The UK has just passed an important law which has serious consequences for digital rights in the UK and across the rest of the world. If you haven't been playing close attention to the news over the last week, you may have heard murmurs here and there.
Here's your comprehensive guide to what's been going on.
What's been happening? Yesterday the House of Commons passed a law called DRIP, which forces communications companies to store all of your data for up to 12 months for use by the security services. Today it goes to the House of Lords, which is also expected to pass the bill.
Why is it called DRIP? That stands for "Data Retention and Investigatory Powers" -- you can read the bill yourself here if you're so inclined -- but we're guessing they didn't foresee the potential for quips about the "drip, drip, drip of your personal data into government hands".
Why are they doing this now? In April, the European Court of Justice told the UK that they had to stop forcing communications companies to store all of your data. The ruling effectively overturned a EU directive from 2006 that told EU member states (including the UK) to store communications data for between six to 24 months.
The government's response has been to basically make a new law and just continue doing it.
Ok, so they've been debating and looking at this bill for months and it's only just got passed? Not quite. The "emergency" bill was announced last week and forced through Parliament in just a day. Here's how many MPs debated it.
Just to be fair, there were slightly more MPs at the debate at other times.
But in total only 51 MPs opposed forcing it through without further scrutiny.
That's not cool You're not the only one who thinks that way
What about the Lib Dems? Surely they voted against it?
Nerp. The Lib Dems claim that they've watered down the bill so that it's safe. Plus they're pointing to a so-called "sunset clause", which means that the bill will expire in 2016 and have to be re-evaluated.
A generous take on this argument is that, well the bill won't last forever so it's not a big deal. A more skeptical person might ask that if the strategy is "pass the law and debate it later" today, why won't they say the same thing in 2016?
What was the "emergency" anyway?
When the government failed to heed the ECJ's ruling, some people went to the High Court to have it enforced and that seems to have kicked the government into action.
**Ok fine, so all this does is maintain the status quo?
Nothing has really changed, right?**
Wrong. It's true that the bill enables the government to continue what it was previously doing. But at the same time, it expands the government's ability to access data beyond the UK's borders. Here's what a group of 15 academics had to say about it in an open letter to Parliament:
In fact, Drip attempts to extend the territorial reach of the British interception powers, expanding the UK's ability to mandate the interception of communications content across the globe. It introduces powers that are not only completely novel in the United Kingdom, they are some of the first of their kind globally.
These new powers are granted in clauses 4 and 5 of the new bill, which some have interpreted as having some serious consequences.
Here's the Financial Times' legal commentator David Allen Green's take:
Fiiiiine. Ok, it's bad. But it's necessary. You know, to be safe and stuff.
Well, yeah that's the government's line (as well as Labour and the Lib Dem's line; all three parties whole-heartedly supported the bill).
A government spokesperson previously told Wired.co.uk: "DRIP is absolutely fundamental to ensure law enforcement have the powers they need to investigate crime, protect the public and ensure national security."
Which pretty much leaves us back where we left off with the Snowden debate?
I guess you could say that. If you sincerely believe that the only way to protect ordinary people from crime is to make sure that everything we send online is stored for up to a year so that the government can go back and look at it if it feels that it needs to, then you would have probably voted with the 436 MPs who thought it should be passed in one day.
But if you're even the slightest bit hesitant about this sort of mass collection of data, then you would have probably voted against rushing the bill through, like this small minority of MPs.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
