Britain’s home secretary is calling for Internet firms to store records of all the sites visited and emails sent by customers. Amazingly this actually constitutes backtracking from demands for even closer monitoring.

Jacqui Smith (pictured) has abandoned plans for a national database which would store the details centrally. She said the government “recognizes the privacy implications in holding all communications data from the UK in a 12-month period in a single store. The government therefore does not propose to pursue this approach.”

However, Smith now says she’s planning legislation which would require all communications firms – which covers both phone companies and Internet service providers – to keep more detailed records of customer activity. This data would have to be made available to authorities investigating potential criminal activity.

The details which would be stored would include the date, time and recipient of all phone calls made, text messages and e-mails sent and Web sites visited, along with the location of the customer at the time they sent it. Firms would not have to store details about the content of messages or any content the user added to an interactive site such as a social networking site.

Smith’s comments come in a consultation paper titled “Protecting the public in a changing communications environment.”

While its a communications paper, the principle of collecting the data isn’t up for debate. Instead the key question the government is asking is whether firms should be allowed to simply store the raw data, or should be required to process it so that it is easier for authorities to search through.

The paper claims that the use of communications data gathered under existing rules in 2006-7 led to  151 firearms and 3.5 tonnes of illegal drugs being seized, as well as providing information which prevented “a number of murders”.

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Entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 2:24 pm under Legal, Politics.

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