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Police and security services will be able to see names of sites visited in the past year without a warrant, under the draft Investigatory Powers Bill.
The science and technology Committee says its requirements are confusing, and firms fear a rise in hacking.
The Home Office said it would study the report's findings.
When she announced the draft bill last year, Theresa May stressed that the authorities would not be able to see individual web pages visited, just basic data, such as domain names like bbc.co.uk or facebook.com.
The information would, of course, only be used for 'official purposes'.
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Theresa May's Internet Spy Powers Bill 'Confusing', Say MPs
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You can drive a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @07:04AM
The "official purposes" include (or will include) destroying whistleblowers, journalists, dissidents, and activists, as well as blackmailing politicians. There has never been a government throughout history that could be trusted with such massive amounts of power, but this time is different; just trust the government.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday February 08 2016, @07:21AM
I believe what we have here is a Tantalus Field [wikia.com]. Used for the same purpose.
The problem we have here is the situation is AFTER Spock ( populace ) has knowledge of the device.... now, given the Captain might use this device, does anyone trust the captain?
This just leads to a witch hunt. [wikia.com].
I know... two Star Trek reverances ( pun intended ) in the same post. That is one thing I believe Gene Roddenberry was extremely good at - bringing up the human condition and showing it for what it was - all with a science fiction backdrop to keep name-calling to individuals out of the picture.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @07:30AM
We went through this in australia a year or so ago. Our politicians were just as clueless:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGURYRjEiRI [youtube.com]
Advice: sign up to a vpn before your local council knows your porn preferences.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday February 08 2016, @07:31AM
The document appears to ignore any Internet communications that are not http.
Also, it looks like the government has engaged in lots of handwaving and inadequate consideration of end-to-end encrypted traffic. Either that, or GCHQ isn't concerned about encrypted traffic and will gather the data itself, without the involvement of CSPs (ISPs to the rest of the English-speaking world).
The only solution proposed to deal with end-to-end encryption that is proposed is hacking, which is unlikely to be useful on a large scale and is likely to be unreliable in producing results. I don't see the need for ISPs to gather this data if they can just hack into someone's computer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mojo chan on Monday February 08 2016, @08:27AM
A list of domain names without a warrant is an Orwellian nightmare. Trying to abuse the language to make it seem benign is why we can't trust May further than you can fling her.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @10:42AM
... or ssl.proxyoutsideyourjurisdiction.com
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Monday February 08 2016, @06:50PM
May, Osbourne and - may any passing gods have mercy on our souls - Johnson are in a 3-way fight to be the next Chief Tory. They'll all try to undermine each other and May vs Osbourne is a funny one to watch: she proposes sweeping new powers for the state, he says we can't afford them, blah blah blah. The only down side is that we may get the village idiot that is Boris Johnson by default while the other two undermine each other.
I hear he knows his subject (Roman history, IIRC) relatively well, but is an otherwise useless tool. I can't see us ever having to negotiate with - or fight, for that matter - the ancient Romans, but I've been wrong in the past.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday February 09 2016, @09:11AM
Basically, no matter what happens we are fucked. Utterly fucked for at least another 4.5 years.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by jimshatt on Monday February 08 2016, @08:57AM
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday February 08 2016, @03:03PM
if it's vague and confusing then the answer is simple: vote against it.