UK surveillance plan to go ahead

news.bbc.co.uk...

The Home Office says it will push ahead with plans to ask communications firms to monitor all internet use.

Ministers confirmed their intention despite concerns and opposition from some in the industry.

The proposals include asking firms to retain information on how people use social networks such as Facebook.

Some 40% of respondents to the Home Office's consultation opposed the plans - but ministers say communication interception needs to be updated.

Looks like a dangerous road to go down. The article does not say who will have access to this information or how long it is to be kept but I don't like.

Personally I never post anything on the internet I would not want the world to see but where is the privacy laws in all of this?

I just hope that the E.U as much as I dislike it will put a stop to this.

Its difficult to see how this can be Policed.
I am on Virgin Media and they was one of the first to add in their terms and conditions that breach of copyright by downloading could terminate the contract.
Richard Branson had good motives for that since it protected his music and video interests.
I know of many who moved to BT or other ISPs when Virgin introduced this-they even restricted download speeds for culprits.
This latest announcement by the GOV is yet another infringment of rights in Labours obsession with big brother tactics.
I think its inevitable that there will be challenges to this-as there has been on the storage of innocent peoples DNA on Police databanks.
The Govs frequent arguements that it is in the interests of terrorist and crime prevention are absolute tosh.....

More degredation of our rights under the guise of "fighting terrorism and crime".

How many criminals or terrorists would use unencrypted, un-proxied communications over the internet? Only the *VERY* stupid ones.

So another £2billion wasted by our dim-witted government. It is about time that we introduced minimum standards for ministers. Being able to write an acceptable hand written letter would be a good start.

I recently heard on the news that a government department had "changed the way they count" which accounted for some differences to previous figures. I think they should continue using their fingers until they have mastered the new method.


[edit on 10/11/2009 by LightFantastic]

Hehe...I know a lot of people who could implicate themselves through this.
Everyone knows Feds are on facebook anyway, and I even have schools in the local area where teachers have made fake facebook accounts to spy on the pupils activity.

If I followed my local MP everywhere he went, sat outside his house watching and photographing his every move, where he went, who he met and bugged his phones and internet connection, I'd be locked up. Yet that is, in effect, what they want to do to us. This has absolutely bugger all to do with security but everything to do with the government (not only our own!) wanting to mark out those dissenters in society.
This is already happening, where people have been stopped by armed police and threatened with arrest under "anti-terrorism" laws, simply because they went to a peaceful demo outside an arms manufacturer / exporter. Their vehicle license plate was logged and then the police ANPR system used to flag them up as terrorist suspects when they subsequently took a drive to London.
That is an abuse of the system and had absolutely no justification whatsoever, except for the government and it's police stooges to intimidate people who had commited no crime or broken any law.

The crazy thing is, the government's own data registrar - the authority on use of any government held data and it's privacy issues - has no jurisdiction over the police use of a lot of this collected information, and in a recent interview referred the interviewer to the Home Secretary for answers on data use and privacy (who then referred the inteviewer back to the data registrar and waffled a lot trying to wriggle out of the issue).

Bottom line - they are collecting data for the sake of logging us all and nothing more. As mentioned already, the bad guys will always find a way to mask their online activity or use low-tech methods of communication, thus rendering the expensive blanket surveillance useless.

Of course, there is also the monetary aspect, and who gets the contract for setting up and maintaining the system. Like any other government IT project, it'll be months / years late, cost at least double what we are told and prove to be useless. But it'll swell the coffers and stock portfolio of those in the know.

My father works for a govt agency as hes a smart programmer I.T and as for as he has told me and my siblings theres no point putting anything about oursleves on websites suchas facebook as "They" are always watching. It doesn't even have to be facebook. He laughed when he read some of your comments he basically made it very clear everytime our computers make a connection with the network all our IP addresses will be recorded the whole time and that everything is logged on what we do. Every household in the country is watched for potential terrorism. That'll make many think twice when using certain websites and posting certain information about themselves which i cant get through my siblings heads but at least ive learnt. For those who didn't know i do not mean to come across harsh or mean but im just trying to help and spread the word and educate.

Many thanks, D.

[edit on 6-2-2010 by DClairvoyant]