RSSUK bill calls for retention of all communications data
By Tim Conneally | Published May 21, 2008, 5:31 PM
Details have emerged about the Communications Data Bill currently in pre-legislation in the UK. Home Office representatives have declined to address whether passage of this bill will mean keeping a central database of all e-mails and texts sent, calls made, and Web pages viewed.
More details have emerged about the Communications Data Bill currently in pre-legislation in the UK, leading many to speculate that the British government is assembling the means to spy on its citizens.
Since October 2007, UK telecom companies have been required by law to retain all landline and mobile phone call data for one year as a part of the wider EU Directive 2006/24/EC.
Now, plans to retain the data from almost all communication in the UK that could be included in the draft Communications Bill are causing public uproar. Spokespersons for the Home Office -- the UK's counterpart of the Department of Homeland Security in the US -- said that changes to the Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 will allow authorities to access communications records in counter-terrorism and crime prevention.
"The changes to the way we communicate, due particularly to the Internet revolution, will increasingly undermine our current capabilities to obtain communications data and use it to protect the public," say Home Office officials.
While the actual data retention will no doubt begin at the service provider level, a possible outcome that many media outlets expect is the maintenance of a state-level database of the billions of exchanges that take place every day.
This elicits a host of technical questions that would take years to resolve; among them: How much space does an estimated annual 57 billion text messages and one trillion e-mails consume? So even if these passages make it into law, launching the database itself probably won't take place any time soon.
http://www.timesonline.c...tors/article3979928.ece
Regardless of the fact that this govt's IT record is appalling, this won't fly. See above link ...
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How will this affect online banking and will it open the door to even more ID theft ? Also if you speak you mind"freedom of speech" will it bring you harassment?.
Leave the doors open but lock the communications up, LMAO.
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This is from a government that has utterly failed to create a health service database in over 10 years and loses confidential data on it's governed populous pretty much every week.
It will never happen!
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Big Brother is watching you Citizen.
Have you had any Thought Crimes lately?
In the act of making you all safe you will all become prisoners of life.
T.D.
Freedom, is a concept that is propagated by those already indentured in slavery, true freedom knows no limits and therefore is impossible to attain.
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Well they are probably the most spied upon country in the so-called free world, so what else is new here?
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Oh, so they are slowly catching up with Google?
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Go PGP, go PGP, go!
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If they honestly think that:
A. This can be implemented
B. This will get even close to being allowed through as a bill
they are ridiculously mistaken.
We've all seen how they can't manage a database properly with the fiasco of losing all the child benefits data late last year (couldn't work out how to separate out certain fields of data, so burnt the whole lot to DVD and sent it through the post - ****ing genius); how the hell do they think they're going to manage a database this big?
"Since October 2007, UK telecom companies have been required by law to retain all landline and mobile phone call data for one year as a part of the wider EU Directive 2006/24/EC."
I wasn't aware of this and am shocked this was allowed through.
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"How much space does an estimated annual 57 billion text messages and one trillion e-mails consume?"
I'm guessing at least 3 - 500GB HDs! ;-)
A record of all web pages viewed?
This should push the sale of the various anonymizer programs, neutrl proxy services, as well as PGP encryption through the roof!
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