Government faces legal action over online snooping

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The European commission yesterday called for the UK's privacy laws to be tightened to protect internet surfers as it launched legal proceedings against the government for breaching data protection and so-called ePrivacy rules.

In her weekly internet address, EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding warned: "Do you want to turn the internet into a jungle? This could happen if we cannot control the use of our information online. There is an undeniable risk that privacy is being lost to the brave new world of intrusive technologies."

The commission's legal action, which could result in the government being dragged before the European court of justice, centres on the handling of controversial online advertising technology developed by UK-based Phorm which has been tested by BT in the UK and cleared by the authorities.

That technology enables internet service providers (ISPs) to track what a user does on the internet to create a list of their interests which can be used to show them more relevant adverts on websites they subsequently visit. While heralded by ISPs and media companies as a way of making more money from internet advertising, a market dominated in the UK by Google, it has been widely criticised by privacy campaigners and the web's creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as unjustifiable online snooping.

The commission said yesterday that the UK needed to tighten its laws to ensure that consumers were required to consent before their online activity was monitored for so-called behavioural-targeted advertising services. The current UK law allows traffic to be intercepted if the company doing the intercepting has "reasonable grounds for believing" that it has consent.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said it had received notice of the infringement proceedings and would respond "in due course". The government has two months to put forward its defence.

The commission is also calling for an independent regulator to oversee the interception of online traffic. Under the current Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, that role is filled by the police, who lack the technological resources for proper investigations, while the Information Commissioner's Office, which covers all other aspects of data protection, has no enforcement powers over interception of online traffic. Last year the City of London police were called in to examine Phorm after a series of complaints but decided not to launch a formal investigation.

Reding, whose tenure comes to an end this year, said serious privacy issues were being raised by experiments in behavioural-targeted advertising. She warned that the commission was closely watching the industry and that she would not hesitate to act if EU law was breached. Alongside technology firms such as Phorm, many existing online advertising companies such as Google and Yahoo as well as media companies are collecting data about online users to offer targeted advertising.

"European privacy rules are crystal-clear, a person's information can only be used with their prior consent and we cannot keep up this principle and have all our exchanges monitored, surveyed, stored in exchange for a promise of more relevant advertisements," she warned.

Her comments and the commission's legal action will not derail the government's interception modernisation programme, or IMP, which aims to create a huge database of email, web, telephony and potentially even social networking traffic, but are further evidence that the UK's online privacy rules have failed to keep pace with EU law.

"It's a bad sign if citizens are having to rely on the commission and courts to defend their rights against the government they elected," said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, yesterday.

Reding also warned newspapers and other media organisations over their use of photos and other personal information posted on social networking sites. "Do we not cross the borders of the acceptable when for example the pictures of the Winnenden school shooting victims in Germany are used by commercial publications just to increase sales?" she asked.

The commission has worked with social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo to put together a voluntary code of conduct which improves the protection of under-18s on such sites. But Reding made it plain that the EU could introduce new laws if users' privacy was not protected.



Source:guardian