A year in review: The 'Snooping' Bill

Given over to its staunchest supporter - the Home Office - the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill caused a storm with privacy groups.

Facing accusations that it broke human rights laws and would cost ISPs millions to implement, junior minister Charles Clarke was on the defensive right from the start (see MP urges industry to back Investigatory Powers Bill, http://www.silicon.com/a34989 ).

As far back as February, the Home Office dismissed its critics as 'hysterical', telling silicon.com: "There has been some hysteria over this but the Commons Trade and Industry Committee sees it as a useful addition to law enforcement powers. It would only apply to material being acquired under legal exercise."

The main objections to the Bill surrounded the difficulty of defining 'communications data' as the path an email took rather than its contents, and the reversal of the burden of proof - so a defendant had to prove they had never been in possession of encryption keys, rather than the security forces having to prove they had been ('Snooping Bill' slammed over privacy issues, http://www.silicon.com/a36138 ).

Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, told silicon in March: "There are so many dangers in this Bill it's hard to list them. But I doubt the government are going to compromise any."

In silicon.com's April survey nearly three quarters of respondents rejected the RIP Bill as pointless legislation, with many adding that the Bill was fatally flawed and would allow law enforcers to abuse human rights.

But it wasn't until the Bill hit the House of Lords later in the year that the government really came under pressure to change its plans.

Under the leadership of Conservative spokesman Lord Cope - who later won a privacy award for his work - peers forced changes to the legislation, including putting the onus back on the police to prove if encryption keys were being deliberately withheld (Lords drop Snooping Bill's burden of proof http://www.silicon.com/a38354 ).

But the changes weren't enough to please everyone, and in July silicon.com exclusively revealed that UK ISP Poptel - which manages central and local government emails - was planning to move its servers abroad if the Bill became law. (Snooping Bill drives first ISP abroad, http://www.silicon.com/a38491 ).

Despite being followed by similar threats from Claranet, GreenNet and PSINet, the Home Office pushed ahead to get the Bill passed before European human rights legislation came into law in the autumn. (Snooping Bill is passed and present, http://www.silicon.com/a38806 ).

With the RIP Act now on the statute books, much of the legislation remains untested and quite how the law will be put into practice remains in doubt. But with the recent uncovering of NCIS plans to keep a record of all email transactions going back seven years, it seems Home Office ambitions have not been quelled. (Industry outraged by 'impossible' snooping proposals, http://www.silicon.com/a41331 ).