Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk

Remember how NuLabour Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister in waiting Gordon Brown, is promising to "cut red tape by 25%" ?

We are not convinced - see "More Treasury financial snooping triplicated red tape"

We have, eventually, had a result from our Freedom of information Act request for the

‘The Partial Regulatory Impact Assessment mentioned in the Explanatory Notes to Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 2657 The Terrorism (United Nations Measures) Order 2006

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2006/20062657.htm’

We reluctantly submitted this, after failing to get any information from the Treasury website, and from emails and phone calls to the Treasury itself.

See our FOIA blog entry for more details.

The Partial Regulatory Impact Assessment is on-line at:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/em2006/uksiem_20062657_en.pdf

This document admits that there has been no actual consultation with anybody, and it makes unsubstantiated claims that there will be no impact on, or cost to, for example, small businesses, despite the wording being so catch-all as to encompass every "person" in the United Kingdom, both individuals and corporate entities.

There is no Code of Practice to regulate the use or abuse of such widespread powers to demand financial information. These powers appear to be a way of circumventing the protections and audit trails, such as they are, envisaged in the forthcoming Code of Practice for the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Part III

These powers, and their criminal penalties, have subsequently been duplicated and then triplicated by the two further, almost identical, overlapping Orders, mentioning the Taliban and Al Qaida, and North Korea.