Slashdot Mirror
UK Plans More Spying On Internet Users Under 'Terrorism' Pretext
Wowsers writes "In vogue with other countries cracking down on freedom and democracy on the internet as discussed in Slashdot recently, the UK is joining in with plans to track all phone calls, text messages, email traffic and websites visited online, all to be stored in vast databases under new government anti-terror plans. As reported in The Telegraph, security services will have access to information about who has been communicating with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook, direct messages between subscribers on Twitter would also be stored, as well as communications between players in online video games. The scheme is a revised version of a plan drawn up by the ex-Labour government which would have created a central database of all the information. The idea was later dropped in favor of requiring communications providers to store the details at the taxpayers' expense."
This isn't about fighting terrorism. its about control.
Orwell was an optimist.
Big Brother's regime is not right- or left- wing. That's (part of) the point of the book. It doesn't even matter, it's just a dictatorship.
Even if they didn't do it themselves, they would be bound by the EU Data Retention Directive to do it.
Sweden has already got threatened with the EU high court for not implementing the directive.
Either the state foots the bill, where you'll pay for it through taxes of the provider has to pay for it and raise the end user prices. Either way, you're the sorry bastard who'll have to pay for it.