Every Email/ Phonecall to be stored by the Government

[SiHart]

Here's a story the Government will be hoping to bury under the news of the spendings cuts today...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...overnment.html

I wonder what the justification for reviving it is? Anyone got any ideas?

Si xx

[Llordllama]

Police State! Police State!!!!! *ahem* I mean, I for one welcome our same old overlords.

[Rob McCow]

Of course! Now that there's going to be half a million extra unemployed, they'll all be joining terrorist networks in the UK.

There is no good reason to store EVERYBODY'S private emails and phone conversations. The cost of this surveillance must be pretty big too.

The move was buried in the Government's Strategic Defence and Security Review, which revealed: "We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.

"This programme is required to keep up with changing technology and to maintain capabilities that are vital to the work these agencies do to protect the public.

"Communications data provides evidence in court to secure convictions of those engaged in activities that cause serious harm. It has played a role in every major Security Service counterterrorism operation and in 95 per cent of all serious organised crime investigations.

"We will legislate to put in place the necessary regulations and safeguards to ensure that our response to this technology challenge is compatible with the Government’s approach to information storage and civil liberties."

It's not remotely clear what Surveillance.Gov is actually up to in that statement.

[Lissa]

There is no good reason to store EVERYBODY'S private emails and phone conversations

There should be an opt out box like you get for junk mail. "Tick here if you don't want your emails and conversations to be stored". That'll solve the problem.

[Philipnet]

When something like this comes up, I'm always keen to know how they plan to implement it.

And then knowing that, find a way to work around it

[Rob McCow]

There should be an opt out box like you get for junk mail. "Tick here if you don't want your emails and conversations to be stored". That'll solve the problem.

Great idea... waitaminute.. what if the damned terrorists ticked that box?



They're so damned clever. They're cleverer than that. We'll just have to be clevererer.

[Lissa]

A clever start would be to not trust Sgt Slaughter as he was an Iraqi SYMPATHISER~! during the first Gulf War. Thank goodness the Hulkster was around to set his brain straight with some well timed blows.

[Rob McCow]

Dammit! Your knowledge of wrestling has left me sprawling.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Here we go with "only the guilty need fear".

Surely a project like this is going to cost a heck of a lot to implement and man? On the back of spending cuts too ...

[Lissa]

Isn't the plan to force the phone and ISP companies to keep records which the spooks can ask to see if they want to? No real cost for central government and no one is going to pry into your affairs that can't already do so. It's just an extension of what companies already do - an itemised phone bill by definition requires the phone company to keep a record of every call you make and those records are retained for months in case you quibble about your bill - and doesn't involve your calls being recorded or your emails read. It's a lot of fuss over nothing and just formalises what's been in place for years.

[Dino]

As long as your e-mail/ phone calls doesn't contain the words "al qaeda", "explosion" or "plot", we should be ok!

Unless you phone a friend and ask "Hey do you think al qaeda are plotting to cause an explosion?"...

[WhiteCrowNZ]

"Guy Fawkes got it right ..."

[Alex]

What really winds me up about this was that in their Election Manifesto they specifically promised they would not introduce this.

I think that if a political party promises something in an election manifesto, unless there are significant financial reasons why something can no longer happen, or an event takes place which means it needs to (and it would have to be a pretty catastrophic one) it should be against the law to implement such things.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

You mean like the way the John Major manifesto promised not to increase the scope of VAT ... and within months they were putting VAT on fuel.

Labour complained until they were blue in the face on how unfair that one was - but you'll notice that Tony Blair didn't scrap it.

[Captain Tancredi]

I remember reading somewhere that during the Clinton administration, the FBI would regularly scan the internet for a variety of key words, one of which (in order to pre-empt any attempted attacks on the President's daughter) was "Chelsea". You can imagine what they had to wade through.

[Dirk Gently]

You mean like the way the John Major manifesto promised not to increase the scope of VAT ... and within months they were putting VAT on fuel.

Labour complained until they were blue in the face on how unfair that one was - but you'll notice that Tony Blair didn't scrap it.

In the same way Labour said they'd get rid of inheritance tax in 1997 & then never did & only increased the allowance by a few percent.