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Originally Posted by Toto
ISP's already do this, they keep IP allocation records so that under RIPA the police can request the account details of who owned what IP address on a given date/time.
This act goes one better, the police can now also ask what sites were visited based on an IP address, or possibly based on known account information. ISP's will be required to "keep logs of internet usage" for a period of 12 months.
What is of concern is this quote in The Register article.
Now, call me paranoid, but education councils have already "exploited" RIPA to spy on parents who wanted their child to attend a certain school.
The article says I know for fact that police do not need a court ordered warrant to access IP data history, there is provision within RIPA to allow such requests to be passed through central controlled divisions within the police ranks. What's to say this will not be accessed in the same way, or in fact that the article has got this bit wrong?
But lets cut to the chase, this act, proposed by the government as part of an EU directive that they now need to ratify means this.
Our Internet usage from a certain date on will be recorded and retained for a period of 12 months by our ISP. What isn't clear is which public authorities will be able to access such data.
As Alexander has said, this is nothing new, however, this is the first time to my knowledge that this requirement will be enshrined in Law, and the first time for sure our browsing data will be recorded, and can be used as part of a criminal or national security investigation.
Obviously my point is off-topic as it doesn't directly relate to Phorm, but this is about privacy.
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The ISP's have fought legislation like this for years their main bone of contention being who is going to pay to store the data. The sweetener, for them, came with the announcement that the law will only require them to store the type of data that would normally be required for billing purposes.
A typical scenario where the police would want to access the data:
The police take down a website used by paedophiles / terrorist suspects - all the site's visitors will have left their IP's and the time and date they visited on the site's hit log. The police sort the IP's into their respective ISP IP ranges. Using this collected evidence as justification a court will grant them a warrant to access ISP data. They then match the IP/date/time from the website with the corresponding data retained by the ISP to identify their suspect.
I don't know about the council's use of RIPA but in this case the police are required to provide the court with evidence in order to justify the granting of a warrant.