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Collection of Internet Connection Records

Internet surveillance activity in the United Kingdom

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 8, 2024
Entity authorityQ105905498
Source-derived summary

As of March 2021, collection of Internet Connection Records is being secretly trialled by two major British ISPs as part of a technical trial for mass surveillance under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The Home Office and National Crime Agency are also participating in the trial.

"Internet Connection Records" is a generic term for metadata records of UK Internet users' Internet access patterns. Data collected may include who they are, what sites they connected to and when, and what quantity of data was transferred, but does not include the data content of the transmissions. While the participants have been kept secret, the existence of the trial has been confirmed by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Collection of Internet Connection Records” as internet surveillance activity in the United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2021, 2016—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Internet, Connection and Records can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as internet surveillance activity in the United Kingdom. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 8, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q105905498. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2021 and 2016.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Collection of Internet Connection Records”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Collection of Internet Connection Records primary sources, Collection of Internet Connection Records archive and Internet research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Collection of Internet Connection Records” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.