What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Every (as in “every”) email, website visit and phone call to be stored by government order
Every email, phone call and website visit is to be recorded and stored after the Coalition Government revived controversial Big Brother snooping plans.
It will allow security services and the police to spy on the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet.
Moves to make every communications provider store details for at least a year will be unveiled later this year sparking fresh fears over a return of the surveillance state.
The plans were shelved by the Labour Government last December but the Home Office is now ready to revive them.
It comes despite the Coalition Agreement promised to “end the storage of internet and email records without good reason”.
But now they have a good reason:
“We want to do it. So we will.”
Vote, dear friends, vote for Liberty and Smaller Government as if your very Freedom depended on it.
Because it does.
Morality, Nanny State, Politics | Mr. Bingley | 
October 21, 2010 7:47 am
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And the danger of the internet is that such standards can be enforced across those borders that people want to pretend are there.
They’re not just snooping on Brits, they’re snooping on us, too.
I wonder if my emails will be intercepted. Soon, any international business, which is almost all business, will be forced to comply with the most restrictive of laws.
For example, years ago the EU started the Blue Angel program for plastic recycling. Only one company in the world could make a certain type of plastic that the EU declared was safer for recycling. In order to do business in Europe, you had to buy plastic made by this German company. Dell Computer had to comply to sell in Europe, but to make a consistent product, they had to use this new German plastic in their American product too. German protectionism, enforced by the EU, forced a huge American company to buy its plastic.
The same will eventually be tried with the internet. An ISP will have to comply with Chinese or some other repressive country’s (i.e., Britain) laws if they want to do business there. Our freedoms and protections will start to protect us less and less.
Just thought you’d like to know O instituted a similar treat for us a few weeks after seizing office. Match that with the new IRS and Obamacare reporting regulations (it gives the IRS access to all your private medical records) and you got your police state right here.
FinReg gave them similar powers over your financial records. Geithner can literally look at any financial transaction that you make. Thank you Mainebots for putting this over the top.
Did you ever ask yourself “why is it that I can’t install a robust hard encryption algo on my phone to protect my privacy, but the government spooks can?”
I’d blame 9/11, but it started long before that.
I guess Britain is lost.
“I’d blame 9/11, but it started long before that.”
Yeah, about the same time that “Pretty Good Privacy” hit the streets, back in 1991. The NSA absolutely loathes that software, although I imagine they’ve made advances they aren’t discussing.
The one bright spot here? Unless they have a decent indexing system, finding a specific file in such huge databases is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult, thanks to the signal to noise ratio inherent in any communications.
Look at Britain — all those cameras, and how many are actually watched?
Please note: I am NOT comfortable with any of this — abuses WILL happen. But it’s good to know your enemy.