In the UK planning for the corpo-fascist police state continues apace.

[JohnyCanuck]

UK: Private firm to guard database of every phone call, e-mail

A contentious proposal to create a massive database of communications metadata in the United Kingdom has just become even more controversial. According to reports in the British press, a "consultation paper" laying out the plan, slated for release in January, contemplates outsourcing the maintenance of the database to private-sector firms. The proposal has already come under fire from civil liberties groups, the European human rights commissioner, and former public officials.

Initially included in Britain's Communications Data Bill as part of a sweeping Interception Modernisation Programme, the surveillance proposal was dropped from the legislation in September, but it was not abandoned. The database is projected to cost some £12 billion ($17.5 billion US), and would contain metadata about every phone call placed, every e-mail or text message sent, and every Web site visited in the UK, reports say. Such "metadata" would include routing information, such as the sender and recipient of an e-mail, as well as times and dates.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, a strong proponent of the plan, has repeatedly stressed that the database would not include the contents of any communication. Still, the sheer quantity of data would provide a highly detailed portrait of the movements and activities of individuals.

SNIP

If the British proposal sounds familiar, it should. A similarly broad metadata collection and analysis effort was one component of the National Security Agency's extralegal Stellar Wind program here in the US. That aspect of the program is believed to have been significantly modified or abandoned after Justice Department lawyers staged a virtual mutiny, threatening to resign if it were reauthorized over their legal objections.

Whether some successor to that program continues today, or falls within the scope of warrantless surveillance authorized by this summer's FISA Amendments Act, remains unclear.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090101-uk-private-firm-to-guard-database-of-every-phone-call-e-mail.html

[Lint Head]

1. There will be no individual rights in 100 years.

Which may be poetic because almost every individual on earth with die from flooding and sun poisoning prior to the earths environmental demise. :dem:


Blackwater Mercenaries Scan the Neighborhood
I don't want them scanning mine.

[JohnyCanuck]

2. kick n/t