Winds and Breezes

Retention of email and phone records

This report from the BBC.

Disclaimer: I work in the IT sector, sort of.

I realise that technology is a wonderful thing which allows us to do things with ease which many years ago would have been construed as magic. I remember button A and manual phone exchanges so a mobile phone is a thing of absolute wonder to me, in some ways, and a total and utter nuisance in other ways. This is true of most technology - it is a double edged sword and can be used for good reasons, or exploited for bad.

The British Government are interest in compelling companies to keep telephone and email records.

At the meeting Mr Clarke will present his European counterparts with a 10-point plan including proposing that records of all private telephone calls, text messages and e-mails be retained by telecommunications firms so they can be passed on to the police and security services if necessary.

Further down:

Labour MEP Claude Moraes, who sits on the European Parliament's civil liberties committee, objected to the plans on the grounds of cost.

"You're talking about millions and millions of e-mails and telephone calls and so on. So even medium size internet providers or phone operators would find this quite crushing," he told BBC news.

I object to it on several grounds, although I have to say cost is not chief amongst them. Companies are well able to find money to do things like pay their directors and management when they feel like it, particularly in the UK. It would be nice if a member of the civil liberties committee objected to it on civil liberties grounds rather than financial grounds, though.

However, I digress.

Email is a terrific tool with a number of unexpected benefits, or disadvantages. It is completely insecure. Now, not only will it be insecure, it will be insecure and stored handy for a select reserve of society to be able to trace at permitted will. I'm not entirely sure I feel particularly pleased about that. Likewise, SMS text messages.

I'm nervous of comments like "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". What I believe is that I have to right to live my life more or less unmonitored. Although I realise that sifting through emails would have to be one of the least exciting jobs in the world, I am under no illusions that people would be found to do it. And although I have nothing to hide, per se, I have many things that I would prefer not to be accessible to unknown third parties, such as a) emails and text messages of a somewhat romantic nature, for example and b) plans about my movements.

This may prove to be an unexpected bonus for the postal and special delivery services.

posted by Winds and Breezes @ 11:07 AM