Broadband Bills Will Have To Increase To Pay For Snooper's Charter, MPs Warned (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes that the UK's Science and Technology Select Committee has been told that ISPs will have huge problems implementing the so-called snooper's charter, and may be forced to raise their prices. The Guardian reports: "Consumers' broadband bills will have to go up if the investigatory powers bill is passed due to the "massive cost" of implementation, MPs have been warned. Internet service providers (ISP) told a Commons select committee that the legislation, commonly known as the snooper's charter, does not properly acknowledge the "sheer quantity" of data generated by a typical internet user, nor the basic difficulty of distinguishing between content and metadata. As a result, the cost of implementing plans to make ISPs store communications data for up to 12 months are likely to be far in excess of the £175m the government has budgeted for the task, said Matthew Hare, the chief executive of ISP Gigaclear."

Comments

Re:Good.

[olsmeister]

Call it out as a separate line item too.

Re:Joined up Government ?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

They've also been talking about broadband being some sort of fundamental right one minute, with ominous-sounding ideas about cutting people off for dubious IP-related reasons the next, and then moving government services that many people are legally required to use into on-line systems the day after that.

I'm pretty sure it's all just an elaborate episode of Yes Minister at this point.