Coffee House has learned that a Tory MP is engaged in a fight with the Home Office on safeguards for its proposed ‘snooping bill’.
The fate of the Draft Communications Data Bill could be decided on Tuesday when a cross-party committee reports back on the legislation. Nick Clegg is already reported to be considering dropping the Liberal Democrats’ support for the Bill, and the joint committee’s report is expected to take a negative view of the proposals. One Liberal Democrat member, Lord Strasburger, told Home Secretary Theresa May that the proposals for monitoring internet users’ records were a ‘honeypot for casual hackers, blackmailers, criminals large and small from around the world, and foreign states’.
Part of the government’s justification for the bill rests on filtering arrangements which ministers argue would only return relevant data, rather than information which could then be mined by those on Strasburger’s list.
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