Monday, April 6, 2009

The United Kingdom has officially sunk below the seas

UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email

The data retention rules require the archival of all email traffic (the identities of the sender and receiver, but not the contents of the messages), records of VOIP telephone calls (traditional phone calls are already monitored), and information about every website visited by any computer user in the country. The rules are being pushed down "across the board to even the smallest company," as every ISP large or small will be required to collect and store the data. That data will then be accessible -- to fight "crime and terrorism," of course -- by "hundreds of public bodies" to investigate whatever crimes they see fit.
Good for them. They've gotten what they've asked for.

I'm sure it will all go swimmingly for them. What could possibly go wrong w/ a program like this? If it saves just one child it's all worth it.

Right?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gos-se. With this new CyberSecurity bill, we are not too many steps away from that ourselves...

Jacob said...

They do realize that over 90% of all e-mail is spam right?

Anonymous said...

Gee golly gosh willikers!! What next? Opening of snail mail? Eavesdropping on private conversations? Searching couriers?

Seriously, where are "they" going to store all this data? I hope "they" already have several very large mainframes or super computers on hand, with efficient search algorithms. Not only is there the problem of storage, but wading through all that data in a TIMELY manner to find the ONE BIT of information that would prevent a terrorist attack. Doesn't do much good to find it the day after, does it?

Meanwhile, all that $$$$$ gone, that could have been used in a more efficient manner. Ooops! But we're talking about the government here. Money is NEVER spent efficiently.

B Woodman
SSG (Ret), U S Army

Smokey Behr said...

Where are all the civil libertarians on this one? You'd think that the ACLU would be screaming bloody murder over Chairman MaObama wanting to take over the interwebtubes.