Overview

This book contends that modern concerns surrounding the UK State's investigative communications-related information processing regime are in fact nothing new. Whether using common law, the Royal Prerogative or statute for providing legitimacy to its activities, the underlying rationale for the UK's investigative information processing activities has always followed that of Cromwell, namely the interests of 'national security'. It has always involved arbitrary Home Office power grabs in response to developments in communications technology and Intelligence Service interests and has always required the tacit support, or at least acquiescence, of communications service providers. This book demonstrates that, irrespective of motive, perhaps the greatest irony of Edward Snowden's 2013 disclosures to various international media outlets is that the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 represents not a curtailment of huge, previously secret State power, but rather its probably irreversible 'transparent' entrenchment. Acceptance of this is crucial to understanding the need for the IPA 2016 as currently constructed, but also for realising that advocacy for any curtailment of State power is probably futile and might be better directed at expanding regulation to include corporate and private surveillance and bringing all investigative information processing within a single regulatory framework--