British Surveillance No Different Than U.S.

While the U.S. has Snowden, The Brits have Privacy International.  As part of a lawsuit, Privacy International obtained formerly secret files regarding the extent of British surveillance.

The data the Brits are hoovering up includes private medical records, correspondence with your doctor or lawyer, financial data and other information.

And the government admits that the majority of the data collected is about people who are not suspected of a crime or a threat to national security.

It seems that the British rules regarding data collection are looser than the NSA’s rules.

The documents say that the data includes sensitive information like political and religious affiliation, sexual preferences and legally privileged information.

It even includes data on people who are dead – and therefore unlikely to be much of a threat to British security.

The documents do say that employees should not search for information on themselves or friends – unless their friends are suspects.  Public figures are also off limits.

One program called KARMA POLICE, the documents say, aims to create a web browsing profile of every person visible on the Internet.

To me, this seems more invasive than or at least equal to, what the NSA is doing.

So while the EU is complaining that the U.S. negotiated Privacy Shield doesn’t reign in the NSA enough, maybe they ought to look at home first.

Just my two cents.

Information for this post came from The Intercept.

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