back to article UK draft super-spy law 'not fit for purpose,' say 100s of senior lawyers

An open letter signed by hundreds of senior lawyers and several high-profile QCs (Queen's Counsels) has criticized the UK's Conservative government for pushing a surveillance bill that is "not fit for purpose." More than 200 lawyers, including several who have been closely involved in cases surrounding evidence from the …

  1. Frederic Bloggs

    Sigh...

    The European Court of Justice has nothing to do with the European Union, other than it lives in a town in the EU. I don't doubt that if the UK leaves the EU, it will likely also attempt to extricate itself from the the ECJ. But it will have to do that separately.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sigh...

      And for leaving the ECJ what better approach than some ill-drafted legislation rammed through under urgency while the "opposition" wrings its hands ineffectually?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sigh...

        while the "opposition" wrings its hands ineffectually

        Fixed that for you: While opposition pretends to wring its hands ineffectually while tacitly supporting it.

        What people forget is that this bill is mostly putting in law a long list of dubious practices which were performed under royal prerogative prior to that. There is nothing new there - it is stuff which was done, just not announced.

        Really, if this is what was being done on a casual basis for decade(s) with no legal basis, do we really live in a democracy and is there a rule of law?

        1. Fred Dibnah

          Re: Sigh...

          "......do we really live in a democracy and is there a rule of law?"

          Given the atrocious FPTP voting system and the ability of the rich, powerful, and well-connected to work the legal and political system to their advantage, my answers are No we don't, and No there isn't.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Sigh...

            Sorry it isn't FPTP . In most cases it is CTTP ( Closest to the post)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How is it pronounced?

      "The European Court of Justice has nothing to do with the European Union, other than it lives in a town in the EU."

      Wrong, the ECJ is very much part of the EU - it's the EU's highest court. You're thinking of the European Court of Human Rights, which predates the EU and is separate from it (and "above it" in the sense that the EU has joined it as a member).

    3. hunnifer

      Re: Sigh...

      ECJ in Luxembourg is an EU institution arbitrating on the EU Treaties, Directives, Regulations, Shopping lists etc.

      I Think you are confusing it with the European Court of Human Rights which rules on The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. But you are right, once the EU/ECJ is gone, ECHR is next on the list.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: Sigh...

      Role: Ensuring EU law is interpreted and applied the same in every EU country; ensuring countries and EU institutions abide by EU law

      Source:

      http://europa.eu/about-eu/institutions-bodies/court-justice/index_en.htm

    5. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Re: Sigh...

      I don't doubt that if the UK leaves the EU, it will likely also attempt to extricate itself from the the ECJ/

      The point being that, whilst a member of the EU, the UK is unable to do so. Leaving the EU would be a prerequisite to withdrawing from the ECJ (as pointed out by others above), and also the ECHR. No doubt the likes of IDS and Theresa May are so in favour of 'brexit'. The thought of having those sort of authoritarian fundamentalists unregulated gives me a cold sweat. Personally, I think human rights are a very important and valuable thing. The unfettered right-wingers see them as an obstacle in the way of total domination...

  2. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    "Government in pushing barely thought out law through commons shocker".

    Sigh... Some things never change..

  3. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Devil

    SNP

    Also known to like their databases, also abstained, also hypocrites.

    1. Ian 55

      Re: SNP

      SNP: prepared to vote against English shops being allowed to do something, not prepared to protect the civil liberties of Scottish citizens.

      That's worse than hypocrisy.

  4. PaulAb

    200 Lawyers!!

    So it takes 200 lawyers to realise we're looking at crap on toilet paper. Well thanks M'lud.

    I remember the Halcyon days when we all floated around, then that bastard Newton invented gravity.....CRUNCH! 2 teeth missing and I now take a bus.

    Gravity didn't exist until we were told by a smart arse but strangely, we used it daily.

    200 lawyers add weight to the bleeding obvious....YEhaaar

    1. Chris G

      Re: 200 Lawyers!!

      @ PaulAb; with gravity in mind, two hundred top lawyers do add some weight to the argument against the IPB.

      As an aside the company I do most of my work for has just told me it wants to introduce employee tracking, I told them to FUCK OFF!

      The spy on everything attitude is not only governments.

      Too many people with too much interest in what people are doing, what happened to being adult and professional and having some trust in each other?

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: 200 Lawyers!!

        Tell them you fully support their employee monitoring and you will yourself be constantly videoing your time on site, their health and safety procedures, their staff behaviour and will be insisting on an audit of their manager's expenses and the company's VAT and income tax returns.

  5. cantankerous swineherd

    the purpose of the snoopers charter is to criminalise encryption. it fulfils that purpose admirably.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Childcatcher

    One expensive letter

    A QC is a seriously expensive beast (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-401488/Britains-lawyers-charge-staggering-5-000-hour.html - and that is from 2005!)

    The (potential) cost of 100s of lawyers and QCs time to be involved in this letter? Priceless.

  7. Fonant
    Black Helicopters

    On the plus side

    On a slightly positive note, this afternoon's nonsense in the House of Commons has finally pushed me to install PPTPD on one of my Linux servers so I have a basic VPN. I've also played with Squid as a web proxy on a remote server connected via an SSH tunnel. My knowledge of security practices is thus slightly greater than it used to be :)

    So if this becomes law my ISP will not be able to log very many "Internet Connection Records" (still waiting to find out what these are!).

    Of course terrists will already be doing this, and using end-to-end encryption. The Bill merely makes it legal for government authorities to snoop on the less-well-informed bulk of the population.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: On the plus side

      Good skills on having a crack. Bad skills for choosing pptp. It's a bugger with firewalls and is considered crackable but not trivially, it's far better than nothing at all by a long way.

      Have a bash at OpenVPN if you can - it's a proper job. pfSense (FreeBSD - but close enough to Linux to be familiar and has a web interface) has it built in and negates the requirement for getting to grips with easy-rsa (which can be a bit of a fiddle). You could always run it in a (K)VM on a Linux box. There are also lots of little Linux distros for router/firewall.

      If you do use OpenVPN and get it to listen on 443/tcp it looks very like another website and hence becomes instantly firewall friendly. Couple with a Dynamic DNS service if you have a DHCP WAN at home.

      1. Youngone Silver badge

        Re: On the plus side

        @ gerdesj

        Thanks for that. I got my pfSense box up and running last week, but haven't had a chance to have a look at OpenVPN yet.

        For a Linux user pfSense is easy, I haven't needed any CLI stuff at all yet.

    2. Palpy

      Re: "...terrists will already be doing this..."

      You know, I would have agreed with you until recently. But the Paris terrorists encrypted nothing much, apparently. And the San Bernardino killers posted on Facebook, though not their explicit plans.

      It's odd. Perhaps we ascribe more cunning to the evildoers than they actually bother to use? Their messages are really needles in a large haystack, and it appears that the lack of ability on the part of Tha Lawr has more to do with their few successes than cleverness in using black-ops comms.

      Anyway, that's off-topic. Now back to regularly-scheduled bashing of dimwitted pols.

    3. Adam 52 Silver badge

      Re: On the plus side

      As an aside, if you've got ssh anyway what does squid give you that ssh -D doesn't?

      1. Fonant

        Re: On the plus side

        No idea - I should have read the ssh man page. Looks like I don't need squid. Even easier to avoid my ICRs being logged!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Childcatcher

    Fancy a laugh?

    Have a read of the pdf linked in para two of the article (IPB). Not all 299 pages of it unless you are lawyerly skilled but the first 30 odd pages of intro and other nonsense.

    The box out justifications for wholesale destruction of civil liberties is almost laughable or would be if it wasn't so sad. It seems that old fashioned policing and intel gathering have suddenly ceased to work and hence we should all be monitored and be considered suspects by default.

  9. Vimes

    There are something like 650 MPs aren't there? Isn't calling the lib dems a 'main party' a bit of a stretch when they only have 8 MPs? A little over 1% of the total?

    Even in the house of lords they still have something like a third less than the group of cross bench peers (108 as opposed to 178 out of a total of 816).

    http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/lords/composition-of-the-lords/

    1. Adam 52 Silver badge

      They got 8% of the vote though, which makes them the 4th most popular party. Or another way to view it is that they're one fifth of a Tory party and one quarter of a Labour party.

      Not sure if that makes them a main party or not.

      1. Ian 55

        The LibDems used their veto to stop the Tories introducing this crap five years ago, so yes, I'd say major party.

        People might complain about aspects of the coalition - and certainly took it out against the LibDem MPs - but in four years time, you'll be wishing there had been another one.

        1. Vimes

          The LibDems used their veto to stop the Tories introducing this crap five years ago

          isn't the only reason this is being introduced now the 2016 cutoff date for DRIPA? The date that the lib dems themselves voted for when they rejected the earlier date of the end of 2014 when they also voted *FOR* DRIPA?

          As for stopping the Tories, they ended up enabling them most of the time. Remember the bedroom tax or higher tuition fees?

      2. Vimes

        @Adam 52

        ...or a little under two thirds of a UKIP (I believe they got something like 12.5% of the vote?)

  10. WonkoTheSane
    Headmaster

    "Senior lawyers"?

    If they're serious, they should offer to defend ANYONE charged under this law "pro bono" (for free)!

  11. Winkypop Silver badge
    Trollface

    It's not about what is RIGHT.

    It's all about what they WANT.

    Priorities people, priorities!

    - Papiere, Bitte

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Safe Habour

    If the subjects of Her Britannic Majesty's realm decide it to go it alone from the EU come June 23rd the IPB could have one of those unintended consequences we have all heard about.

    Data from EU citizens that is stored outside of the EU (or in servers directly controlled from outside) has to meet the Safe Harbour criteria. The USA failed on this because the NSA/FBI have rights of access to US controlled data wherever it is. Facebook servers based and controlled in Ireland are open to the NSA. NSA assurances that they wouldn't break Safe Harbour standards were blown apart by Snowden. It looks like the IPB will give our Plod and Spooks just as much access and the remaining EU countries could get very sniffy about that once we are out of the EU. The consequences for UK multinational companies operating in the EU could be very interesting.

    The EU is like Hotel California ...........

    1. P. Lee

      Re: Safe Habour

      >It looks like the IPB will give our Plod and Spooks just as much access and the remaining EU countries could get very sniffy about that once we are out of the EU.

      And what is different if we stay in?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Re: Safe Habour

        the EU courts cut our Gov's legs off at the knees for being a bunch of *****

      2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        Re: Safe Habour

        And what is different if we stay in?

        The ECJ rules this law illegal, and gives the UK gov a stern talking to, which they promptly ignore. They then fine our government, which comes out of our taxes. Our government then spins this as the EU taking our money, whilst still not doing what they are constitutionally bound to do. There is a general election. The next government the repeals the bill.

        1. sabroni Silver badge

          Re: The next government then repeals the bill.

          Wouldn't hold your breath for that....

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Safe Habour

        What's different if we stay in is that the practice can be challenged in the European courts.

  13. Robert E A Harvey

    What a surprise

    After all, every other government policy is so well-founded, based upon valid research, and entirely without unexpected consequences.

    oh, hang on....

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