Snoopers Charter
The Draft Communications Data Bill (nicknamed the Snoopers’ Charter or Snooper’s Charter) is draft legislation proposed by Home Secretary Theresa May in the United Kingdom which would require Internet service providers and mobile phone companies to maintain records of each user’s internet browsing activity (including social media), email correspondence, voice calls, internet gaming, and mobile phone messaging services and store the records for 12 months. Retention of email and telephone contact data for this time is already required by the Data Retention Regulations 2014. The anticipated cost is £1.8 billion or 2,793,150,000.00 US Dollars!!!!
Now this is not Crazy,what more crazy is that ‘Snoopers Charter’ bill which would potentially allow the Government to ban instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, iMessage and Facebook Messenger.Looks like these Services would either be required to allow Back doors or Shut Down or Risk being Shutdown!!!
While i Feel for the UK citizens,USA has their own Problems as well with Government Snooping According to a Report by the Guardian,In France, the lower house of parliament approved by a large majority a bill giving the intelligence establishment new powers to spy on the population with almost no judicial oversight. The bill still has to go before the French Senate, but the direction of policy is clear. In the US the New York court of appeals ruled that the bulk collection of telephone metadata is unlawful, although it is delaying enforcement until Congress votes on renewal of the relevant provision in the Patriot Act. But the court fired a warning shot across the bows of politicians who want to renew it without any changes, indicating that, as it stands, “it cannot bear the weight” of the interpretation so far put upon it.
I agree with the Guardian when the state that Electronic espionage and data mining only work if the targets stay in the electronic world, but the indications are that terrorists are retreating from it. The result could be too much investment in the wrong kind of intelligence, along with an infringement of privacy all too easy to exploit by actors less concerned with terror than with their own commercial or bureaucratic interests.
Information Technologi 