UK's Expensive Net Spying Plan Proceeds

PCPro:
The Government has dropped plans to create a massive database of all internet communications, following stern criticism from privacy advocates.

Instead the Government wants ISPs and mobile phone companies to retain details of mobile phone calls, emails and internet sites visited.

As with the original scheme, the actual content of the phone calls and messages won't be recorded, just the dates, duration and location/IP address of messages sent. The security services would then have to apply to the ISP or telecoms company to have the data released.

The new proposals would also require ISPs to retain details of communications that originated in other countries but passed over the UK's network, such as instant messages.

ITPro:
The government is set to require all telcos to record data between communications – mobile phones, text message, emails and instant messages, as well as internet browsing sessions to social networking sites such as Facebook.

The details of the Intercept Modernisation Programme were laid out in a consultation document released today. The government will be accepting advice on the plans until July 2009.

Any firm considered a communications service provider (CSP) – such as internet service providers (ISPS) and mobile operators – would be required to hold onto such data in case the government needed it, for anti-terror or policing reasons, for example.

Such CSPs will also be required to collect data from services that are based overseas but use UK networks.

A document from the Home Office stressed the data held would include who, when, where and how communications connections were made – but not the content. For example, the information held on an email would include who sent it, to whom they sent it, and when it was sent, but the content of the email would not be stored.

The Register:
Spy chiefs are already spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a mass internet surveillance system, despite Jacqui Smith's announcement earlier this week that proposals for a central warehouse of communications data had been dumped on privacy grounds.

The system - uncovered today by The Register and The Sunday Times - is being installed under a GCHQ project called Mastering the Internet (MTI). It will include thousands of deep packet inspection probes inside communications providers' networks, as well as massive computing power at the intelligence agency's Cheltenham base, "the concrete doughnut".

Sources with knowledge of the project said contracts have already been awarded to private sector partners.