Home Office declares: Detained immigrants shall have internet

The Home Office has issued guidance demanding that immigration detainees are provided with internet access so they can maintain “links with friends, families and legal representatives and to prepare for removal.” Publishing Detention Services Order 04/2016 (PDF) the Home Office has responded to an independent review into the …

[Anonymous Blowhard]

Some of these people have managed to escape from repressive regimes, with secret-police monitoring all their communications; they must wonder what has happened to the UK since they started their journey to "freedom"...

[Alexander J. Martin]

Indeed, and it isn't nice to think that we're not welcoming genuine asylum seekers (let's not lie to ourselves, there are certainly those who are merely breaking the law) but where there is a need for border control there is also a need to ensure that we're treating those being detained at our borders with dignity, and the ability to communicate with family and have access to news and other factors affecting claims is widely recognised to be an important part of that. It's interesting that the Home Office is running against the findings of both those running these centres and the indie reviewer in denying them access to social media.

[Jay 2]

The other day I was watching (what I think was) 24 Hours In Police Custody on C4, and in that the police had picked up quite a few illegal immigrants. As part of the processing the men were separated from the women and children. One of the men was repeatedly asking where his family was, but could get no answer. Even when he was released (not to a detention centre), no-one seemed to know where his family were. Fortunately after a day or two he made contact with his wife via Facebook and found they were in a hotel not too far away.

Given the proliferation of FB/WhatsApp/etc nowadays of being the primary weapons of choice, blocking them doesn't exactly help the detainees maintain links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Primary weapons of choice; such an unfortunate turn of phrase when talking about potential terrorists illegal immigrants.

[Anonymous Coward]

Left-pad

Asylum seekers should be denied access to node.js left-pad.

Because why not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's free basics when you need it?

[Anonymous Coward]

+Like

[Chris Fox]

Magical thinking

"It is the responsibility of the centre suppliers to ensure that detainees electronic communications are monitored, and that any privileged material (such as legal correspondence) is excluded from all monitoring."

How's that supposed to work? Suppliers are required to monitor communications, but if it turns out to be legally privileged they have to go back in time and unmonitor it? And as for the downloading and uploading of *any* files being prohibited; by what other magical means is Internet access supposed to work?

Perhaps this comes from the same Home Office brains that gave us such great ideas as secure encryption with backdoors, or that argue bulk collection, storage, indexing and querying of all communications meta data somehow does not count as "mass surveillance".

[joshimitsu]

Re: Magical thinking

shouldn't they also be able to download forms and information relating to the asylum process and settling in etc. to print out and fill in or read offline - since the terminals will be in high demand?

[SolidSquid]

So they're allowed to use the internet to keep up social connections, just not through any social networks?

[localzuk]

Makes sense from a "protecting your own ass" POV

Why would the government want people's posts to potentially go viral on social media sites if/when a detainee posts something that embarrasses the govt?

Its all about trying to keep them quiet.