Telecommunications Act 1984
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The Telecommunications Act 1984 (c. 12) is an Act of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace ...
. The rules for the industry are now contained in the
Communications Act 2003 The Communications Act 2003 (c. 21) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The act, which came into force on 25 July 2003, superseded the Telecommunications Act 1984. The new act was the responsibility of Culture Secretary Tessa ...
.


Provisions

The provisions of the act included the following: * Privatising British Telecom. * Establishing
Oftel The Office of Telecommunications (Oftel) (''the telecommunications regulator'') was a department in the United Kingdom government, under civil service control, charged with promoting competition and maintaining the interests of consumers in the UK ...
as a telecommunications regulator to protect consumers' interests and market competition. * Introducing a licensing system for running a telecommunications system or making a connection to another system without a licence. Doing so without a licence became a criminal offence. * Setting standards for modems according to BABT rules. * Criminalising indecent, offensive or threatening phone calls.


Section 94

Section 94 of the act provided a very broad power of government regulation of telecommunications in the interests of national security or relations with foreign governments. It allowed ''any'' Secretary of State to give secret directions to Ofcom or any providers of public electronic communications networks. They could be instructed “to do, or not to do” any particular thing specified, and the directions did not automatically expire after a certain period. The Secretary of State was required to lay a copy of every such direction before parliament so as to alert parliament to any possible misuse. However, this did not need to be done if to do so would be against the interests of national security or relations with foreign governments. It is not known to what extent this power has been used. In reply to a parliamentary question, the security minister James Brokenshire replied: “If the question relates to section 94 of the Telecommunications Act, then I am afraid I can neither confirm nor deny any issues in relation to the utilisation or otherwise of section 94.” The Interception of Communications Commissioner was asked in 2015 by prime minister
David Cameron David William Donald Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton (born 9 October 1966) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. Until 2015, he led the first coalition government in the UK s ...
to oversee section 94 directions, but was unable to do so because "there does not appear to be a comprehensive central record of the directions that have been issued by the various Secretaries of State." The commissioner recommended that oversight of section 94 directions is put on a statutory footing and that future legislation requires the use of the section 94 directions to be reported to the commissioner. Subsequently, on 4 November 2015, the
Home Secretary The secretary of state for the Home Department, more commonly known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom and the head of the Home Office. The position is a Great Office of State, maki ...
announced that after the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
in the U.S., MI5 started collecting bulk telephone communications data on which telephone numbers called each other and when, under a section 94 direction instead of the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (citation of United Kingdom legislation, c. 23) (RIP or RIPA) is an Act of parliament, Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, regulating the powers of public bodies to carry out surveillanc ...
which would have brought independent oversight and regulation. This had been kept secret until announced in 2015, without laying the direction before parliament under the against the interests of national security exemption. Section 94 was later repealed by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 which introduced new powers for the interception and collection, including bulk collection, of communications by British Intelligence Agencies, authorized by the Investigatory Powers Commission (IPC) it introduces.


References

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See also

* UK public service law * Telecommunications Act (Canada) *
Telecommunications Act of 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a United States federal law enacted by the 104th United States Congress on January 3, 1996, and signed into law on February 8, 1996, by President Bill Clinton. It primarily amended Chapter 5 of Title 47 of ...
, United States *
Halsbury's Statutes ''Halsbury's Statutes of England and Wales'' (commonly referred to as ''Halsbury's Statutes'') provides updated texts of every Public General Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Measure of the Welsh Assembly, or Church of England Me ...
*
Current Law Statutes Annotated Current Law Statutes Annotated, published between 1994 and 2004 as Current Law Statutes, contains annotated copies of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed since 1947 and Acts of the Scottish Parliament passed since 1999. It is publish ...
History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1984 Public services United Kingdom public law