Lowe, D (2015) Why in Widening Surveillance Powers of Electronic Communications, Co-Operation is needed with Internet and Communications Service Providers. The New Jurist.

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Abstract

There is no denying that the current international terrorist threat faced by many states around the world is real. The actions witnessed just in 2015 provides sufficient evidence of that as seen from the terrorist attacks in Paris in January 2015, to attacks seen in June 2015 in Kuwait, Tunisia and France and of late in Turkey and again in France in August 2015 where an attack was prevented by the courage of travellers on a train travelling from Holland to France. One common thread through these attacks are that the terrorists are known to be in various states’ intelligence systems and yet their intended actions were not picked up by intelligence analysts. One of the reasons for this has been the widespread and sophisticated use of electronic communications systems by terrorist groups, especially the group Islamic State (also referred to as ISIL or Daesh). Another problem facing security and counter-terrorism policing agencies is in gaining access to communications data held by Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Communications Service Providers (CSP). By examining the current terrorist threat facing many states and terrorist groups’ use of electronic communications, as well as the concerns over the surveillance society, this article looks at the proposed and recently passed legislation regarding surveillance of electronic communications in a number of states. One key issue why some of the legislative provisions will fail to achieve its intended outcome will be in the failure to secure the co-operation of ISP and CSP’s. This article proposes that as privacy rights and data protection is deeply embedded within its law, the European Union (EU) has the opportunity to become a major international actor on the world stage in seeking that co-operation with ISP and CSP’s in securing access to communications data and its retention.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General)
Divisions:	Law
Publisher:	The New Jurist
Date Deposited:	04 Sep 2015 09:34
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 14:00
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/1934

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