This appears to not affect programs like Tempora operated by the GCHQ (the British NSA), which intercepts all internet traffic in Britain. Instead, local & federal police are the ones who will have their own mass spying programs slightly impinged, with a new agency called the Office for Communications Data Authorizations taking requests and vetting them.
Now, this could go one of two ways. Hopefully, OCDA will thoroughly vet each request, rejecting most of what is currently rubber stamped and do limited interception of specific citizens connections for short durations.
Alternatively, this could become another rubber stamp FISA kangaroo court, where the OCDA doesn't have the manpower, tooling nor the inclination to do much more than sign nearly every interception request form.
I'm hoping for the former, but betting on the latter. Despite that, Brits are still having their data stolen by the GCHQ.
The historical problem in the UK has been that surveillance powers that were rushed through parliament to tackle "terrorism" have ended up being made available to every single branch of government. And 99.9% of the time they're used for petty, local government issues, like collecting council taxes or speeding fines, often by people without any law enforcement training at all.
Even if the OCDA ends up rubber stamping requests from the police, it'd be a huge improvement on the complete free-for-all there has been in the past. If they at least reject requests from a guy in the council refuse collection department who wants to spy on his ex-wife, then that'll be an improvement.
The even more historical problem is that surveillance powers were operated under the royal prerogative with no oversight of any kind. RIPA (that, correctly, much maligned predecessor to the Snoopers' Charter) was in one sense a step forward in that it at least put the surveillance that had always gone on onto a statutory basis.
Same with local councils. They'd always carried out some physical surveillance (benefit fraud and lying on school application forms being the main scope IIRC) but without oversight.
Unfortunately, the oversight regime sucks. But as you say, it's an improvement on a complete free-for-all.
The point of RIPA is not to allow surveillance, but to disallow most of the surveillance that was being carried out unless clear proceedures were followed.
RIPA wasn't a snoopers charter, it was designed to limit the amount of snooping that was happening and to bring it under some kind of regulatory framework.
It's not a very good law, and it's too generous to people wishing to carry out surveillance. But it's better than the uncontrolled surveillance that was happening before.
They are in the OSC's annual report, for example. [1]
Councils also sometimes respond to FOI requests, although they don't have to. e.g. over a three year period this council [2] made 11 requests for Call Data Records (who somebody phone) and 29 applications for in-person surveillance (checking people who claim to be unemployed are actually unemployed).
In 2015-2016 (the most recent OSC I can find) there were, for example, 9147 applications for Directed Surveillance of which a MAXIMUM 8.5% were possibly by local councils.
Do you have any evidence that suggests, it is, in fact, 99.9% from local councils?
If only such a thing existed. We don't have any of this pesky federalism in the UK. The police are supposed to be local, but they are ultimately under the control of the Home Office.
Influence, certainly, but not exactly control. When the Home Office did semi-nationalise the police against the miners' strike in the 80s it was rightly something of a scandal.
Now, this could go one of two ways. Hopefully, OCDA will thoroughly vet each request, rejecting most of what is currently rubber stamped and do limited interception of specific citizens connections for short durations.
Alternatively, this could become another rubber stamp FISA kangaroo court, where the OCDA doesn't have the manpower, tooling nor the inclination to do much more than sign nearly every interception request form.
I'm hoping for the former, but betting on the latter. Despite that, Brits are still having their data stolen by the GCHQ.