Modernisation of police surveillance tactics! What a steaming pile of bullshit! What that actually means is that government agencies will have the power to snoop on Joe Public’s activities above and beyond the scope of counter terrorism and serious crime. The government plans to force ISP’s to maintain a record of all contacts made through their Internet connections but not the content of the communication itself. Some people will say “if you have nothing to hide, what do you have to worry about?” – but that isn’t the point, it’s the powers that be slowly stripping people of their civil liberties. Thankfully the government scrapped plans for a proposed central database of all digital and telephone communications the United Kingdom. I doubt whether this will make it into law for two reasons; first and foremost, the voting public will not stand for it (at least I hope that is the case). It’s the government taking liberties with peoples right to privacy without any reason to suspect Mr. and Mrs. Public of any wrongdoing! The second thing that will probably dictate whether this happens or not is the cost; £2bn including compensation for ISP’s. There are much more important things to spend £2bn on like hospitals, housing, roads and much more.
While I’m on the subject of Internet privacy; Phorm has been told that their system of intercepting data packets reading your surfing habits needs to be “opt-in”. There has been a lot of controversy about the Phorm system when BT trailed the targeted advertising system during 2006/07 without notifying it’s users. Phorm and UK ISP’s, BT, Virgin and Talk Talk had hoped to make the system “opt-out” but European law doesn’t allow for this. Users have to voluntarily “opt-in” before data can be collected on their surfing habits. The system is bad because you are constantly being profiled but also if more than one person uses your computer they’ll see your targeted ads. For example, while wifey is sleeping, hubby is looking at porn, wifey logs on in the morning to see ads for XXX websites on her homepage. Other considerations; what about secure data such as credit card and other sensitive information, will that be read and stored as well? I don’t often agree with European policy but they have got it spot on in this case! For more information on Phorm and what it will mean for you; the Internet user, check out BadPhorm.
