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

Feds spending millions on Kennedy legacy in Mass.

Lord Lunch gags on his morning muffin.

More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys.

The bill includes $5.8 million for the planning and design of a building to house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate.

The bill also includes $22 million to expand facilities at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum and $5 million more for the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a park system in downtown Boston named after Kennedy's mother.

The $22 million JFK library earmark was sponsored by fellow Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry, who is also a top sponsor for the money for the Kennedy Senate Institute. Kerry defended the project, saying, "This shovel-ready project will also bring much-needed jobs to the area."

Local officials are seeking up to $100 million to build the institute, which will focus on the Senate in general and Kennedy's more than four decades of service to the body.

Tentative plans called for a replica of the Senate chamber itself, as well as programs to train new senators.

"These funds will create jobs that are desperately needed, and will provide lasting benefits for all our citizens long into the future," Kennedy said in statement accompanying a list of earmarks.

Feds spending millions on Kennedy legacy in Mass.

Scientists Find Oldest Living Animal — Then Kill It

This is really a "no commenter" blog-wise. But I just had to post it, because of the headline:

British marine biologists have found what may be the oldest living animal — that is, until they killed it.

The team from Bangor University in Wales was dredging the waters north of Iceland as part of routine research when the unfortunate specimen, belonging to the clam species Arctica islandica, commonly known as the ocean quahog, was hauled up from waters 250 feet deep.

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings did they realize how old it had been — between 405 and 410 years old.

Another clam of the same species had been verified at 220 years old, and a third may have lived 374 years. But this most recent clam was the oldest yet.

"Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it," postdoctoral scientist Al Wanamaker told London's Guardian newspaper. "For our work, it's a bonus, but it wasn't good for this particular animal."

This article was lifted from FoxNews.com by Lord Lunch.