IPB The redrafted Investigatory Powers bill is about to return to Parliament, accompanied by complaints that the government is trying to rush it through, threats of Conservative backbench rebellions and a withdrawal of Labour support. It could almost be the European Union referendum.
Arguments over process and party splits are not the only things the IP bill shares with the EU vote. In both, the big picture is more important than the detail.
If passed, the IP bill will mark the end of a 40-year shift for the surveillance of communications from secrecy to democratic oversight. Duncan Campbell revealed GCHQ’s existence in the media in May 1976 (PDF) – Bletchley Park had only been revealed in 1974.)
The government officially admitted it in 1983, and section 94 of the next year’s Telecommunications Act gave ministers the power to give secret directions to communications network providers. Late in 2015, home secretary Theresa May said this had authorised MI5’s bulk retention of data on domestic phone calls since September 2001.
Some go even further back. Sir David Omand, former director of GCHQ and the unofficial government spokesman at the Scrambling for Safety conference earlier this year, namechecked Elizabeth I’s principal secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, who set up Her Majesty’s first Secret Service. From then until the late 20th century, British spying was carried out under the royal prerogative, Sir David said. “The Crown did whatever the Crown felt necessary in the circumstances of the day to secure the state.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/01/investigatory_powers_bill_spies_coming_from_cold/
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