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Britain mulls plan to store all e-mails, calls

Reuters

Latest comment posted at 9:06 PM EDT 21/05/08

Government considering massive database to help security forces battle crime, terrorism ...Read the full article

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  1. Tim Cares from Canada writes: I can't believe the people of Britain tolerate this crap.
  2. h w from Waterlogged, Canada writes: This makes Huxley and Orwell's nightmares look like swell! You'd think the brits would know better. Human rights? Pfff. China is freer now than USA or UK. So did the terrorists win already? Perhaps life in jolly old England may have been better off under Hitler...
  3. Dick Nails from Canada writes: Tim Cares from Canada writes: I can't believe the people of Britain tolerate this crap.

    >> Must break your heart that bush43 didn't try this one first. Given your usual brainless crapola postings, one will come along blaming bush/harper who, despite having absolutely no connection to this story, will some how, in your bent little world, are implicated. Further, Timmer, you are a statist. This sort of thing should make you stiff and giddy in some body parts. Why complain? Keeping track of citizens is the foundation of a statist utopia. Remember? Try harder Timmer, try harder.
  4. Dick Nails from Canada writes: h w from Waterlogged, Canada writes: This makes Huxley and Orwell's nightmares look like swell! You'd think the brits would know better. Human rights? Pfff. China is freer now than USA.

    >> China is freer than the US? Amazing. Can you post something about this? No doubt the people in jail for that '89 Tianamen thing would like to know about this.
  5. Jeremy K from vancouver canada, Canada writes: if the germans had this kind of system in place they never would have lost ww2. information is power
  6. Jeremy K from vancouver canada, Canada writes: dick nails
    you just revealed your ignorance. the americans already have a system like this in place.
  7. brian bishop from Brantford, Canada writes: Sounds like Britain is trying to one up Canada!

    Giant database eh! sounds like our gun registry, billion dollar cost over runs you remember the one don't you?

    Which reminds me I should check & see if a newer copy of our beloved gun registry is available on Usenet yet.
  8. Delta J from Canada writes: How will this ever be feasible? The amount of data being created increases exponentially from one year to the next! So much so that even Google's search algorithms would have a hard time searching through all that data in a very short time after this system would be put in place.

    Unless of course MI-6 has a top secret algorithm to sort through all the "who needs the Queen anyway?" emails vs. the "let's plant dirty bombs at Trafalgar Square" vs. the "you need to be a stallion in the bedroom" ones.
  9. A. Nonymous from FreeVille, United States writes: This is a really good idea, but I have one suggestion. Lets implement a similar system to record every call, every finincial transaction, every second of the life of any elected official.

    Elected officials are paid from the public tax dollars, so the public should have an idea of how their money is being spent.

    All attendance records, phone records, purchases, meetings should be a matter of public record, even 'personal' purchases.

    If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander.
  10. James P from Canada writes: Oh Big Brother, Where Art Thou?
  11. Big M from Canada writes:
    Uh ... you guys are kidding right?

    Have you never heard of ECHELON ??? Been there, seen it, worked on it ... used to have NSA security clearance.

    This is already being done all over North America. Canada is involved.

    Surely you folks aren't that naive.
  12. brian bishop from Canada writes: Big M -

    The amount of communications ECHELON is able to intercept is so small it's almost not even worth mentioning. Maybe 0.25 percent of communications max at the best of times & more along the lines of .001 to .01 percent the majority of the time.

    That's hardly anything people should even worry about besides their mostly capturing satellite & cell phone communications, & most of that data is now being carried over fiber optics. Unless they've opened up thousands of sites all over north america, which they haven't, all their getting is data from those few places they have a site. With so many cell towers going up the reach of ECHELON has dwindled to almost nothing.

    Without a physical link to every cell tower they can't intercept much of anything, the same holds true of Internet traffic. Sure back in the late 70's early 80's when the majority of Internet traffic was routed through a handful of U.S. exchange points ECHELON was able to monitor loads of traffic. If you consider the traffic from back then for a whole year likely equals 30 minutes of todays traffic! Today there's thousands upon thousands of exchange points in north america & ECHELON just doesn't have the ability to tap into them.

    All ECHELON does today is monitor a very select few communications in limited locations, nothing to lose sleep over!

    Why do you think ISP's are required by law in Canada & the U.S. to retain user data, because nobody else has the ability!

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