UK ISPs Refuse to Monitor Users

An anonymous reader writes "The internet industry has refused to sign up to plans to give law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to the records of British web and email users, throwing David Blunkett's post-September 11 data surveillance regime into fresh disarray. In the latest of a long line of setbacks for the home secretary's data retention campaign, the Guardian has learned that internet service providers have told the Home Office that they will not voluntarily stockpile the personal records of their customers for long periods so that they can be accessed by police or intelligence officers."

Comments

Re:umm

[matthew.thompson]

Hope and Glory.

Pr0n

[Anonymous Coward]

You geeks don't want your mothers to find out about all the pr0n you've been downloading....

Heh.

Re:Of course the Government would...

[Dean Sas]

so the hundreds (i think?) of lives lost in the various train crashes which were owned by a private company makes people happier. The crashes were caused by money been gave to shareholders instead of track maintanence? Air traffic control being part privatised meaning equipment that doesn't always work correctly? etc etc

The handgun guy owned his guns legally

[Goonie]

The guy that went psycho at Monash and killed those students bought and owned his guns perfectly legally. Handguns are not banned in Australia, though there are strict licensing and registration requirements and you can't carry legally carry around concealed weapons.

From all the reports (and of course apply necessary salting), your self-defence arguments wouldn't have applied to the Monash case. The guy was almost certainly mentally ill, so he was unlikely to be deterred by the risk of being killed himself, and even if somebody had have been carrying a concealed weapon he still would have had time to kill people before a defensive weapon could be retrieved and used.

Nor does it apply to our friend the Washington sniper, for that matter. Nobody has even seen him pull the trigger. People could carry around 50-cal sniper rifles, SAWs, or RPG's and it wouldn't help defend against him.