Posted on 10/06/2008 10:13:10 AM PDT by BGHater
Ministers are considering a £12 billion plan to monitor the e-mail, telephone and internet browsing records of every person in Britain.
The huge eavesdropping programme would involve the creation of a mammoth central computer database to store hundreds of billions of individual pieces of communications traffic.
Supporters say it would become one of the security services' most comprehensive tools in the fight against terrorism but critics described it as "sinister".
MI5 currently has to apply to the Home Secretary for warrants to intercept specific email and website traffic but, under the new plan, internet and mobile phone networks could be monitored live by GCHQ, the Government listening post.
The Home Office said no decision had been taken but security officials claim live monitoring is necessary to pick up terrorist plots.
It would allow them to capture records like chat room discussions on password-protected Islamic extremist websites.
The annual number of phone calls and other electronic communications in the UK is predicted to nearly double from 230 billion in 2006 to 450 billion by 2016.
Last year 57 billion text messages, or 1,800 a second, were sent. That rose from one billion in 1999.
The number of broadband internet connections rose from 330,000 in 2001 to 18 million last year. Three billion e-mails are sent every day, or 35,000 every second.
One of the spurs for a central database is a concern over how that electronic communications data is currently stored by hundreds of different internet service providers and private telephone companies.
Records may only be held for limited periods of time and are then lost which makes it impossible for police and the security services to establishing historical links, or so-called "friendship trees", between terrorists.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Doesn’t the NSA do this to us right now? I was under the impression that this began under Clinton in the late 90s.
The leftists let their real opinions about electronic surveillance surface; when they were so excited about Governor Palin’s email getting hacked. They're all for it, if it serves “the cause”.
The NSA outsources to Britain to spy on US, then we spy on them. Then we share the data.
This is where normally I would make a statement like, ‘this is the difference between being a “subject” and being a “citizen.”’, but now even those lines are being blurred.
Wow. And Americans just keep on sending these same people and parties back to Washington year in, year out. It’s mind boggling.
Why don’t they just teach their children about the love of God and country in school instead?
If the American people - Right, Left, Independent, and Idiot - knew how bad the situation truly is and likely will become, they would revolt.
However, since the subject is complex (technically and legally) and has been hijacked by the Alex Jones’ of the world, it is ignored by most people.
We’ve been building - for decades - a system that will be exploited and abused when the wrong people get power.
Only when it is too late will people wake up.
1984 (original version) coming.
Watch this and you’ll see why the socialist dhims can’t wrap their brains around anything. In fact this will really open your eyes (unless you have already been brainwashed) you as to why they have no brains.
Even if you put absolute proof in front of them, they truly will not believe it, as we have seen with comments on Kos.
Search Yuri Bezmenov on YouTube.com
About Soviet strategy for subversion.
Same tactics we see Zero and his followers doing.
Because they'd have to empanel a committee of Lords to define 'G*d' and define 'country'. Such a nuisance. Wot? And besides since nobody has a job anyway they might as well just sit around surveilling each other.
I guess Alex Jones, William Cooper and those other demonized conspiracy “crazies” could be actually right about the coming New World Order and its totalitarian goals.
Their (NWO) goals are being pushed on a macro basis by the Neo-Cons in erasing borders and the military industrial complex; on the ground level (micro) via Leftist social policy, high taxes and an erosion in traditional values (affiormative action, gay marriage, porn, gun control, abortion).
I am always labeled nuts by some family and friends, maybe I’m right.
My problem with this as a British citizen is that this will end up costing 36 Billion pounds and expand an already bloated government.
This system won’t pose a threat to freedom - either mine or a terrorists - as it will be total shite. This is because Government simply do NOT know how to get value for money. UK government IT resourcing is as well managed as the Big Big. Fortunately (to date) it has killed less people.
Yeah, fiendishly ingenious isn’t it? IMHO, it’s in the interests of AMERICAN CITIZENS to help the British people to resist this, because because of AUSCANZUKUS and the ECHELON system, anything which allows the government to form a system of universal electronic surveillance will have an impact on the citizens of other member states.....
Big Brother is alive and well. I fear that worldwide we will see privacy sacrifice on the alter of “security.”
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