From The Economist:

#22  Intercept: Spooks and e-mail.

GOVERNMENT ministers are backing a demand by the police and security
agencies for a huge increase in the tapping of e-mail and other electronic
communications. Britain's Internet service providers (ISPs), which host
e-mail and other Internet services, have been told that the government
requires them to have the capability of intercepting one telephone line in
every 500 lines that they operate.
That tapping capacity, roughly 20 times the level required by other European
countries such as the Netherlands, represents a considerable increase in
police powers. According to one Internet provider, it would result in the
home secretary issuing 10,000 warrants a year by 2005, five times the
current level of tapping authorisations.
A government consultation document, "Interception of Communications",
published in June, says that interception is indispensable in gathering
intelligence against serious criminals. But it gave no indication that it
required a vast leap in the level of tapping. Home Office officials refused
this week to explain why the government believes this increase is needed.
But Tim Pearson, chairman of the Internet Service Providers Association,
says his members are seriously concerned by the significant extension in
state and police powers that is being requested. The one-in-500 line figure
was first disclosed at a meeting at the Home Office last month between
Internet providers and intelligence officials.
The service providers are also concerned by the financial burdens the new
tapping regime would place on them. Demon Internet, Britain's third largest
ISP, estimates that the new intercept proposals would cost them more than
Pounds 1m, 10-15% of their infrastructure costs. It estimates that at this
level of interception, one megabit of data would be flowing from Demon
Internet to law enforcement agencies every second. "If the government wants
this information, they should pay for it," says Richard Clayton, the
company's Internet adviser.
The problem for the ISPs is that most of the highly specialised switch and
routing equipment needed for mass interception is made in the United States
and most of it is very expensive. They point out that requiring them to
carry out e-mail interception may be convenient for the police and security
agencies but that the task could be achieved in other ways: either via an
intercept on the telephone network, or via planted software on the suspect's
computer.
Because of the advance of encryption, the imposition of significant new
burdens on ISPs may also be disproportionate to the potential benefits
gained. If, as most computer experts believe, coded, uncrackable, e-mail
messages become the norm in the near future, then the advantages of
requiring ISPs to intercept large volumes of their traffic will be limited.
Intelligence officials who gave evidence to the Trade and Industry Select
Committee recently warned its members that "encryption has the potential to
give (criminals) an unassailable advantage."
Another issue worrying civil-liberties campaigners is that the significant
increase in interception capacity being proposed is not matched by any
increase in oversight. Currently the home secretary is meant to approve
personally each and every interception warrant that is issued. The recently
published consultation document has the home secretary's assurance that
"each warrant is personally authorised by the relevant secretary of state
and only when he or she is satisfied that it is strictly necessary." But
even at the current level of around 2,000 warrants a year, it is unlikely
that ministers have the time for more than a cursory glance at applications.
One former home office minister tells the story of how bundles of
immigration files were regularly wheeled through his office so that
officials could claim that each one had been seen by the minister. If the
number of tapping warrants quintuples over the next five years, then
ministerial authorisation will become little more than a fiction. The more
it is obvious that the task is delegated to officials, the more pressure
there will rightly be for proper judicial oversight.


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