General Article Broad support for increased surveillance powers

Topic Selected: Privacy
This article is 9 years old. Click here to view the latest articles for this topic.

British people say the police and intelligence agencies should retain all of their communications data for 12 months – but tend to oppose a ban on encryption software.

The attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last week has added fresh impetus to the Conservatives’ ongoing struggle to introduce new surveillance legislation. The Draft Communications Data Bill 2012 (dubbed the ‘snoopers charter’) would have extended data retention obligations on communications companies to include the metadata of social media, email and Internet voice calls; however, it was blocked by the Lib Dems. Now there is even greater need for such legislation, says David Cameron, because newer forms of encrypted communication such as WhatsApp and Snapchat may be ‘unreadable’ by intelligence.

YouGov research for the Sunday Times finds the British public supportive of increasing the security services’ access to public communications in order to fight terrorism (by 52–31%).

Most people (53%) say that, ...

Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?

Sign up now for an immediate no obligation FREE TRIAL and view the entire collection