Rants

Who you phone and email and what you do in your own home is private right? What’s more we all believe that if the authorities want to tap your phone, they need a warrant right?

Well not anymore, from today (Monday 06/04/09) your phone company and Internet service provider must keep a complete log of every phone call, email and text message you send and a log of all your web traffic, all in the name of Anti-terrorism.

The data stored will not include the content of the e-mails or a recording of the phone call / text. However it will cover the subject line, sender and receiver of the message and all of their personal information, such as name, date of birth, address and telephone numbers. Even more worryingly if you carry a mobile phone, the Mobile Network will also be required to store your location, that’s right the police can now trace your exact whereabouts at all times via your Mobile. Handy tool if you are a missing child, but it doesn’t just relate to real time data this relates to historical data too as this information must be stored by the Mobile phone operator.

All of this information is to be used to determine connections between individuals, an important point I will revisit in a moment.

Regards web traffic it will also store the site you visited and its owner information but not the actual content. Why won’t it store its content, well not because they don’t want to know what you are looking at, but because that would create too much data. What’s more if they want to know what you were looking at they can find it easily on a web back or web archiving service. Try visiting Archive.org and asking for news.bbc.co.uk, then look for September 11^th 2001 and you can relive the awful moment in time that has led us here, or rather been used as an excuse to lead us here.

Just in case you’re thinking well it’s only the police and they can be trusted right? Wrong, this data can be accessed by a whole host of organisations including Government departments and Local authorities for all kinds of reasons, without your knowledge or consent.

Well I’m a goodie two shoes, they wont find anything on me! Are you sure, how often do you look at certain sites, what does that say about your religious, political or moral beliefs or opinions. Ok so it’,s not that anything you do might be dodgy or illegal, but do you really want your local council officials looking at your browsing history and drawing inferences from it, correctly or otherwise. Who do you talk to who are your connections, personal and business, the express aim of this legislation is to track this kind of information. Who is accessing your internet connection, do you have a partner staying over? How often do they use your internet and what are they accessing, what does that give away about you, your sexuality and relationships?

Most importantly what have you and I done wrong to justify this invasion of our privacy and civil liberties, simply become terror targets. If this all sounds a little draconian, it is, I’m all for the police having the ability to track and trace criminals when they are under suspicion of a crime but this doesn’t apply to criminals it applies to all of us, all of the time and we are not under suspicion are we?

Just think, Local authorities have been in the press recently for using these types of powers to check up on all kind of misdemeanor, Dog Fouling, Single Persons Council Tax Discount claims, Un-occupied Properties / Holiday home claims, School role applications. Whilst these are all law breaches, are they proportionate to the invasion of our privacy and restriction of our civil liberties?

Perhaps we should think about Google’s power, it is a truly amazing tool and I love what Google is able to do and the ease of use their tools bring to my PC, but this also comes at a price, Google also stores some of your personal information and use that to bring you content you are interested in. But it’s not linked directly to you and certainly not to your exact position 24 hours a day 7 days a week, oh and its Opt it, you choose to use their services or not. Or maybe you don’t if your face or house is on street view, but that’s topic for another day.

After reading all of this you would be forgiven for thinking I am some kind of civil liberties campaigner or that I have something to hide? Well I am not and I do not, but this all seams a little to much like my favorite book for comfort, George Orwell, warned us of the dangers of a large single European country with vast powers over all of its citizens and the ability to use the Thought Police. Sound a bit far fetched? This legislation applies across the whole of Europe and most definitely allows the authorities to complete a large amount of psychoanalysis just by looking at your habits. To take an easy example, what dose the newspaper you read every day say about you and your political beliefs?

If you haven’t read 1984, perhaps you should, it is more real than you might think or that the ‘Big Brother’ headlines you read in the press, might suggest.