UK e-mail law 'attack on civil rights'

Hrrrrph, Hrrmph, Hrrrrrmmmmmmmmph.. I emailed my local MP telling him I was against this , since its a vioation of my civil liberties.................

Service providers will have to store information for 12 months

From March all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year.

The Home Office insists the data, which does not include e-mails' content, is vital for crime and terror inquiries.

Dr Richard Clayton, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge's computer lab said the money could have been better spent.

He said:"There's going to be a record of every single e-mail which arrived addressed to you and all the e-mails you sent out via your ISP.

"That of course includes all the spam.

"I'd have liked to see more bobbies on an electronic beat investigating internet crimes. This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life

"There are much better things to do to spend our billions on than snooping on everybody in the country just on the off chance that they're a criminal."

The new rules are due to come into force on 15 March, as part of a European Commission directive which could affect every ISP in the country.

The firms will have to store the information under the government's Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) and make it available to any public body which makes a lawful request.

That could include police, local councils and health authorities.

To help set up the system the government may end up paying ISPs between £25m and £70m.

The rules already apply to telephone companies, which routinely hold much of the data for billing.

The Earl of Northesk, a Conservative peer on the House of Lords science and technology committee, said it meant anyone's movements could be traced 24 hours a day.

"This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life," he said.

"Under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental right... it is important to protect the principle of privacy because once you've lost it it's very difficult to recover."

The Home Office said the data was a vital tool for investigation and intelligence gathering.

"It will allow investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time.

"Implementing the EC directive will enable UK law enforcement to benefit fully from historical communications data in increasingly complex investigations and will enhance our national security."

Reports have suggested the government has even bigger plans for data retention.

They could involve one central database, gathering details on every text sent, e-mail sent, phone call made and website visited.

Consultation on the plans is due to open later this year.

BBC