British Police, ISPs Cooperate On Crime

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September 18, 1998 (11:07 AM EDT)

By Andrew Craig,

British police on Friday dismissed as "rubbish" claims by several civil-liberties organizations in the United Kingdom that they are working with ISPs to get access to Internet users' private information.

The Association of Chief Police Officers launched Wednesday a series of seminars involving the police, ISPs, and key industry figures that will run for the next three weeks. The police said the talks were intended to give ISPs a better understanding of police requirements for investigating illegal activity that uses the Internet.

But civil-liberties groups said in a statement Friday they "unanimously condemned secret talks" between the parties. The groups said the meetings were being held to create an agreement that would give the police access to e-mail messages transmitted by any of Britain's 8 million Internet users, along with detailed Web usage logs about sites users had visited.

Proposals for a "memorandum of understanding" between the police and British ISPs has been fueled by panic about child pornography on the Internet, according to Chris Ellison, a spokesman for civil-rights group Internet Freedom. "Industry representatives have got themselves into a situation where they are under pressure to disclose information without legal obligation or justification," he said. "There is no alternative but to break off these talks immediately."

The police association denied it was creating new rules. Instead, it just wants guidelines for implementing existing data-protection laws. "There has been no attempt by police to get extra access [to Internet user data]," said a spokesman for the police association. "To say this is a secretive scheme to give police access to information about any Internet user is rubbish."

At least one industry representative believes increased police cooperation with ISPs is a good development. "ISPs have always felt we were being told 'You must not move illegal content' -- or host it or forward it -- but we were not in a position to say what illegal content is," said Laurence Blackall, chairman of the British ISP Association.

In addition to child pornography, the seminar addressed police concerns about Internet gambling, although the police declined to offer any further details about the discussions. The seminars were triggered by "the growth of the ISP industry and growing concern that crime is being facilitated by the Internet," the police spokesman added.

ISPs have a duty to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of their users, according to Yaman Akdeniz of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties, a British civil-rights group. Although the police may have found a loophole in weak British laws governing electronic surveillance, they "should not, in any case, be allowed to amass evidence without showing probable and specific cause either to the ISP or to a judge," said Akdeniz in a statement.

If ISPs sign the police memorandum, they could be asked to provide police with information needed for criminal investigations under Britain's Data Protection Act, by filling in electronic forms issued by the police, according to a report in British newspaper The Guardian.