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UK ISP Internet Snooping Act in Trouble After CJEU Court Ruling

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 2016 (11:04 am) - Score 1,734

The Court of Justice of the European Union has struck a blow to the UK’s controversial Internet snooping Investigatory Powers Act 2016 by ruling that EU law does not allow “general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and location data,” except for “targeted” use against “serious crime“.

Today’s ruling stems from a long running legal challenge, which began after the UK Government’s old Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) and similar laws in other EU member states, which enabled the security services to snoop on telecoms and Internet services, was effectively declared “invalid” by the European Court of Justice (here and here).

The court found that related laws breached the “fundamental right to respect for private life and the fundamental right to the protection of personal data“, among other things. The decision forced the UK to hastily introduce a temporary Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIP), which did little to overcome the original concerns and was similarly challenged (here) by civil rights group Liberty and two ministers – David Davis MP (Conservative) and Tom Watson MP (Labour).

Since then the DRIP Act has been replaced by the even more controversial IPAct (here), which among other things forces broadband ISPs into logging a bigger slice of your Internet activity, irrespective of whether or not you’re even suspected of a crime. The data can then be requested by a variety of security and non-security related groups, all without needing a full warrant.

However today’s CJEU ruling appears to confirm that such “general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and location data” is NOT allowed under EU law, unless the data retention is both targeted (e.g. used against a specific individual or group of interest to the security services) and used in cases of “serious crime“. Individuals must also be notified if their data is accessed.

CJEU Statement (Joined Cases C-203/15 & C-698/15)

EU law precludes a general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and location data, but it is open to Members States to make provision, as a preventive measure, for targeted retention of that data solely for the purpose of fighting serious crime, provided that such retention is, with respect to the categories of data to be retained, the means of communication affected, the persons concerned and the chosen duration of retention, limited to what is strictly necessary.

Access of the national authorities to the retained data must be subject to conditions, including prior review by an independent authority and the data being retained within the EU

At present the Internet Connection Records (ICR) that the UK Government’s IPAct would appear to mandate do not appear to comply with today’s ruling, not least because the controversial data retention is anything but targeted against specific individuals or groups suspected of “serious crime“. On top of that the suspects do not have to be notified if their data is accessed.

Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, said:

“The CJEU has sent a clear message to the UK Government: blanket surveillance of our communications is intrusive and unacceptable in a democracy.

The Government knew this judgment was coming but Theresa May was determined to push through her snoopers’ charter regardless. The Government must act quickly to re-write the IPA or be prepared to go to court again.”

A Spokesperson for the Home Office said:

“We are disappointed with the judgement from the European court of justice and will be considering its potential implications.

It will now be for the court of appeal to determine the case. The government will be putting forward robust arguments to the court of appeal about the strength of our existing regime for communications data retention and access.

Given the importance of communications data to preventing and detecting crime, we will ensure plans are in place so that the police and other public authorities can continue to acquire such data in a way that is consistent with EU law and our obligation to protect the public.”

The outcome could force the UK Government to return the law for further significant amendments, although we wouldn’t put it past them to find a way of twisting the wording and or delaying any related court judgements through appeal until the Brexit process completes.

However, depending upon the terms of any Brexit deal with the EU, the UK may still have to respect some of the related EU laws, so it might not be a simple case of waiting to escape before the full force of the IPAct can be introduced. On top of that the CJEU states that any data being retained must be kept within the EU, which adds another complication.

As a quick reminder, David Davis MP withdrew from the case after being appointed Minister for Brexit.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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