Enter Stage Left.What price do you place on your security? Take 9/11 for example - I'm sure that there were messages passed electronically between those who masterminded the attacks and those who carried them out - same with the 7/7 bombings. What if those messages had triggered some alarms and the messages had been intercepted?
If it's known that monitoring is in place, then it's not too difficult to bypass such monitoring, either by using codes, or by using the phone. Or you can simply change ISP. These measures will only be required to be enforced by the larger ISPs because it is recognised that it is not financially viable for smaller ISPs to maintain such records.
Using your logic, all phone calls should also be monitored. And so should every item of mail, electronic or otherwise. Because the only way to live in 100% safety is to have 100% control over every single action taken by every single individual at any given time. And that just isn't possible.
What price do you place on your freedom? Or your privacy? And even your security, because you seem all too willing to place a massive amount of trust in the way the government handles this information. Face it, their recent track record hasn't been too good in this area, now has it? A lost data disc here, a mislaid data disc there. Do you have any idea of the scale of the record-keeping we're talking about here? It's absolutely immense. And along with that comes massive scope for human error.
I wonder whether the families of those who died during the attacks would worry about the government intercepting some of their own innocent e-mails asking their wives what is for dinner. After all, who cares if they're intercepted?
No I shouldn't think they would. Leaving aside the matter of what may or may not be included in an email, there is no evidence that any kind of mass-monitoring would in any way increase the effectiveness of the fight against terrorism. In fact, just the opposite - as I've already said, if you know you're being monitored, all that does is make it easy for you to take steps to bypass such monitoring.
On the other hand, if your intelligence is effective, in the form of undercover operations and
targeted surveillance, then yes you can take appropriate action, make arrests and so on.
Regarding the naive comments, perhaps you are naive for thinking that your ISP isn't already monitoring the content you're using your computer for.....
That's some kind of assumption you're making there. Two in fact. Firstly regarding my knowledge of my ISP, and secondly concerning my attitude to this knowledge, or lack of.
As it happens. ISPs already keep records for 12 months, not content but start/destination type records. They do this largely for billing purposes. The government proposes to take this several stages further, using data mining techniques. Similar measures are also due to be put in place on behalf of the copyright industry, again only the larger ISPs will be affected. Then there's Phorm, or it's US equivalent, NebuAd, targeted advertising based on your browsing habits.
