UK government to be sued over BT and Phorm

The UK government faces being sued by the European Commission after failing to take action over secret broadband interception by BT and Phorm.

It has been revealed in a recent report that the UK’s government could be facing legal action by the European Commission over failure to do anything about secret broadband interception by BT and Phorm. The EU claims that no action was taken by the government over the broadband interception and profiling trials undertaken by BT and Phorm.

It was claimed last year that in 2006 and 2007 tens of thousands of broadband lines had been secretly tapped into by BT and Phorm, the purpose of this being to monitor Internet use for the benefit of advertisers. One EU official, Viviane Reding, has said that this has highlighted the need to tighter security and more stringent laws in the UK to protect consumers under the ePrivacy Directive.

Reding stated: “I call on the UK authorities to change their national laws and ensure that national authorities are duly empowered and have proper sanctions at their disposal to enforce EU legislation on the confidentiality of communications.” She added: “This should allow the UK to respond more vigorously to new challenges to ePrivacy and personal data protection such as those that have arisen in the Phorm case.”

The European Commission went on to state: “Under UK law, which is enforced by the UK police, it is an offence to unlawfully intercept communications. However, the scope of this offence is limited to ‘intentional’ interception only. Moreover, according to this law, interception is also considered to be lawful when the interceptor has ‘reasonable grounds for believing’ that consent to interception has been given. The Commission is also concerned that the UK does not have an independent national supervisory authority dealing with such interceptions.”