Big Brother-British style

[Tim Nunan]

Jacqui Smith to announce email and internet tracking plans - Telegraph

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will announce proposals to extend Government records of billions of electronic conversations every month on Monday.

Ministers say they are needed so police and the security services can investigate crime and terrorism.

Current systems do not extend to new technologies such as online chat, internet phone calls and social networking sites such as Facebook.

But civil liberties groups fear an expansion of "Big Brother" snooping powers. Campaigners are concerned the records could be used by councils and other government bodies.

The Intercept Modernisation Programme could include a giant database to store the information. Reports put the cost at more than £12 billion.

It will track details of when and where electronic communications are made but not their content.

Investigators say they need the data before they can ask for permission to listen in on what suspects are saying. But critics say it would prove a "hell house" of private personal data.

Former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald said leaks were inevitable.

He said last year: "All history tells us that reassurances like these are worthless in the long run. In the first security crisis the locks would loosen.

"This database would be an unimaginable hell house of personal private information. It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail."

The consultation document "Protecting the public in a changing communications environment', will be published by the Home Office.

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of campaign group NO2ID said: "Just a week after the Home Secretary announced a public consultation on some trivial trimming of local authority surveillance, we have this: a proposal for powers more intrusive than any police state in history.

"Ministers are making a distinction between content and communications data into sound-bite of the year. But it is spurious. Officials from dozens of departments and quangos could know what you read online, and who all your friends are, who you emailed, when, and where you were when you did so – all without a warrant. Tracking your every move is more efficiently creepy than reading your letters."