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By Michael Holden and Kate Holton
LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - At the height of aninvestigation into a group of Islamists plotting alQaeda-inspired bomb attacks across Britain in 2004, Britishspies analysed more than 4,000 telephone contacts to build up apicture of what they were planning and with whom.
The security services say the information was crucial inhelping to thwart what could have been one of the deadliestattacks on Britain and to bring the cell to justice.
But a decade on, the police and intelligence agencies warnthey have fallen behind those they are trying to track, asadvances in technology and the growth of services like Skype andFacebook, increasingly put criminals beyond their reach.
In response, Britain is seeking to bring in what critics sayare the West's most far-reaching surveillance laws that couldchange the international landscape in this area. The proposalswould force communications firms to collect and store vast reamsof data about almost every click of British online activity.
By doing so, ministers have provoked the wrath of humanrights campaigners, sown division within the coalitiongovernment and alarmed major corporations such as Google and Microsoft.
"Nobody wants to live in a tyranny. I certainly don't and Idon't want people snooping on what I do," said Gary Beautridge,the lead chief British police officer on the issue.
"This is about maintaining capability. It's not increasingcapability, it's maintaining it in the face of change intechnology," he said, rejecting talk of an Orwellian scheme.
Beautridge and all those involved in law enforcement saythey are now unable to see about 25 percent of allcommunications data, hindering the secret war against bombplotters, drug lords and paedophiles.
SECRET WAR
Almost everyone, from lawmakers to privacy campaigners,accepts something needs to be done. But trying to find asolution that is technically possible, will not cost billionsand is not overly intrusive is proving a challenge.
Politicians across the world are grappling with the sameproblem but privacy campaigners say Britain is going furtherthan any other democratic state.
Some countries such as France and Denmark are interested innew laws but campaigners said most other states had so farsteered clear.
"The UK is the first mover in this. If the UK is successful,they will have changed the landscape for the rest of the world,"said Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International.
Currently, if British authorities want to find out detailsabout who has been talking to who they make a request to asenior police or intelligence officer who can approve theapplication without the need for a warrant.
British mobile and landline telephone providers must retainrecords for 12 months, in line with an EU directive, and figuresfor 2011 show some 494,078 applications were made.
Now Britain's Home Office, or interior ministry, plans toexpand these powers to include online activities, such as whichweb sites were looked at and who was talking to who on socialnetworks.
The new law would force British Internet service providers(ISP) and mobile operators to store data they would not normallykeep for billing purposes and could even require them to keepdata generated by internet groups based outside Britain.
The government insists it does not want to look at thecontent of the exchanges, but merely the details of the contact.
"NO FISHING EXPEDITIONS"
"All we're talking about is keeping the communications logof actually who owns that account, when a call was made and towhom or from whom and that is it," Beautridge said.
"It's not the content, it's never the content. Fishingexpeditions should not happen. The processes have been designedto ensure that."
However, last December a draft version of the bill washeavily criticised by a parliamentary committee, which said itwas too sweeping in its remit, would give ministers too muchpower and was likely to be too expensive.
The government is now expected to outline an amended bill inweeks with many of the same powers, according to sourcesfamiliar with discussions, having made it clear it cannot wait.
"Technical experts are clear that everything in the bill isfeasible and we are continuing to consult with communicationsservice providers on our proposals," said a Home Officespokeswoman, adding the aim was to bring a law forward "at theearliest opportunity" along with its cost implications.
Unlike the original plans which placed huge powers in thehands of the home secretary, the new proposals are likely togive parliament a greater say in what is permissible.
But privacy campaigners warn that might just put a gloss onsomething still unpalatable, putting in place a system whichcould be extended at a later date.
"If the police want to investigate me, they should be ableto ask any company that has data on me to disclose thatinformation. That's generally not a problem," said Hosein fromPrivacy International.
"The problem is the Home Office want much more than that.They want these companies to record these activities just incase at some point in the future I may become a suspect. That'snot the way things work in a democratic society."
Among the concerns are proposals that service providers keepweblogs - records of websites people have visited - and a"filter" system which would ask them complex questions andfilter data accordingly, something Hosein describes as masssurveillance.
"Having a list for 12 months of every single website you goto, that's quite a lot of information about yourself, verypersonal information," said Julien Huppert, who speaks on theissue for the Liberal Democrats, the junior members of Britain'scoalition government.
But it's not just the rights or wrongs of the system atstake, there are also concerns it will not work in a world ofmass communications provided by firms located across the globe.
One of the main sticking points will be how the authoritiesget information from so-called third party service providersbased outside British jurisdiction, such as Google's Gmail, Facebook and Microsoft's Skype.
British-based mobile operators have told Reuters they arehappy to cooperate with the government, but they insist that thesame rules must apply to the likes of Facebook.
"From a security point of view, you need to be able to haveaccess to the full pool of communication otherwise you'refishing in a sub-set of a sub-set," said Ronan Dunne, the chiefexecutive of O2 UK.
DEEP-PACKET INSPECTION
If internet groups based outside Britain do not comply, theHome Office envisages forcing the British Internet ServiceProviders who carry their services to access the data instead,through a process known as deep-packet inspection.
But, it is not clear if this will be technically possible. Google has said it would not allow another service provider todecrypt its information on its Gmail service, and Jimmy Wales,the founder of Wikipedia, has said he would not cooperate.
"If we find that UK ISPs are mandated to keep track of everyweb page that someone reads on Wikipedia, I am almost certain... that we would immediately move to a default of encryptingall the connections to the UK," Wales said.
The government, which has already spent 400 million poundsso far on the scheme without it getting off the ground, hasestimated that it would cost 1.8 billion pounds over the 10years until 2020-1, a figure that has been disputed. TheTreasury has also said the funds have not been approved.
"We got widely divergent estimates of the cost and none ofthem were lower than the Home Office suggestion," said lawmakerStephen Mosley, a member of Prime Minister David Cameron'sruling Conservative Party who sat on the parliamentary committeewhich scrutinised the draft bill.
Polls indicate that the majority of Britons do not like theplans, think they are a waste of money and do not have faiththat the information will be secure.
Mosley, co-chairman of the Parliamentary Internet,Communications and Technology Forum, warned it was vital thatany law could not give succour to draconian regimes which soughtto censor their citizens activities.
"We as a country do want to be a beacon for freedom andliberty. We've got to make sure that legislation we introducecan't be misused elsewhere," he said.
