A threatened ban on encryption has been banished from a draft bill on surveillance powers in the U.K. — but the government plans to explicitly allow bulk surveillance of Internet traffic by security and intelligence agencies.

U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May began by listing the things the draft bill did not contain as she introduced it in Parliament on Wednesday.

“It will not include powers to force U.K. companies to capture and retain third-party Internet traffic from companies based overseas. It will not compel overseas communications service providers to meet our domestic data retention requirements for communications data. It will not ban encryption or do anything to undermine the security of people’s data,” she said.

But she does want police and the security and intelligence services to have the right to track Internet communications in the same way they do phone calls.

“It cannot be right that police could find an abducted child if the suspects were using mobile phones to conduct their crime, but if they were using social media or communications apps they would be out of reach,” she said.

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Browsing Privacy: (PC World) – Encyrption ban banished from draft UK surveillance bill

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