UK Data Retention & Investigation Powers Act Arouses Criticism

UK Parliament has pushed through an emergency legislation in legalizing surveillance by telecom companies on its customers as part of a national security move to counter renewed terror threats.

Prime Minister David Cameron has justified the move in stating that surveillance is used in all major crime cases and that it will ensure the safety of British citizens.

The new legislation, called the Data Retention and Investigation Powers Act 2014, also applies to telecoms and communications companies not based in the UK, which has led to criticism from scholars of the Internet law studies.

Lorna Woods is a professor with University of Essex.

"The Act applies to telecoms and communications companies not based in the UK. The Act makes it very clear that it does cover even an activity based outside the UK and processed by companies outside the UK. It is quite a unusual thing for a country to do to regulate the behavior of other country citizens when they are not in the UK."

Under the new legislation, phone companies are now required to keep records on whom their customers telephoned and the addresses of websites they visited for a period of time.
This also includes emails and text messages.

The move also follows warnings from the United States last week of renewed terror threats on-board flights to a number of Western countries, including Britain.

The bill comes after April's ruling by the European Court of Justice, which banned communication companies from retaining customer data for 24 months under a 2006 European unio directive on the grounds that it infringed upon human rights.