Jacqui Smith - biggest threat to liberty in the UK

[Incognito]

NAFAIK!

They already have access to all this, only difference is that they have to request it at present and the companies involved, i.e. Orange, BT etc charge them for it. The proposals are to ensure all these companies have to supply the place in the west of the country the data to store in their nice shiny new big database that they can then trawl through at their leisure.

[Bob Dalek]

"and appropriate safeguards would be put in place. "

That'd be a ruling that all USB sticks must have the legend "DO NOT LOSE ME" printed on them?

[Mich the Tester]

This will require one big mother of a data centre just to store all the bloody spam that gets sent around and the stupid cold calling pension sales calls. At best it’ll be of no use whatsoever and at worst it’s a serious intrusion into privacy.

Government solution for seeking needles in haystacks; make a bigger haystack.

[ace00]

+1

WHS

[Peoplesoft bloke]

They already have access to all this, only difference is that they have to request it at present and the companies involved, i.e. Orange, BT etc charge them for it. The proposals are to ensure all these companies have to supply the place in the west of the country the data to store in their nice shiny new big database that they can then trawl through at their leisure.

I think this is morally repugnant.

[Moscow Mule]

Don't know who said it the other day, but I whole-heartedly agree - 1984 is a warning, not a blueprint.

I for one will be sending myself lots of spam just to increase the amount of email they have to monitor.

[expat]

Don't know who said it the other day, but I whole-heartedly agree - 1984 is a warning, not a blueprint.

I for one will be sending myself lots of spam just to increase the amount of email they have to monitor.

What else is new?

[Board Game Geek]

for one will be sending myself lots of spam just to increase the amount of email they have to monitor.

Obviously they will be using automatic profiling algorithms to "flag up" any messages which need a human operator to re-read and analyse.

So let's say certain key words like "Bomb", "Allah", "Infidel" are used to narrow the search.

That's still going to result in billions of messages which need to be sifted by humans, since the words in and of themselves are harmless, and used in everyday parlance. You'd need millions of operators to read the billions of messages every day to have any chance of reacting to a single message in a suitable time scale.

Then all that will happen is the supposed terrorists will code their messages to avoid certain keywords.

Eg..

Instead of "Greetings Brother, We plan to blow up the Kings Cross Station at midday on the 5th of November 2005"

they will use something like

"Yo my main man. Me and the boyz are gonna meet up at the angry monarch to watch the GF's let a few off."

Or something like that...

Which really makes the cost and effort of the database pointless.

Still, imagine all those juicy secrets the Government can get their hands on. Knowledge is power and they will be the Data Mammon of the Binary Age.

[ratewhore]

So let's say certain key words like "Bomb", "Allah", "Infidel" are used to narrow the search.

racist

[BoredBloke]

Look we're all being silly here. Our government want this information to protect us from the nasty terrorists - That's all. It's not like they would use these kind of powers for something else once they are passed. Although that old bloke in the Labour party conference was charged under terrorism legislation......and like the whole of Iceland. At least it's better than being shot in the head 7 times.