Report: UK anti-terror plan to sweep up email, phone, online records

[IDemo]

By msnbc.com staff

Data on all phone calls, text messages, email traffic and online visits would be stored for a year in vast databases under a new anti-terrorism plan in Britain, The Telegraph reported Saturday on its website.

The report, which did not cite sources, said that phone companies and broadband providers would be ordered to store the information themselves for a year for security services’ “real-time” inspection under the plan. Contents of phone calls, texts or emails would not be recorded, The Telegraph said, but the databases would retain the phone numbers and email addresses sent from and to.

And the plan would reach into social networking for the first time, The Telegraph reported, allowing security services to get information about direct messages between users of Facebook, Twitter and similar sites, and even between players in online video games.

The Telegraph said the government had been negotiating with Internet companies for two months and the plan could be announced as early as May.

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/18/10445637-report-uk-anti-terror-plan-to-sweep-up-email-phone-online-records

[msongs]

1. the UK is going all BushObama police security state. ugh nt

[GoneOffShore]

4. It's been that way for a while.

"Probable cause"? I have a warrant card.

[stockholmer]

2. K & R'd

[Mojorabbit]

3. I read an article today that they are planning the same here

Let me see if I can find it
House panel approves broadened ISP snooping bill
Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.

It represents "a data bank of every digital act by every American" that would "let us find out where every single American visited Web sites," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20084939-281/house-panel-approves-broadened-isp-snooping-bill/#ixzz1mrt6lxcu

[leveymg]

5. It's called The Program. NSA has been doing this (and more) for a decade, without warrants.

The requirement for the telcos to divert call information to government databases goes back to 1995. The Patriot Act extended it to ISPs.

It's what the gov't does with all that identifying and predictive information about you, and how their models and profiling get so much wrong about individuals of interest, that should be most alarming.

The law in the US and UK is merely just catching up with established police state practices.