Your phone calls are no longer private

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Your phone calls are no longer private
www.metro.co.uk Oct 07
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Details of every phone call made in Britain will be available to the police and the Government from today.

A law is now in force requiring telephone companies to keep information about landline and mobile communications for up to a year.

The time and length of the call and the name and address of the phone's owner will be recorded under the legislation, brought in as part of the Government's anti-terrorism measures.

Phone masts will be used to pinpoint the location of the mobile caller and this will also remain on record. However, content will not be recorded.

Applications to view the information are made to a senior police officer. Among the 652 bodies entitled to apply are the police, the Gaming Board and the Food Standards Agency.

Civil liberties groups such as Liberty say the law gives too many organisations access to the information.

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A Home Office spokesman said the law followed a directive from the EU.

'Imposing requirements on phone service providers to retain data is part of the difficult balance between protecting people from terrorism and serious crime, and respecting people's human rights,' he added.

And this is a problem how?

It's been this way in most of the first world for a while now, nothing to fret about.

Food Standards Agency? The Gaming Board? Who the f**k are they? 652 bodies permitted access? I'd like to see the rest of the list.

Far as i'm concerned there should be two bodies, maybe three at best with access to all your phonecall information (the phone company itself notwithstanding.) The police, for internal security, and MI5 for external security. Thats about it. Anyone else having it is an invasion of privacy.

But of course its an EU directive, so our puppet-masters in Brussels must be obeyed. ....

That's just f***kd up!

I hope that the surveillance being done is paid for with proceeds from yen carry trade and not taxes.

Sounds good! Wish they'd do more of the same thing here in the U.S.

Some people like Muslim terrorists. I don't. But, just to be clear, I also don't like ANY of the less-than-1% of terrorists who aren't Muslim.

Call me "equal non-opportunity".

Terrorists? How's this going to stop them from using, say, an anonymous prepaid sim?

Btw, have you never heard of the IRA, RAF or the ETA?

I think they'd do the tapping even if this law didn't exist. Makes you wonder why they've become so uptight, what they really feel threatened by.

Ya. "Oh no! The government knows I call my grandmother! " And it's not as if calling certain people is a crime. You couldn't be charged for that.

I'm sure there's more hackers, predators and ID thiefs who know who you call and email than government employees.

Not quite. There are certain VoIP services you can use if you're worried about this sort of thing.

You probably wouldn't; you're missing the point, I think. The initial post quoted a Home Office spokesman who justified the imposition of the law by stating it was a EU directive. Would you like some socialist Canadian dictating law to you? He did, too, invoke that bogey man, terrorism, 'tis true. However, we've done fine without the law, up to now, and there's another angle to consider...

The current regime is gradually, little by little, creating a climate of fear and distrust, similar to that in the old Soviet block countries. Increasingly, legislation is forcing private individuals to act as agents of the state to snoop and pry into the lives of others. You'll note that the legislation puts the onus on private companies to retain the data -- they're incurring expense on the behest of the state, to do the dirty work of the state. If you'd been living in this country, you'd have noticed how this is being done in other areas, taxation being one that springs to mind. Indeed, on a more individual level, we sometimes get state TV adverts encouraging us to report neighbours for various offences, and roadside hoardings asking us to shop those guilty of that heinous crime of dropping litter.

Funny, isn't it, that approval of such measures is almost always confined to favored political perspectives?

Is it an excellent idea that the North Koreans, Cubans and Chinese also routinely surveil their citizens? Or is that a sign of totalitarianism?

If it's it's an indication of totalitarianism for one country, why isn't it for another?