European Commission; First Stage of Infringement Proceeding

Dear Sir or Madam,

on 14 April 2009, the UK were given two months to respond to
infringement proceedings initiated by the European Commission
(64/08/INSO).

The proceedings arise following the covert trials of Phorm/121Media
interception and surveillance systems by BT Internet on hundreds of
thousands of its customers, and the web sites they used.

The last working day for the UK Government to submit a response was
Friday 12 June 2009.

Please will you

- confirm or deny that a response has been submitted

- indicate which Department of Government was responsible for
submitting the response

- disclose the content of that response in full

- disclose the content of correspondence between the Cabinet Office
and the European Commission concerning the same matter

- disclose correspondence between the Cabinet Office and other UK
government departments contributing to the response concerning the
same matter

Yours faithfully,

P. John

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Cabinet Office's
handling of my FOI request 'European Commission; First Stage of
Infringement Proceeding'.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/eu...

Concerning q2; please could you elaborate? Which other Government
Depts. contributed to the response?

Concerning q3; please would you reconsider the public interest
exemption. The public interest is best served by openly and
transparently disclosing the reasons why the UK Government either
failed to enforce the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act/Data
Protection Act/Privacy in Electronic Communications Regulations
(among others), or in the alternative, failed to correctly
implement the European Directives highlighted by the EC Infraction
proceedings.

Concerning q4; it seems surprising that there would be no
correspondence between the Cabinet Office and the EC. Please could
you reconsider whether such documentation exists? I am aware from
previous disclosures that correspondence with the EC and Cabinet
Office officials commenced 10 July 2008 concerning acceptance of
the EC case (see link below). I am aware that there is a case
management system used by the UK Government to manage the state of
EC cases (the reference being 64/08/INSO) which has presumably been
updated in that period.

(See
https://www.dephormation.org.uk/document...)

Yours faithfully,

P. John

Dear Sir or Madam,

please can I chase progress on this internal review?

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/eu...

The public interest is best served by openly and transparently
disclosing the information requested.

It has taken the CPS almost a year to consider the evidence of
criminal offences by BT/Phorm.

I am particularly keen to know what explanation was provided to the
European Commission that might explain this extended delay, and so
understand the ongoing failure to prosecute executives of BT/Phorm
for illegally intercepting UK personal and commercial
telecommunications without authorisation or licence.

Yours faithfully,

P. John

Dear Cabinet Office,

Three hundred days later, you offer me a one page reply, with no
explanation for the obscene delay.

In that time, no one in BT or Phorm has been prosecuted or
imprisoned for illegally intercepting the private/confidential
communications of 200,000 people, and the businesses that served
them.

Still worse, in the interim, TalkTalk have apparently conducted a
near identical trial of illegal covert communications interception
(this time secretly using Chinese rather than Russian supplied
espionage technology).

Yet you consider it is in the public interest not to explain what
the Government is doing to comply with and enforce EC Directives
which protect the privacy/security/integrity of telecommunications?

Please would you care to elaborate on the reasons for the delay,
before I make a complaint to the Information Commissioner?

Yours faithfully,

P. John