MOSCOW, October 11 (RIA Novosti) - Phone and internet users should be worried about big commercial companies, rather than intelligence agencies obtaining and sharing their private data, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) Director Sir Iain Lobban said in an interview with the Telegraph.
"Look, who has the info on you? It's the commercial companies, not us, who know everything – a massive sharing of data," Lobban was quoted as saying by the newspaper on Friday.
"The other day I bought a watch for my wife. Soon there were lots of pop-up watches advertising themselves on our computer, and she complained," the GCHQ director added.
Lobban's comments came following revelations that three of the United Kingdom's largest mobile phone companies, EE, Vodafone and Three, were automatically passing on user data to the police through the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
The controversial law was approved in 2000 and is formally aimed at battling terrorism and internet crime. Earlier in October, it was revealed that London police officers had used the RIPA to obtain phone data of journalists from at least two major UK newspapers.
