UK government planning to keep the activities of internet users under surveillance

UK government planning to keep the activities of internet users under surveillanceThe government of United Kingdom is planning to give sweeping powers to the nation’s police, security forces, and intelligence agencies, to keep the activities of internet users under surveillance. The Gordon Brown government is planning to monitor phone calls, emails, visits to social networking sites and other such websites.

The Telegraph on Friday reported that the British government has proposed to give extensive powers to its police and security forces to monitor communication "traffic" – who calls, texts, emails-- who, when and where - but not what is said”.  

According to the paper, the details about this proposed plan will be revealed today (Monday) by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who will advocate that the powers, known in Whitehall as the Interception Modernisation Programme, are necessarily required to combat terrorists and serious criminals, who take advantage of the complex nature of communications to plot atrocities and crimes.

According to the proposed plan, the police & security forces will not be allowed to access the content of calls and other communications, but will be allowed to track the phone calls, emails, even text messages, and visits to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but if, the police & security forces find something suspicious, the content can be intercepted.    

However, the critics of the proposed plan are criticizing the Government for using climate of fear to expand the surveillance state. The civil liberty campaigners have dubbed the proposed plan as “Orwellian” and "highly intrusive". The country’s data protection watchdog has warned that the proposal would be “unacceptable”.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, the country’s data watchdog, said, “I have no problem with the targeted surveillance of terrorist suspects. But a government database of the records of everyone’s communications, if that is to be proposed, is not likely to be acceptable to the British public. Remember that records - who, when, and where - can be highly intrusive even if no content is collected.”

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