UK Gov’t outlines Facebook monitoring plans
ZDNet >> 27th April 2009
The government wants communications service providers to record, retain and process details of all communications that take place over their networks, the home secretary said on Monday.
Jacqui Smith was speaking at the launch of a consultation entitled Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment. She said it was essential for such information to be easily accessible by public authorities, including the police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), HM Revenue & Customs, and the intelligence agencies.
The information that the government wants communications service providers (CSPs) to store and process covers the circumstances of communications – that is, who was contacting whom, and when and how that communication was made – rather than the content of those communications.
Legislation has already come into force that requires service providers to retain details of user internet access, email and internet telephony for a year. The rules being proposed in the Home Office’s new consultation, however, also take in communications made using third-party providers, such as webmail providers and social networks such as Facebook. Facebook’s chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, told ZDNet UK in March that such plans were “overkill”.
Smith said on Monday that, if public authorities are to access and correlate many kinds of communications data within a reasonable timeframe, they need such data to be held in a form where it can be easily and quickly accessed. Soca director-general Bill Hughes, speaking at the same event, also said communications data were “essential tools” for fighting crime.