rather than
explaining the Act in simpler language.

> a person would have to read very closely to be certain that it
>confers power to ask for a single person's traffic for one day,

Single person's for as long as you have it in the past, and for up to a
month in the future. (Noting that requests for traffic data are quite
rare, it's the subscriber's name and address that's wanted for the vast
majority of enquiries).

> or the
>entirety of records held by the ISP. With absolutely no guidance for the
>authorities on what is "proportionate" in the circumstances (it's no
>longer any business of the ISP).

2.3     Test of necessity
4.3/4.4 Description of proportionality.

>Also this is cute:
>
>"(b) Data protection safeguards
>
>7.5 Communications data, and all copies, extracts and summaries of it,
>must be handled and stored securely. In addition, the requirements of
>the Data Protection Act 19988 and its data protection principles should
>be adhered to."

That's the safeguards which public authorities (jargon for Police,
Customs etc) need to apply to the data once they have collected it from
the ISPs. eg passing the data to an outside 3rd party should normally be
refused on DPA grounds.

>Hope some people wade through this morass to submit a decent response by
>Friday
>mailto:RIPA.Pt1Ch2.draftcode.responses@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
>
>What other issues does it raise ?

I'll be putting the CoP on the Internet User Privacy Forum agenda for
Thursday; no time to discuss in detail by email today.

(http://www.iupf.org.uk, all interested persons welcome, but please RSVP
to me).
-- 
             Roland Perry | tel: +44 1733 207705 | roland@linx.org
Director of Public Policy | fax: +44 1733 207729 | http://www.linx.net
 London Internet Exchange | mbl: +44 7050 604080 |       /contact/roland