Details of UK website visits 'to be stored for year'

The Internet activity of everyone in Britain will have to be stored for a year by service providers, under new surveillance law plans. Police and intelligence officers will be able to see the names of sites people have visited without a warrant, Home Secretary Theresa May said. But there would be new safeguards over MI5, MI6 and the police spying on the full content of people's web use. May told members of Parliament the proposed powers were needed to fight crime and terror.

The wide-ranging draft Investigatory Powers Bill also contains proposals covering how the state can hack devices and run operations to sweep up large amounts of data as it flows through the Internet, enshrining in law the previously covert activities of GCHQ, as uncovered by whistleblower Edward Snowden. May told members of Parliament the draft bill was a "significant departure" from previous plans, dubbed the "snooper's charter" by critics, which were blocked by the Liberal Democrats, and will "provide some of the strongest protections and safeguards anywhere in the democratic world and an approach that sets new standards for openness, transparency and oversight".