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REST IN PEACE? June 20th 2000 The year 1984 may have passed us by without much cause for concern, but 2000 is turning out to be just as dark and Draconian as Orwell ever predicted. I'm talking about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill, RIP for short. If you live in Britain then you must read this article and consider what the bill will mean to you. And don't ignore your instincts or underestimate the potential harm this Bill could do to our society: fight it while you still can. How would you feel if every single e-mail you sent was tracked and recorded? How about every website you visit, every item you purchase, every newsgroup posting you make? How about every WAP service you access on your mobile phone? What if this information could be passed on to any Government agency without you ever knowing? Sounds unlikely? Think again. Come Thursday 5th October, we will be citizens of a country that monitors our every electronic transaction as a matter of course. Our Government's ability to infringe individual privacy will be second only to Communist China. Every Internet Service Provider in Britain will be required to install a "black box" in its offices, directly wired in to the MI5 head quarters. The device will make use of "passive monitoring", capable of intercepting all data traffic and forwarding it on to the security services. While the police will require warrants to actually read your messages, their access to a wide range of general information about your activities will suddenly become more available than ever before. And in future, your use of digital information is likely to increase, with the Government's powers of invasion increasing too. So even though the security forces are required to serve you with a warrant to look inside the hard drive of your computer, they can examine your i-drive or other virtual hard drive on the Web without you granting permission or even being aware. What reason would a Government agent need to infringe your privacy in this way? The first two reasons are understandable; few of us would have quarrels with phrases such as "(a) in the interests of national security" and "(b) for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime". More vague, however, is the need to defend "the economic well-being of the United Kingdom". The expression is so nebulous that it could cover all manner of evils: could downloading tracks from Napster damage the economic well-being of the country? comment on this article e-mail this to a friend start a discussion 
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