Secular Café: UK Government wants access to emails, texts and web use

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UK Government wants access to emails, texts and web use Apr 2nd 2012, 09:57 http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...ails-texts-web Time to write to your MPs???? Quote: THE AUTHORITARIAN UK Government wants access to all emails, text messages and internet use and will propose sweeping snooping powers in legislation to give it that soon. The bill will be announced during the Queen's speech and will give crime busting agencies like GCHQ, the government's central intelligence *cough* spying agency, MI5, the police and who knows else access to all of the emails, text messages and internet histories of everyone in the UK. The Home Office claims that the legislation is necessary to "obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public." "We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data as technology changes," said a spokesperson. Accessible data will include the "time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address, but not the content of the phone call or email," it added. The spokesman said that the Government does not plan to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications. "As set out in the Strategic Defence and Security Review we will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows to ensure that the use of communications data is compatible with the Government's approach to civil liberties," it said. Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties organisation, has already condemned the proposals and sniffed at their timing, "This is an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran. This is an absolute attack on privacy online and it is far from clear this will actually improve public safety, while adding significant costs to internet businesses," said Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch. He asked, "If this was such a serious security issue why has the Home Office not ensured these powers were in place before the Olympics?" This is the sort of thing that came up during the riots last year, when intrusive police access to Twitter and Blackberry's BBM messaging tool was considered but not implemented. µ

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