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[Bowdon]

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/07/government-responds-to-uk-internet-snooping-law-consultation.html

The Government has today published its response to the recent consultation on proposed amendments to the controversial 2016 Investigatory Powers Act, which among other things would force broadband ISPs to log the Internet Connection Records (ICR) of all their customers for up to 12 months.

Interestingly today’s response and proposed amendments consider the outcome of three rulings against related legislation. This includes a 2016 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which found that EU law does not allow “general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and location data,” except for “targeted” use against “serious crime”.

On top of that the Government said it has now also considered two recent rulings, which includes an April 2018 verdict by the High Court of Justice (Queen’s Bench Division) that found part of the new IPAct to be unlawful.

The High Court essentially agreed that Part 4 of the IPAct is incompatible with fundamental rights in EU law because in the area of criminal justice: (1) access to retained data is not limited to the purpose of combating “serious crime“; and (2) access to retained data is not subject to prior review by a court or an independent administrative body.

At the time the court told the government to amend its law by 1st November 2018. As part of that they were told to change the law to require prior review by a court or independent administrative body and – in the context of crime-fighting – to only allow access to data for purposes of combating “serious crime.” Sadly this doesn’t stop the data collection itself due to the case only focusing upon access to the data (a separate case may challenge that).

The new document, which was published today but dated for June 2018, provides both an overview of the representations received during the consultation period and the Government’s response to them, and outlines the changes that will be made as a consequence of these comments, and the next steps. The key paragraphs are as follows.

June 2018 IPA regulations - Government Response to consultation on response to ECJ judgment pdf document.