New UK email law – Allowing the government to spy on us all
By Dave Parrack
I’ve been becoming increasingly concerned at the direction the British government seems to be heading on issues related to privacy and spying on ordinary citizens. It seems that if an initiative can be justified for reasons of crime and terror detection then that should make it all alright. But it doesn’t, and the new law concerning emails is no exception.
According to the BBC, as part of a European Commission directive, the British government is insisting that every email either sent or received in the UK is logged and the details stored for a year. ISPs already do this on a voluntary basis but making it illegal not to stinks of an Orwellian state trying to keep tabs on its citizens to ensure no wrongdoing is taking place.
Some of you may be asking what the fuss is about, especially as previously stated the ISPs already keep this information anyway. But the whole thing takes a more sinister turn when coupled with plans drawn up last year which would see the British government setting up a huge database to store records of all emails, texts, and emails sent and received by British citizens.
The so-called super database was first mooted in July before being detailed more fully in October. Unsurprisingly, many British people didn’t take too kindly to the idea and neither did backbench MPs, or privacy groups. The current Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, tried to justify the plans by using the old ‘war on terror’ line but the public consultation on the plans should be interesting when it begins later this year.
On the email front, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty had this to say:
The thing we have to worry about is what happens next because the government is already mooting plans not just to leave this stuff with the providers but to create a central government database where they hold all the information.
I’m afraid we just don’t trust any government or any organization to keep that much very sensitive information about us all and to keep it safe.
Which is patently true and especially of the British government which has a terrible track record of keeping sensitive information safe. And regardless of whether it’s safe or not, why should law-abiding citizens have to put up with having their personal communications kept on file for the government to dissect at its leisure?
This is just the latest move from a government seemingly determined to tighten laws up and take away people’s freedoms as much as possible. Team the super database plans up with the ID cards and proposals to impose age ratings on Web sites, and you have a trilogy of ways in which our privacy rights are being eroded away.
I’ve probably already overdone the 1984 parallels but we’re getting to that stage slowly but surely. George Orwell may end up having been 50 or even 100 years too early with his predictions but a lot of what he said is definitely coming to pass. Which worries me no end.
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January 9th, 2009
Again your a idot a Dave.
January 10th, 2009
Same comment as on the previous story – “an EU directive”, so all 27 member countries are doing more or less the same thing. Only two of them make the mistake of using English to tell the world that they are doing it!
The article contradicts itself; it is the much less intrusive traffic data, not the contents of what is being carried, that is being proposed to be stored; I suspect that no current or conceivable system could do the second. Certainly a rough picture of relationships could be built up from a large amount of traffic data concerning the same person, but that would be an exercise, I suspect, requiring human analysis.
January 10th, 2009
PGP anyone?
January 11th, 2009
Hang on – I’d guess that most emails nowadays are sent via Gmail and Hotmail rather than ISP’s naff email services. So, seeing as how Gmail and Hotmail are US companies, isn’t this a gaping hole in the government’s would-be Big Brother scheme??
January 11th, 2009
Using a US based server is no help. Here the government spies on us without regard to laws. I use an email service based in Panama with encrypted links so my ISP cannot see the email headers and GPG encryption so only the recipient can read the message. The service is at http://www.novo-ordo.com.
January 18th, 2009
I’m afraid that unless there is a real sustained riot by UK citizens against all this intrusion into our lives, then we will all be stuffed. The sad thing is that so many people here just lie down meekly and accept what’s doled out to them, without question. We can but hope to engineer a change of government….get shot of Labour and just pray that a new party will not carry on doling out the same old thing. I can’t wait to give 2 fingers to Jackie Smith.
Many overseas people can’t see what Brits are moaning about, but maybe they don’t fully appreciate the huge obsession that our Home Office has got, over building a super-database to rule all.