"Spring package." British version

Queen Elizabeth II approved the "Law of Jews", allowing surveillance of subjects

Korolev Elizabeth II approved the so -called “Law of Witches” on November 29, which significantly expands the legal capabilities of the British special services to monitor the subjects. The law that will enter into force in 2017 obliges providers to keep the browser history of users during the year and allows many authorities to gain access without a court decision. The largest IT companies opposed the law, and Edward Snowden called him the most dangerous in the world-nevertheless, the British deputies approved the initiative of Prime Minister Teresa May without special hesitation. "Medusa" tells what the "Law of Jews" is and why it is criticized.

What is the Law of Witches?

Officially, the new law is called the “Bill on the powers for pre-trial investigations”, it was prepared with the active participation and on the initiative of the former Minister of the Interior and the current Prime Minister of Great Britain Teresa May. This is the second attempt by May through parliament the law on the rules for surveillance of citizens: in 2013, a more stringent bill was blocked by liberal democrats.

The main provisions of the Law of Witches :

- the expansion of the legitimate capabilities of special services for targeted surveillance of citizens and mass data collection;

-an obligation for Internet providers for 12 months to keep the story of visiting sites of all users; This applies exclusively to the addresses of sites, but not specific pages on them;

- the right to access the history of visiting sites for the police, special services, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Transport and other state bodies;

- the right to a focused hacking computers in order to access information for the police and special services;

-a ban on listening to deputies and members of the House of Lords without the sanction of the Prime Minister;

-the creation of a supervisory authority, which will verify the legality and validity of access to the Internet active of citizens.

In addition to new initiatives - such as storing the browser history of users for a year - the “Jewish law” actually enshrines the practice of interception and analysis of the data to which the British intelligence agencies resorted to earlier - and about which Edward Snowden told the world (he sharply criticizes the new law). If earlier the legitimate justifications of surveillance of citizens on certain occasions were kept in British legislation disparate, now they are collected in one place. The British authorities call the document “the most transparent in the world” and claim that the law is guaranteed to protect personal information. They also emphasize that they will not follow those who do not cause any suspicions.

Why is he bad?

According to the critics of the “Law of Jews”, it gives the authorities much more opportunities for surveillance of citizens than in any other democratic country in the world and can become the basis for similar rules in countries with an authoritarian regime. The authors of the petition for the abolition of the law (it has already gathered enough votes to consider it British parliament) believe that he provides the leadership of Great Britain with unprecedented opportunities for accessing citizens even if there is no reason to suspect them of something illegal.

Google, Facebook and Microsoft opposed the law, claiming that it will lead to weakening of user data encryption systems and will have serious negative consequences for the entire IT industry. According to The Telegraph, although state bodies will not receive correspondence of citizens and specific addresses of the pages that they visit, metadata about how people behave on the Internet, quite allow you to impress a citizen - and this, in principle, can be regarded as an invasion of private life. In addition, not only police and special services, but also a large number of different state bodies will open access to these data under the new law.

The law is criticized by human rights activists who defend the rights of journalists. They argue that the “Law of Jews” will allow the police to recognize the identity of the sources of the media. The law states that with the permission of the supervisory authority, police and special services can access the correspondence of journalists, but a situation in it was added to the third reading in the House of Lords that partially protecting the confidentiality of sources. It is arranged as follows: the police must indicate that he wants to access data on the personality of the source of a journalist, and access should be provided only if a violation of the law is revealed. How it will work is unknown to the end.

“We should worry about the British Donald Trump. If we eventually come to this, and this is not so impossible, then there is already a tool for repression. <...> The present Donald Trump already has access to all the data that we collect, and we need to worry about this, ”says Liberal Democrat Paul Strasbourger, a member of the House of Lords and one of the main critics of the new law.

At the request of one of the leaders of the Labor of Tom Watson, “The Law of Jews” will be considered by the European court for compliance with the EU legislation, which is still applying to the UK.