Anderson Report: Review Of UK Anti-Terror Data Laws.

David Anderson QC

The UK Government will publish a comprehensive review on the laws governing the bulk interception of communications on mobile phones and the Internet.

The report by David Anderson QC, an Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, has examined all laws, which allow police and security services to access the public's personal communications – and will offer new recommendations.
Lord Carlile, his predecessor, told Sky News: "There's been a huge amount of controversy about intercepted communications, communications data, about the state of the law, and about the capacity of the police and other authorities to detect very serious crime using material that comes from internet service providers and from mobile telephony. There is a huge need for the law to be revamped and revised."

The Anderson Review was a condition of emergency legislation passed last year by the Government to force phone and Internet companies to keep records for up to two years. It was delivered to Downing St on 6 May.
The review is expected to look at the relationship between the Government and US Internet giants such as Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Last year, the inquiry into the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby blamed Facebook for not passing on messages exchanged between the soldier's killers, Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo.
The Government is set to introduce a wide-ranging investigatory powers bill – dubbed the "snoopers' charter" – which the Home Office says will "better equip law enforcement and intelligence agencies to meet their key operational requirements, and address the gap in these agencies' ability to build intelligence and evidence where subjects of interest, suspects and vulnerable people have communicated online".

Details are few, though, because the Government has promised that its legislation will respond to the Anderson Review.
Writing on his blog ahead of the report's publication, Mr Anderson said: "The report won't please everybody (indeed it may not please anybody).
"But if it succeeds in informing the public and parliamentary debate on the future of the law, from an independent perspective, it will have done its job."

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