House of Lords - Social media and criminal offences - Communications Committee

House of Lords - Social media and criminal offences - Communications Committee:

"The Director of Public Prosecutions has published guidelines for the application of the current statute law to prosecutions involving social media communications. The guidance is clear and accessible. The guidance is structured by conduct, relating different sorts of conduct to different potential offences:

(a)  credible threats of violence to the person or damage to property:

(i)  Offences Against the Person Act 1861, s 16 (threat to kill)

(ii)  Protection From Harassment Act 1997, s 4 (fear of violence)

(iii)  Malicious Communications Act 1988, s 1 (threat)

(iv)  Communications Act 2003, s 127 (of a menacing character)

(v)  together with legislation related to racial, religious, disability, sexual orientation or transgender aggravation 


(b)  communications targeting specific individuals:

(i)  Protection from Harassment Act 1997, s 2 (harassment)

(ii)  Protection from Harassment Act 1997, s 2 (stalking)

(iii)  Protection from Harassment Act 1997, s 4 (fear of violence)

(iv)  Protection from Harassment Act 1997, s 4A (stalking involving fear of violence, serious alarm or distress) 


(c)  breach of court order, e.g. as to anonymity:

(i)  Contempt of Court Act 1981

(ii)  Sexual Offences Amendment Act 1992, s 5 (identification of a victim of a sexual offence)

(iii)  restraining orders, conditions of bail 


(d)  communications which are grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false:

(i)  Malicious Communications Act 1988, s 1 (electronic communications which are indecent or grossly offensive, convey a threat false, provided that there is an intention to cause distress or anxiety to the victim)

(ii)  Communications Act 2003, s 127 (electronic communications which are grossly offensive or indecent, obscene or menacing, or false, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another)

 These offences all pre-date the invention of social media. These offences are offences under the law of England and Wales; we have not considered the position in Scotland or Northern Ireland. A table of our own design showing these offences and their relationship to social media is at Appendix 3.

15.  The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 also provides for civil remedies in the form of injunctions and damages, on application to the High Court, to protect a person from harassment." 'via Blog this'

Is this the most inane government consultation of all time? Adult porn checks

Is this the most inane governmentconsultation of all time?: "Atvod had taken it onto itself to enforce age verification checks on British websites some time ago. The regulator was a product of an EU directive demanding that member states include TV-on-demand – services like iPlayer or 4oD – under some regulatory framework. Everyone else in the EU – literally everyone – added a line or two to whatever legislation they had bringing the services under the control of whichever regulator they already used. Only Britain set up its own regulator." 'via Blog this'

Human rights in Europe should not buckle under mass surveillance

Human rights in Europe should not buckle under mass surveillance | openDemocracy:

"many of the surveillance measures contradict international human rights law. As established by the European Court of Human Rights, in fact, surveillance is – by its very nature  an interference with the right to privacy, as reiterated last December in case of Zakharov against Russia.

 Although the use of private communication information is essential in combating terrorist violence and threats, states can collect, use and store such information only under exceptional and precise conditions, while offering adequate legal safeguards and independent supervision.

 The Court of Justice of the EU also set limits to telecommunication data retention when it invalidated the EU data retention directive for its unnecessary “wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with the fundamental right to respect for private life” and personal data. This judgment echoed the concerns expressed some years earlier by the German Constitutional Court, which ruled against computerised searches by German police of potential terrorist sleepers as this breaches the individual right to self-determination and human dignity." 'via Blog this'

Access Now to human rights court: GCHQ surveillance violates human rights

Access Now to human rights court: GCHQ surveillance violates human rights - Access Now: "The underlying case, Big Brother Watch and others v. the United Kingdom, deals with U.K. mass surveillance programs like Tempora, as well as U.K. government access to the U.S. database compiled under the Prism surveillance program. The plaintiffs, including Big Brother Watch, Open Rights Group, English PEN, and Constanze Kurz, asked the court to investigate whether GCHQ’s practices and the current system of oversight comply with the right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case stalled for nearly two years pending the resolution of complaints in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The case is now moving forward.

 In our intervention Access Now makes three key arguments:

(1) these surveillance programs not only violate the European Convention on Human Rights, but also the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance;

(2) it is inadequate to consider any surveillance program in a vacuum, and the entire suite of information collected under all of the separate programs is more invasive than the sum of the individual parts; and

(3) intelligence sharing regimes undermine the human rights protections included in formal, transparent channels like those available under Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties." 'via Blog this'

Submarine cable cut lops Terabits off Australia's data bridge

Submarine cable cut lops Terabits off Australia's data bridge • The Register:

"TPG's announcement says the fault is around 4,590 km from the cable's Guam landing, which means it's around 3,000 metres below the surface.

The fault notice says engineers first logged a report that “alarms indicated that a submarine line card had lost its payload”, and the company is trying to establish when a repair ship can be dispatched to the location.

 In the meantime, traffic is using alternate routes including the Australia-Japan Cable and Southern Cross.

 Last year, the SeaMeWe-3 cable which runs from Perth to Asia via Indonesia suffered multiple outages.

The situation is complicated by the Basslink cable outage. As Vulture South reported last week, a repairing the electrical cable connecting Tasmania to the mainland is going to necessitate a visit by cable repair ship the Ile de Re, because Basslink's communication fibre is going to be cut during the operation." 'via Blog this'

Cyberleagle: #IPBill Christmas Quiz

Cyberleagle: #IPBill Christmas Quiz: "[Updated 1 January 2016 with answers at foot of page]

Now that everyone has sent in their submissions to the Joint Parliamentary Committee scrutinising the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, here is a little Christmas quiz to alleviate the withdrawal symptoms.

For most of the questions you need only study the draft Bill. One requires the Explanatory Notes. For one other you have to go slightly further afield. Answers may be indeterminate.

1. When is a person not a “person”?  
2. What is an internet communications service?  
3. How many times does ‘proportionate’ appear?  
4. How does generation of data differ from obtaining data by generation?  
5. What may identify an identifier?  
6. When might you have to grapple with the meaning of meaning?  
7. How many times is encryption mentioned?  
8. Can general be specific?  
9. Which two differently worded provisions describe the same thing?  
10. When is data not itself?" 'via Blog this'

Never mind Internet Connection Records, what about Relevant Communications Data?

Cyberleagle: "Clause 71 of the Bill would empower the Home Office to issue retention notices covering six categories of what the draft Bill calls ‘relevant communications data’.

 According to the draft Bill’s Explanatory Notes, one of those six categories (71(9)(f)) corresponds to internet connection records. That leaves five categories which, on the face of them, seem to go wider than the existing data retention categories under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) as amended by the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (CTSA).

 For internet communications the current DRIPA data retention categories cover internet access services, internet e-mail and internet telephony. Those categories replicate the 2009 Data Retention Regulations, which implemented the now invalidated EU Data Retention Directive.  The CTSA extended DRIPA to include so-called IP address resolution data.

 We can get an idea of the scope of ‘relevant communications data’ by appreciating that it covers any type of communication on a network, expressly including communications where the sender or recipient is not a human being. This sweeps up not only background interactions that smartphone apps make automatically with their supplier servers, but probably the entire internet of things. 

The type of data about these communications that could be required to be retained goes beyond the relatively familiar sender, recipient, time and location information to data such as the ‘type, method or pattern’ of communication (clause 71(9)(c)).

‘Data’ is defined to include ‘any information which is not data’ (clause 195(1)).

In another departure from existing retention laws, providers could be required to generate data specifically for retention (71(8)(b)(i)). At present they can only be required to keep data that they already generate or process in the course of providing their service." 'via Blog this'