By Nick Heath, 3 December 2008 16:23
NEWS
A snooping database of all UK communications data was put on the backburner after draft legislation failed to appear in today's Queen's speech.
The Communications Data Bill was pushed back by the Home Office to allow more consultation on the controversial proposals next year.
There is concern the bill will allow the government to store all UK communications in a £12bn super database, with Whitehall arguing that the law needs to be updated to allow police and security services to monitor and store internet traffic in the fight against terrorism and serious crime.
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The government is expected to reveal the substance of the bill in January, when it begins consultation on the bill.
The bill will also no longer fulfil an EU directive that requires the UK to demand that all ISPs store the "who", "what" and "where" of all web and messaging traffic for at least 12 months. The directive, which has to be implemented by March 2009, will now be implemented separately.
A Home Office spokesman said: "The government is committed to maintaining the communications data capability and we intend to bring forward proposals to achieve this.
"We recognise however that this is a highly sensitive issue and because of that there should be sufficient time to hold a proper public debate.
"We are therefore bringing forward a consultation paper, outlining the challenges the UK faces, setting out how we believe these challenges can be overcome, and seeking views on the proposals and the safeguards proposed."
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
I'd like to think these were dropped because the labour party have seen sense
but a more likely reason is that they can't easily transfer the money from other more vital areas without committing political suicide at the next election
2. Richard Davies
The biggest worry for me though is who is going to run and manage the project?
My company for example isn't huge and wouldn't be capable of running something on this kind of scale but it does deal with sensitive data and its never had a data breach. How many data breaches have the government had? Lots!
Summary: If a professional company that is capable of such a task implements it then I am sure it will work, however, if the government and its usual croanies do it themselves, it will an unmitigated disaster.
Can anyone tell that I have completely lost faith in the governments IT ability.
3. GALLEYSLAVE
SO its business as usual!
Or lords and masters and MI WHOEVER will be gleaning infomation from our E-communications and we won't know anything about it.
Just as it is now!
4. Drew Stephenson
RD and KC are both there before me but i'll back 'em up anyway...
It should be being dropped because they don't understand what they're doing and it won't help them achieve their stated aims (no comment about unstated aims), in reality it's being dropped through political expediency.
And if they do go ahead with it, the track record says they will screw it up. As they do with EVERYTHING else.
oh well, thankful for small mercies and all that. We might even get a commons debate on it (wishful thinking?)
5. James Button
I was hoping they would archive emails for me.
Then I could stop archiving emails and just refer court 'present-it' orders to the government.
6. Thomas N
It's good that this Government will at least allow more time to consult with the Public before deciding to setup the Super Database.
As far as the Super Database is concerned, can we trust a Government with such an outrageous record for keeping our private information safe?
7. anonymous
At the moment some 97% of incoming emails are Spam - so maybe the Government have dropped it as (a) searching for the meaningful stuff will be so tedious (b) they'd be keeping so much duplicate stuff from all the spambots faking your and my email names they'd soon run out of storage?
But maybe if a terrorist wrapped his plans in messages about V*A*R* then they'd be virtually undetectible anyway...