Liberal Democrats Online: upcoming bills

Upcoming internet related bills

Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill:: Recently described in the Guardian as "probably the worst piece of legislation ever laid before Parliament", the RIP Bill blows a hole in people's privacy online - removes presumed innnocence and is potentially a major barrier to successful e-commerce (due to its muddled thinking on encryption). There is a need to regulate Government activity in this area, but the Bill gets the balance wrong between the rights of the state and the rights of the citizen. Read the Stand summary of the Standing Committee debate on April 4th - and how Richard Allan, Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam tried to amend the bill to make it work - and how the Liberal Democrats opposed the most controversial sections. You can also read the amendment being put forward by Simon Hughes MP and Richard Allan MP for the Report Stage and Third Reading on May 8th.
Electronic Communications Bill: This used to contain the highly controversial proposals now included in the RIPS bill above - but now doesn't and so is now an uncontroversial and useful piece of legislation providing the legal infrastructure for e-commerce in the UK: electronic signatures etc.

Houses of Parliament:: Find out what your MP might have said about RIP in Hansard during the second reading. You can also read the House of Commons Library Research Paper on RIP and what happened to the RIP bill in committee.

Department of Trade & Industry: Their site includes a copy of the original proposed Electronic Communications Bill and a summary of the responses to it - this latter is helpful since many of the criticisms are still valid.

Guardian: Free Speech on the net: Excellent impassioned source of information on the RIP bill (and other internet issues) from the UK Guardian newspaper.

Stand: An informal group campaigning for safe e-commerce legislation. Their site includes an extremely helpful analysis of the RIP bill. Go and sign their petition!

Foundation for Information Policy Research: An independent body that studies the interaction between information technology and society. Again check out their excellent analysis of the RIP bill.