Information Commissioner: monitoring plans will dominate Queen\'s Speech interest

The proposed Government surveillance plans are expected to face out in the Queen's Speech next month.

Talking to SC Magazine, information commissioner Christopher Graham said he expected that next month's Queen's Speech will not have "much in it" and the surveillance plans would thus dominate.

He said: “Obviously this can be quite big and i've been working with the house Office on a standard compatibility to study this with both the last government and the present government and our position is consistent in regard to the last government's commitment.

“There are core decisions to be made, and the intrusion into people's privacy, to be certain it's compliant with the knowledge Protection Act on safeguarding people's data. Will probably be interesting to peer what's within the Queen's Speech and my role is to watch the main points and suggest where there ought to be changes.”

Graham said it's not the role of the data Commissioner's Office (ICO) to take a view on politics but to take a look at proposals intimately.

The announcement of plans to observe and store the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone within the UK by the house Office a the beginning of this month caused outrage.

A statement from an ICO spokesperson on the time said that the ideas commissioner's role in the house Office project, both under this government and the last, was to press for the required limitations and safeguards to mitigate the impact on citizens' privacy.

“We will continue to hunt assurances, including the implementation of the result of a radical Privacy Impact Assessment. Ultimately, the choice to whether to proceed with the project is one that needs to be taken by Parliament,” it said.

It added: “There might want to be key safeguards as to who has access to data and where it's stored. If there isn't deep packet inspection, what's there? There must be guidelines to the honeypot of info.”