IEEE Spectrum: British Government: We Want Access to Your Every Phone Call, Email and Web Search

Description

In England, your home may be your castle, but the government will soon be able to get a rather good idea of what is happening inside it.

The British government has decided to go ahead with its plans under what it calls the Intercept Modernisation Programme to force every telecommunication company and Internet service provider to keep a record of all of its customers' personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the web sites they have visited, according to the London Telegraph and various other British papers.

The information gathered, the Telegraph says, will be able to be accessed by 653 public bodies, "including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors."

"They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to obtain the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority," the Telegraph says.

The only bits of "good news", if you can call it that, is that the information won't be held on a central database because of privacy concerns (that seems a bit oxymoronic to me), and the full rollout will be delayed until the after the next election.

Original URL

http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/computing/it/riskfactor/british-government-we-want-access-to-your-every-phone-call-email-and-web-search

http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/computing/it/riskfactor/british-government-we-want-access-to-your-every-phone-call-email-and-web-search