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| Britain |
| New Powers to record every phone call and email 'echoes ChinaÂ’ |
| 2012-04-02 |
| The Coalition is to revive plans first raised then shelved by the last Labour Government to track the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet. Proposed new powers, to be unveiled in the Queen’s Speech, will see a huge expansion in the amount of data communication providers are required to keep for at least a year. It will allow the police and intelligence officers to monitor who someone is in contact with or websites they visit, although the content of such communications will not be accessed. Civil liberty campaigners last night said the proposals were an “unprecedented” expansion of state intrusion more akin to China or Iran. Labour faced fierce opposition in 2006 when it proposed creating a national database to store such information and later dropped all notion of the scheme just before the last general election. But the new Government has revived the plans and while there will be no database, providers will be required to record all activities of their customers so they can be accessed if needed. It comes even though the Coalition Agreement promised to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason". Ministers will argue it is essential to help combat terrorism and serious crime such as paedophile networks. It raises the prospects of police or security agencies being able to monitor communications in real time on people they are investigating as well as trawling back through previous contacts. |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #1 Go ahead, got nothing to hide andy you'll get bored Quickly. Just another scare tactic. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2012-04-02 18:10 |