Proposed law will entrench intelligence agencies’ power to hack phones and computers

A proposed law will give British spies the right to hack into smartphones and computers The Times reports.

The Investigatory Powers Bill will afford MI5, MI6 andGCHQ a “dizzying” range of surveillance powers and give them clear statutory authority for exercising them.

Sources close to the Home Office said the move has been prompted by increased use of encryption techniques which allow users to scramble data and make it unreadable.

Devices are usually accessed via vulnerabilities in the software.

Spies can install software that allows them to remotely activate the camera and microphone as well as access files.

Digital evidence expert Peter Sommer said: “Increasingly, can’t read communications sent over the internet because of encryption, so their ability to get information from interception is rapidly diminishing.

“The best way around this is to get inside someone’s computer. This is an increasingly important avenue for them.”

The bill is intended to simplify the rules on interception, surveillance and monitoring of communications and will clarify the intelligence agencies’ powers to interfere with people’s property after acquiring a warrant from the Home Secretary.

Currently, the legal authority for hacking comes from the Intelligence Services Act 1994 although it does not specifically address hacking or indeed computers.

The government conceded in February that spies had been using this act as the legal basis for hacking into computers.

David Anderson QC cautioned in June that some current hacking methods were appropriate but that “many are of the view that there are others which are so intrusive that they would require exceptional safeguards for their use to be legal”.

A spokesman for the Home Office said the draft bill would “update the legal framework governing the use of investigatory powers to ensure law enforcement and the security and intelligence agencies have the powers they need, subject to strong safeguards and robust, independent oversight”.

James Welch, the legal director at Liberty, said: “Hacking … carries unlimited and untested potential for government to act against the security and economic interests of its own citizens, whether consciously or otherwise.”