Snooper's Charter is nearly law: how the Investigatory Powers Bill will affect you The Investigatory Powers Bill has passed its third reading in the House of Lords and will soon become law
After almost 12 months of debate, jostling and a healthy dose of criticism, the United Kingdom's new surveillance regime is about to become law.
Members of the House of Lords have passed the third reading of the Investigatory Powers Bill, first introduced by then-Home Secretary Theresa May in
November 2015 and often referred to as the Snooper's Charter. It has now been voted on by both the House of Commons and Lords.
This means the 300-page bill has almost completely passed through the parliamentary process and is likely to be passed into law before the end of 2016 (in line with the government's intentions and ahead of existing surveillance laws expiring).
The Home Office, the department responsible for the law, has said the provisions listed within it are needed to help protect the country's national security and give more oversight than ever before. While civil rights groups and those in opposition to the powers say it is intrusive and draconian.
Hacking powerFor the first time, security services will be able to hack into computers, networks, mobile devices, servers and more under the proposed plans. The practice is known as equipment interference and is set out in part 5, chapter 2, of the IP Bill.
This could include downloading data from a mobile phone that is stolen or left unattended, or software that tracks every keyboard letter pressed being installed on a laptop.
"More complex equipment interference operations may involve exploiting existing vulnerabilities in software in order to gain control of devices or networks to remotely extract material or monitor the user of the device," a
draft code of conduct says.
The power will be available to police forces and intelligence services. Warrants must be issued for the hacking to take place.
Bulk hackingFor those not living in the UK, but who have come to the attention of the security agencies, the potential to be hacked increases. Bulk equipment interference (chapter 3 of the IP Bill) allows for large scale hacks in "large operations".
Data can be gathered from "a large number of devices in the specified location". A draft
code of practice says a foreign region (although it does not give a size) where terrorism is suspected could be targeted, for instance. As a result, it is likely the data of innocent people would be gathered.
Security and intelligence agencies must apply for a warrant from the Secretary of State and these groups are the only people who can complete bulk hacks.
Web recordsUnder the IP Bill, security services and police forces will be able to access communications data when it is needed to help their investigations. This means internet history data (Internet Connection Records, in official speak) will have to be stored for 12 months.
Communications service providers, which include everything from internet companies and messenger services to postal services, will have to store meta data about the communications made through their services.
The who, what, when, and where will have to be stored. This will mean your internet service provider stores that you visited WIRED.co.uk to read this article, on this day, at this time and where from (i.e. a mobile device). This will be done for every website visited for a year.
Bulk data setsAs well as communications data being stored, intelligence agencies will also be able to obtain and use "bulk personal datasets". These mass data sets mostly include a "majority of individuals" that aren't suspected in any wrongdoing but have been swept-up in the data collection.
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