SPY chiefs are forging ahead with secret plans to monitor all internet use and telephone calls in Britain. This is despite Jacqui Smith's announcement earlier this week that proposals for a central warehouse of communications data had been abolished on privacy grounds.
A mass internet surveillance system known as Mastering the Internet (MTI) will cost hundreds of millions of pounds. It will consist of thousands of deep packet inspection probes inside communications providers' networks.
MTI will grant intelligence staff in Cheltenham GCHQ complete visibility of UK Internet traffic. It will allow them to intercept and monitor all e-mails, website visits and social networking sessions in Britain. The agency will also be able to track telephone calls made over the internet, as well as all phone calls to landlines and mobiles.
At the moment the agency is able to use probes to monitor the content of calls and e-mails sent by specific individuals who are the subject of police or security service investigations.
Today these interceptions must be approved by a warrant signed by the home secretary or a minister of equivalent rank.
The new GCHQ internet-monitoring network will shift the focus of the surveillance state away from a few hundred targeted people to everyone in the UK.
Last week, in what seemed to be a concession to privacy campaigners, Smith announced that she was dropping the controversial plans for a single “big brother” database to centrally store all communications data in Britain.
Jacqui Smith said. “The government recognised the privacy implications of the move [and] therefore does not propose to pursue this move.”
Smith announced that up to £2 billion of public money would instead be spent helping private internet and telephone companies to save information for up to 12 months in separate databases.
She neglected to mention that substantial additional sums — amounting to more than £1 billion over three years — had already been allocated to GCHQ for its MTI programme.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said “We opposed the big brother database because it gave the state direct access to everybody’s communications. But this network of black boxes achieves the same thing via the back door.”
Ministers have said they do not intend to snoop on the actual content of e-mails or telephone calls. The monitoring will instead focus on who an individual is communicating with or which websites and chat rooms they are visiting.
Supporters of MTI and IMP say they are essential if intelligence agencies are to preserve their capability to monitor terrorist and other criminal networks. GCHQ does not want to discuss how the data it gathered will be used.
Are they gathering this information to “protect us?” What do you think?
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