Police in the UK are to push for powers to store logs of all UK Internet traffic for up to five years, it was said today at the launch of the National High Tech Crime Unit.

Roger Gaspar, deputy director general of the National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS), said that police in the UK would call for legislation allowing Internet traffic to be stored for years for investigation purposes.

"There is gap in the legislation that has to be got rid of," he said. "We're saying we need debate about what kind of data is held and for how long."

Gaspar said that, as organised criminals move to the Internet, police need new capabilities to gather forensic evidence. In December of last year, police and members of Britain's intelligence services first called for powers to log Internet data, suggesting that messages should be stored for up to seven years Gaspar said that the police would not want to store the data themselves, and would ensure that safeguards were implemented to protect individual privacy.

The new head of the NHTCU said that the unit would not mean the beginning of Big Brother-style surveillance. "There is no intention whatsoever of randomly intercepting people's emails," he said.

Gaspar, however, added that police would argue that investigators should have access to data stored for up to five years. "Traffic data is now the eyewitness and the fingerprint. If we are going to be successful, we have to have access to that data," he said.

Proposals for such data storing powers were met with hostility from civil liberty groups. Malcolm Hutty, director of the Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain, said that any sort of hoarding would contravene the Human Rights Act, introduced in the UK in October of last year to consolidate the European convention on human rights.

Hhmmmm! Another inevitable step down the road towards Government control of the 'net? Governments simply can't accept the lack of control implicit in the 'net - and I'm afraid I see this sort of intervention as inevitable.

-- Anonymous, April 18, 2001

Answers

"There is no intention whatsoever of randomly intercepting people's emails,"

Nah they don't want to do it randomly, they want to develop a system that can intercept, scan and read EVERY E-Mail message sent.

The Sedgefield Shiteface hates the fact that he can't hold back people's opinions on the web and that people can say what they want without being controlled.

Bastard!

-- Anonymous, April 18, 2001

So do I take it you won't be voting for Tony's lot in the impending GE, ITK? Even if the price of petrol goes down up? (Forgot - he put it down already).

-- Anonymous, April 18, 2001

Dead bliddy right Screacher

I wouldn't........vote for that.....sanctimonious twat.......even if I had........a kalashnikov(sp).......held to my head........I just wish......he wouldn't keep saying.....that he is.......a Newcastle supporter

-- Anonymous, April 18, 2001

Well Gawd help whoever gets my mail to read! They`ll be bored rigid! (:o)

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2001

That's the problem ITK - the open, unrestricted, uncensored nature of internet is inherently anti-establishment - and Governments of all persuasion are desperately uncomfortable with their inability to control the content. Establishment = control.

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2001

The only possible value in saying that all internet correspondence will be stored is that it might scare people. Clearly not the rabid anarchists on this BBS - thank goodness. Given the rate we all produce the stuff it would probably mean that 1 person in, say, 20 would have to be employed as an e-mail sniffer tomake the thing work. The Stasi in E. Germany were unable to keep up with their much simpler but still voluminous task and relied on just the idea that they were doing it.

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2001