Snooper’s Charter Slammed By Industry Pioneer Michael Dell

Earlier this month the UK government published its draft Investigatory Powers Bill, more popularly known as the snooper’s charter.

The draft bill proposed by UK Home Secretary Theresa May requires internet service providers and mobile phone companies to store records of their customers’ internet browsing activity (including social media), email correspondence, voice calls, internet gaming, and mobile phone messaging services for 12 months.

Unsurprisingly, this draft bill has been met with incredulity within the technology and service provider industry. Today, Michael Dell – the chief executive of the US PC maker Dell Computers – in an interview with the Telegraph came out to describe the draft bill as a “horrible idea.”

Mr Dell insisted that breaking the encryption that ensuring messages cannot be read as they are sent between user’s devices will cause more problems than it solves. Furthermore, creating and opening backdoors into systems so that governments can access their citizens unencrypted data also provides a way in for others that you don’t want to get in.

As Michael Dell said: “Our position on creating a back door inside our products so that the government can get in is that it’s a horrible idea.”

Despite this, Michael Dell acknowledged that even though most industry experts agreed with him, his company would always comply with the laws in any given country. He further acknowledged that it was the technology Industry’s responsibility to take a role in educating politicians and the broader government about the risk of the proposed legislation.