Though the legislation faces opposition from 56 members of parliament, the government managed to rush the new legislation into law.
Britain has revived the controversial Communications Data Bill - dubbed as the snooper's charter — to give the intelligence officers more power to track web and telephone use.
The law placed before the House of Commons by Theresa May, the Home Secretary and backed by prime minister David Cameron and deputy PM Nick Clegg would require internet firms to store records of every website visited by subscribers in the past 12 months and their use of social media.
The legislation will allow the police and security services investigating serious crimes to access details of whom a person spoke to, and when, but not the content of their communication.
The legislation will now face the final hurdle - approval from the House of Lords.
Cameron said "It is the first duty of government to protect our national security and to act quickly when that security is compromised. As events in Iraq and Syria demonstrate, now is not the time to be scaling back on our ability to keep our people safe. The ability to access information about communications and intercept the communications of dangerous individuals is essential to fight the threat from criminals and terrorists targeting the UK. No government introduces fast track legislation lightly. But the consequences of not acting are grave".
Clegg said the Bill includes a termination clause that ensures the legislation falls at the end of 2016 and the next government is forced to look again at these powers.
Cameron said "In recent weeks there have been two developments that require urgent action. First, the European Court of Justice has struck down legislation that enables telephone and internet companies to hold data for security purposes. This means that unless we act now, companies will no longer retain the data about who contacted whom, where and when, and we would no longer be able to use this information to bring criminals to justice, and to keep our country safe".
"It is used in 95% of all serious organised crime cases handled by the crown prosecution service. It has been used in every major Security Service counter terrorism investigation over the past decade, and it's the foundation for prosecutions of pedophiles, drug dealers and fraudsters".
"Now, the second development concerns the legal framework to underpin those very specific instances where telephone and internet companies work with government to share the actual content of communications. Listening to someone's phone calls or reading their emails is an extremely serious thing to do. Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone's phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot. As Prime Minister, I know of examples where doing this has stopped a terrorist attack. We rely on the assistance of telephone and internet companies".
According to the PM, some companies are questioning whether there's a legal basis for them to share the content of data with government when their company is not based in the United Kingdom.
UK has said it will establish a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on the American model, to ensure that civil liberties are properly considered in the formulation of government policy on counter-terrorism. This will be based on David Anderson's existing role as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. Britain will also restrict the number of public bodies that are able to approach phone and internet companies and ask for communications data. Some bodies will lose their powers to access data altogether while local authorities will be required to go through a single central authority who will make the request on their behalf.
UK will also publish annual transparency reports, making more information publicly available than ever before on the way that surveillance powers operate.
Cameron added "So we're going to introduce emergency legislation to preserve these 2 vital capabilities: first, the capability for telephone and internet companies in the UK to retain data on who contacted whom, when and where, essentials to so many prosecutions at the heart of our criminal justice system and secondly the capability for such companies who offer services to UK customers to assist in specific UK national security or criminal investigations, regardless of where in the world these companies are based".
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