British Government To Watch Every Call And E-mail
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Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.
GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping center, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project.
Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers - thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.
Ministers are braced for a backlash similar to the one caused by their ID cards program. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “Any suggestion of the government using existing powers to intercept communications data without public discussion is going to sound extremely sinister.”
MI5 currently conducts limited e-mail and website intercepts which are approved under specific warrants by the home secretary.
Further details of the new plan will be unveiled next month in the Queen’s speech.
The Home Office stressed no formal decision had been taken but sources said officials had made clear that ministers had agreed “in principle” to the program.
Officials claim live monitoring is necessary to fight terrorism and crime. However, critics question whether such a vast system can be kept secure. A total of 57 billion text messages were sent in the UK last year - 1,800 every second.
Wow!!
NOBODY had anything to say about this?!?!? Did you guys read this??
Now, I am the last guy that will say that political correctness or “cultural sensitivity” should overwhelm the law or the principle that bad guys need to be dealt with.
BUT! in order to deal with them, they need to be identified. And honestly, is watching every single piece of electronic correspondence going to do any more than build up a list for the cops of who looks at girly sites in the wee hours??
There is an existing system that allows interception of specific material based on a warrant. That is supposed to be the result of good solid police work. Call it racial profiling or targeted investigation if you must, but chances are that the soccer mom and the highschool kid working at pizza hut are not worthy of eavesdropping based on national security or terrorism concerns.
By all means, let’s get the bad guys and dispatch them appropriately. Nobody says it’s easy. Let’s not overwhelm the system by trying to watch everybody all the time. It won’t work, and it’s one step closer to Big Brother having total control.
Oh, and for the conspiracy theorists out there (you know who you are, and so do we!!), don’t for a second forget that there are already people listening to you either live or via memorex, hoping to hear key words and phrases and send in the troops…
So, whattya think?? Anyone??
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