The mobile calls, emails and website visits of every person in Britain will be stored for a year under sweeping new powers which come into force on Monday. Privacy campaigners warned last night that the information would be used by the Government to create a giant “Big Brother” super-database containing a map of everyone’s private life.
[…]
Although the new retention powers will not permit the storage of the content of emails or phone calls it will show details such as IP addresses, date, time and user telephone numbers. Under the terms of the EU directive, the Home Office has written to leading internet service providers and phone companies offering to compensate them for the costs incurred in retaining the data for a year.
[…]
Phil Booth of the civil rights campaign group, NOID, said: “Inch by inch, the Government’s plans to map and monitor everyone’s communications are creeping into place. Today it’s retention of data, soon it’ll be a giant database to suck it all up. And unless we speak out and stop this, what used to be private – details of your relationships and personal interests – will end up in the ever-widening control of the stalker state.”Last week the The Independent reported that millions of Britons who use social networking sites such as Facebook could soon have their every move monitored by the Government and saved on a “Big Brother” database.
Disgusting. Unfortunately, there are just not enough people who give a damn about such intrusions to organize en masse. Even when it becomes that everything you do will be recorded AND retained permanently, people still won’t rage against it. Fear and insinuation (you’re not doing anything wrong, nothing to hide, etc.) will keep the majority in line.
#1 Burke is, unfortunately, right.
As a matter of fact, it is already happening to all telephone transmissions in the “land of the free”, as clearly shown in a recent Nova documentary.
The most disgusting thing is the attitude clearly described by Burke, above.
We have become a nation of sheep-like cowards. (my apologies to actual sheep)
2. “.. my apologies to actual sheep”, accepted.
Ford! Why worry about the google photo car when you have this crap going on?
ARE belong to us.
[Fixed — UD]
Can you say anonymous encrypted proxy?
in the morning!
A serious subject, deserving a better comment that the one I posted earlier.
What’s really shocking about this story is that so many people are prepared to believe that this kind of monitoring is a new thing.
Anonymizer.com
Agree with #9…
Only fools believe that all of YOUR emails, website visits and phone calls are not already being logged!
This website is becoming very tedious! Every other story is about some new “scandal” about Britain… Half of them are made up and the other half are stating the obvious!
Uncle Dave… Any chance you could either try to bring some originality to the blog or just stop posting, these dredged up anti-British stories are getting so old and tired.
This is from the EU?
I thought that was the land of privacy?
Want to know what is next, it is all right here in this documentary.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw
It’s more credible and better documented than global warming.
http://obamadeception.net/articles.html
You can not say you were not warned.
It is very ineffective for any enforcement or proof of anything. With an IP address and a date, nothing can be determined. Someone logged on to my wireless router and downloaded a DVD from bit torrent and I was contacted. I told them to screw off because I am only reasonable for my actions. If someone steals my phone and makes a terrorist threat, I am not responsible for that threat. And it someone steals my car and robs a bank, I am innocent even if I left my car unlocked and running outside of the bank. Windows Vista has 4 serious wireless router bugs that prevents me from running high speed un-crackable connections, so anyone can use my IP address if they know what they are doing.
#14–yea, but that fourth bank that gets robbed with your car used as the get away vehicle will be a bit harder to excuse as mere coincidence.
The fantasy workings of a naive mind.
Big Brother is watching you. Don’t worry. Big Brother is just looking out for your best interest. Nothing bad is going to happen to you because Big Brother is watching. Only the bad people have to worry about Big Brother.
As for the people that do worry, well that tells us that they must have been doing something bad and we’ll keep a special eye on them.
Face Book does this anyway just in case.
@#6, #10: No use. By the law ISP will know you contacted whatever proxy (ex. anon.). By the law anyone serving such proxy also needs to keep logs. If they don’t – they go to jail. Believe me, they’ll rather want you to go to jail than them. Foreign proxy? Law have already been proposed in USA to do the same. Once it is existing in one country, it will spread like wildfire culminating in regulations that would deny you access to countries without such laws. This is not trivial to evade.
@#14 – Silly excuse. Visit some real courtroom for education. If they claim some wrongdoing by you, everything you owe will be taken and searched. Find one contradiction between your testimony and their claim – you go to jail just for lying. Bizarre schemes like yours exist only in TV dramas.
Haha wiglebot, thank you for justifying our means to an end. I’ll see about flipping that router code we are using on your router off, Vista indeed, yeah Vista sucks hehe.
For the sheep I will just say don’t worry we know what we are doing, what that is you don’t need to know. As deowll says, no worries only bad people need to worry, people that would harm the sheep are who we are after. Don’t you guys watch the news we put out for your comfort?
Soon we shall pass a similar law worldwide that our French figure heads voted on recently (ah democracy in action, long live democracy fools 😉 ) and with the data we collect we will laugh all the way to the bank with your money you owe us for doing nothing but being your master.
By the way don’t mind us, we will mind you.
United Kingdom is really becoming the dystopian empire depicted in the film V for Vendetta.
Hard to imagine how people could live with such active and growing police paranoia and distrust of it’s own citizens.
And I thought the US was bad with it’s DoD,NSA,FBI,CIA witch hunts.
# 17 dusanmal said, “@#6, #10: No use. By the law ISP will know you contacted whatever proxy (ex. anon.). By the law anyone serving such proxy also needs to keep logs.”
You would use a proxy of that type that is based in the EU or N. America? LOL. 1st, you need to get educated on IT Sec matters…
I’ve been watching the DVDs of Dr. Who 2nd series (2007). And this story and others convinces me that the evil “Master” IS running the UK. If not him, they some paranoid faction of Torchwood.
F the Home Office. Put that in your data base.