Total Phone and Email Database Proposed In UK

mishmash writes "The Times of London is reporting a proposal for a massive government database holding details of all phone calls, emails, and time spent on the Internet. This is to be justified as being 'part of the fight against crime and terrorism.' Quoting: 'Internet service providers and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.' If you want to write to representatives to let them know your views, contact details are available at Write to Them." UK telecoms are already required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months, accessible by subpoena; the requirement is already slated to expand to records of Internet usage, emails, and VoIP. This new proposal aims to centralize all that information in a single database in the Home Office.

Comments

Re:Useless information

[mikael]

Stock prices for data brokering companies, goverment contractors (HP, EDS), and server manufacturers. Seems more like an attempt to breath life into the UK IT industry to win votes in the home counties rather than anything practical.

Sending all that information to the database system is going to generate just as much traffic as spam generates. How on earth are they going to differentiate between spam with forged E-mail addresses and real E-mail, when they won't have access to the actual message contents?

Now more than ever

[ciaohound]

"Western civilization isn't possible without relational databases." -- Bruce Lindsay, IBM fellow. I always loved that quote.

Re:Is this even legal issue?

[Pepebuho]

I do not think they are talking about statistical data in here. They mean the content of everything and that is A BAD THING(TM).

Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever!

[Morromist]

Nobody seems to hate the concept of terrorism as much as the Brits -

I would like to see us have an Osama Bin ladin day where we burn his effigy to fireworks and general celebration
- and Guy fawkes never actually carried out the gunpowder plot
AND nobody seems to forget the bloody goverment reprisals that have taken place under the guidance of the old Kings and Queens, mostly due to religious differences. here I name but a few:

The rampage of Bloody Bonner during the reign of Queen Mary I

The Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys in the reign of King James II

The repression in Scotland against the highlanders after the first Jacobite rebellions which some historians have called genocide

The Peterloo Massacre in 1819

Have the English forgot all of these thousands of government killings and yet still remember Guy Fawkes who did not manage to kill a single person?
If I were British I would be considerably more afraid of my government than any terrorist.

Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever!

[Zemran]

The vote is just something they 'allow' us to have because it appeases the masses.

Why do people go on about the vote as if it makes a difference? In China they have had elections for decades and nothing has changed. The party puts forward a few suits to chose between and the people choose a puppet to stand in front of them. In Britain we get to choose between 3 suits and in the US they get to choose between 2... It is a long time since we have been any different to China or Russia.

Russia and China are moving in one direction and becoming more free. The UK and the US are moving in the other direction. Russia has closed its gulags and the US has opened its own...

In a few years we will be different to Russia and China again when they become the representatives or the free world.