Something extraordinary recently happened in the U.K., and I am
not talking about Brexit. On Nov. 29, following passage by
Parliament, Her Majesty the Queen signed into law the Investigatory
Powers Bill.
Known to critics as the "Snoopers Charter," the act is
possibly one of the most far-reaching surveillance laws ever passed
by a democratic nation. While some sections of the act received
Royal Assent on Nov. 29, the act will come into force in stages,
initially as early as the end of this year.
The U.K. government first published the draft bill in November
2015 to replace the existing Data Retention and Investigatory
Powers Act 2014, or DRIPA, certain sections of which will expire at
the end of December. However, the real impetus for the act arguably
was to retroactively legitimate practices that the U.K.'s
security apparatus had been using for years without disclosure to
the public, in addition to expanding the current scope of
government surveillance powers.
