Broad support for increased surveillance powers
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British people say the police and intelligence agencies should retain all of their communications data for 12 months – but tend to oppose a ban on encryption software.
The attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last week has added fresh impetus to the Conservatives’ ongoing struggle to introduce new surveillance legislation. The Draft Communications Data Bill 2012 (dubbed the ‘snoopers charter’) would have extended data retention obligations on communications companies to include the metadata of social media, email and Internet voice calls; however, it was blocked by the Lib Dems. Now there is even greater need for such legislation, says David Cameron, because newer forms of encrypted communication such as WhatsApp and Snapchat may be ‘unreadable’ by intelligence.
YouGov research for the Sunday Times finds the British public supportive of increasing the security services’ access to public communications in order to fight terrorism (by 52–31%).
Most people (53%) say that, ...
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