Lawyers and web experts attack UK’s fast-tracking of surveillance legislation

The World Wide Web Foundation and the United Kingdom Law Society have both strongly criticized the British government for attempting to fast-track the new Data Retention and Investigation Powers (DRIP) Act, which is meant to keep existing surveillance powers going but which will actually expand them greatly.

According to the World Wide Web Foundation, which is headed up by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, the British government’s assertion that the bill needs to be rushed through as emergency legislation “seems at best incompetent, and at worst manipulative,” as the law could easily have been debated over recent months. The Law Society, which represents British lawyers, warned that history shows emergency laws tend to be “used for purposes for which they were not intended.”