GOTCHA! EU takes UK to court over Phorm snooping trials

By Davey Winder
Wednesday, 15 April 2009 14:48

Technology

The UK has structurally flawed data protection and privacy laws which allowed secret Internet snooping trials to take place. Now the European Union is stepping in to try and force the UK Government to take action.

As iTWire first reported back in August last year, the European Union is really not at all happy with how the UK has handled secret Internet snooping trials by BT and Phorm.

Phorm directors were happily being quoted back then as saying things like "As you browse, we’re able to categorize all of your Internet actions" while the biggest ISP in the UK, BT, was running trials of the technology without first informing those whose actions were being observed.

The UK Information Commissioner decided that no harm had been done, and no action would be taken against BT. Meanwhile, the Brit police got involved but closed the investigation after deciding it would be a waste of money to continue.

European Union Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding wrote to the UK Government to formally ask them for clarification on whether Phorm has broken European data laws, but got no response by her deadline.

Her investigation continued, however, and now it appears that the results are in: those secret trials were illegal under European law.

"I call on the UK authorities to change their national laws and ensure that national authorities are duly empowered and have proper sanctions at their disposal to enforce EU legislation on the confidentiality of communications" Reding says.

"We’re not satisfied that the UK is adequately protecting citizens’ data, there is a structural problem. We wouldn’t use that word unless we believed it was a serious case" a European Commission spokesman told The Times.

End result, the EU has started infringement proceedings against the UK Government which gives it two months to respond  before things potentially get moved to the European Court of Justice as a breach of the EU Data Protection Directive.

GOTCHA!