The report into Britain’s surveillance laws that has just been submitted to the PM by Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation David Anderson Q.C. recommends that the security services be allowed to continue collecting bulk data sets. According to the press release Anderson recommends:

“the retention subject to legal constraints of bulk collection capabilities, but subject to additional safeguards and to the addition of a new and lesser power to collect only communications data in bulk”

Techno will have more once the report’s website starts working so he can actually read it:

it seems @terrorwatchdog’s website has melted 🙁

— Sam (@smithsam) June 11, 2015

Developing…

Update: A quick skim through the report has thrown up a few snippets of interest.

Anderson lays into RIPA:

“The desire for legislative clarity is more than just tidy-mindedness. Obscure laws – and there are few more impenetrable than RIPA and its satellites – corrode democracy itself, because neither the public to whom they apply, nor even the legislators who debate and amend them, fully understand what they mean.”

Apparently encryption allows evil to flourish. So much for Snapchat.

“There may be all sorts of reasons – not least, secure encryption – why it is not physically possible to intercept a particular communication, or track a particular individual. But the power to do so needs to exist, even if it is only usable in cases where skill or trickery can provide a way around the obstacle. Were it to be otherwise, entire channels of communication could be reduced to lawless spaces in which freedom is enjoyed only by the strong, and evil of all kinds can flourish”