UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

Posted with the greatest trepidation by Lord Lunch

In a move that even the most nonchalant of privacy advocates is crying foul over, the UK has put into effect a European Union directive which mandates the archival of information regarding virtually all Internet traffic for the next 12 months. The program formally goes into effect today.

The data retention rules require the archival of all email traffic (the identities of the sender and receiver, but not the contents of the messages), records of VOIP telephone calls (traditional phone calls are already monitored), and information about every website visited by any computer user in the country. The rules are being pushed down "across the board to even the smallest company," as every ISP large or small will be required to collect and store the data. That data will then be accessible -- to fight "crime and terrorism," of course -- by "hundreds of public bodies" to investigate whatever crimes they see fit.

Technically the new directive applies to all countries of the EU, but individual nations appear to be complying with the rules to various degrees. Privacy-obsessed Sweden is reportedly ignoring the rule completely, for example.

The privacy implications of the rule are enormous, as everything UK citizens do online will now be under the watchful eye of EU's powerful Home Office. One privacy advocate, whose anger is clearly barely being held back, called it "the kind of technology that the Stasi would have dreamed of." Naturally, the government counters that this kind of information has already proven invaluable in tracking down criminals, including the killer of an 11-year-old boy a couple of years ago.

UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

If you Colonials would but peruse our papers here in once Great Britain, a daily dose of horrors like this you would get. Sadly for me, I've kept up with news from the rebel colonies you call the USA, and I see that the Fresh Prince of D.C. is racing pell mell to catch up with, and then outpace, we wee British on the expressway to hell.

When m'Lord Cornwallis surrendered to Gen. Washington at Yorktown in 1781, he ordered his drum & fife corps to play 'The World Turned Upside Down.' Time for someone to do a cover recording, is it not?

Pip pip (though I feel rather like saying 'poop poop.')

Lord Lunch

Hamsammich Castle, Worcestershiresauce, England