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So it all seems like it's all about taking away civil liberties and nothing to do with public safety.

Same is currently active in Germany - only they use the "manslaughter argument" of stopping childporn and fighting terrorism to defend their fight (and censorship) against the net

[off-topic]I'm waiting for the time our government will prohibit encryption without a "keyhole" for our police and/or "services" [/off-topic]

A Home Office spokesman said: "It is the Government's priority to protect public safety and national security. That is why we are completing the implementation of this directive, which will bring the UK in line with our European counterparts.

The ironic part of that statement is the UK gov fought a lawsuit a couple of years ago trying to force them to make roundabouts safer and get rid of accident black spots.  The gov claimed that they were not responsible for public safety and won the case.

So it all seems like it's all about taking away civil liberties and nothing to do with public safety.

Is Big Brother really watching? Or is it just the moderators

why wouldn't big brother be watching anyway ?

Starting today (6 April 2009), the contents of every email sent and the IP address of every website visited by everyone in Britain will be stored by ISPs for a year. Police and national security services will be able to access the information "to combat crime and terrorism."

The surveillance comes as part of an EU directive, which Britain was instrumental in devising, and which Britain pushed hard to get through the EU.

Phil Noble of NO2ID (a privacy advocacy group) says "This is the kind of technology the Stasi would have dreamed of."

"We are facing a co-ordinated strategy to track everyone's communications, creating a dossier on every person's relationships and transactions.

"It is clearly preparatory work for the as-yet un-revealed plans for intercept modernisation."

-Phil Noble

The "Intercept Modernisation Programme" is the British plan to store virtually all internet traffic information in Britain in a centralized location, to which police and intelligence services will have ready access.

It's not clear to me to what extent other EU countries are participating in the internet surveillance program. It appears to be mandatory for all ISPs within the EU. Britain has been spinning the monitoring program to its public as a necessary imposition from Brussels, even though the legislation was drafted by  Britain, was introduced into the EU parliament by Britain, and Britain was instrumental in pushing the legislation through the EU.

British secuity services became paranoid after the London bombings of 7 July 2005. They have become convinced that comprehensive monitoring of the internet activities of all British citizens is necessary to secure the nation from terrorism.

A Home Office spokesman said: "It is the Government's priority to protect public safety and national security. That is why we are completing the implementation of this directive, which will bring the UK in line with our European counterparts.

"Letters will go out to communication service providers telling them that it is coming into force. We are talking across the board, to all communication providers."

British officials have said communications data have played a "vital part" in a wide range of criminal investigations, such as finding the killer of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, a Liverpool schoolboy shot dead in 2007.

"Without communications data, resolving crimes such as the Rhys Jones murder would be very difficult if not impossible."

hxxp://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105519/Internet-records-to-be-stored-for-a-year.html

hxxp://www.openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/index.php/Intercept_Modernisation

lol I feel daft now. Thanks  ;D

lol - I did NOT intend that. Just chalk it up on my liking of George Orwell's novel 1984 which I read the first time when I was at a tender age of about 12 years and still love it