The government agrees to pass a law to protect confidential journalistic material from state hacking.
The government will amend the Investigatory Powers Act to require intelligence agencies to seek independent approval before accessing confidential journalistic material obtained through a mass cyberattack, but journalists remain vulnerable to other mass surveillance powers.
The government has agreed to introduce legislation that will require MI5 and GCHQ to seek independent approval before accessing confidential journalistic material obtained through mass phone or computer.
The Investigatory Powers Amendment Bill, which was debated in the House of Commons yesterday (Monday 19 February), will require intelligence agencies to seek independent approval from the Investigatory Powers Committee before accessing journalistic material or material that could identify a confidential journalistic source.
The compromise follows a seven-year legal challenge filed by the human rights organization Liberty with the support of the National Journalists Union (NJU).
It follows separate warnings from tech companies and rights groups arguing that proposed changes to the Investigatory Powers Act will disrupt the ability of tech companies to implement security updates and introduce end-to-end encryption.
The government has asked Liberty to drop legal proceedings in light of a proposed amendment to the Investigatory Powers Bill 2016, which would require an independent body to review all requests to search for and preserve confidential journalistic information obtained through mass hacks of computers, phones and tablets.
Journalists are exposed to state surveillance and interference.
Under current law, security and intelligence services and other state agencies can search for confidential material from journalists, including emails, phone calls and text messages, in data obtained through mass hacking operations without the need for prior approval from a judicial judge.
The state introduced similar protections for journalistic material obtained through mass interception in March 2023, following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of “Big Brother Watch and others v UK”, which concluded that mass interception of communications data violated the privacy rights of UK.
Liberty's lawyer, Megan Goulding, said journalists have been exposed to state surveillance and interference for more than a decade with minimal safety or protection measures in place.
However, he added that journalists and sources still face risk from other mass surveillance powers.
Lord Andrew Sharpe, representing the government, introduced an amendment to the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Act during its reporting phase on 23 January 2024.
The amendment, in Article 27 of the bill, requires security and intelligence services to seek prior approval from the Inspector of Investigatory Powers if they intend to access confidential journalistic information or material that may identify or confirm the identity of a journalist's sources collected in the context of detection through mass intervention equipment.
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The Commissioner may only authorise access to or retention of confidential journalistic material if the public interest in accessing or storing the material outweighs the public interest in the confidentiality of the journalistic material and there is no other way in which the information could be obtained .
Journalists and sources continue to face risk from mass surveillance.
Goulding told Computer Weekly that confidential journalistic material and sources were still at risk under other UK mass surveillance powers that had not been addressed by the government.
These include journalistic material found in massive personal data sets – databases containing information about the population – most of which have no interest in objective information. They are believed to contain data such as travel records and emails that organizations have sent and received and can be used to read journalists’ sources.
Liberty argues that other IT and business authorities are implementing measures to obtain bulk communication data from telecommunications companies, which puts journalists and their sources at risk.
Information source: computerweekly.com
