As Andy Robinson, the founder of the Pirate Party said:
“This story looked for all the world like an April Fool’s joke: Labour’s plan for a massive surveillance programme that would dwarf anything dreamed up by the KGB, brought back to life by its opponents?”
You may not have heard but the Tory and Libdem governments announced the Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP) on April first.
This must be somewhat frustrating for Conservatives like David Davis and Lib Dems like Julian Huppert both of whom are known to have strong views on reducing online surveillance and now have to work to persuade their own party’s that this is a bad idea.
James Firth – the tech blogger with ears in all the corridors in Whitehall, in fact warned of these proposals warned of proposals along these lines last year. From a political point of view, this is quite interesting as this is largely a piece of legislation that Labour proposed in their third term which Tory’s and Libdems campaigned against.
For this reason, the Open Rights Group already has quite a detailed article on what we suspect the proposals will entail.
James Blessing from the ISP Association explained that when this was looked at last, the costs were prohibitive – we’re talking billions of pounds. Personally, I can’t see that this would be a sensible option, given the current funding climate.
James Blessing from the ISPA on BBC News