Yes, the headlines along the lines of "Secret plans to spy on phone
calls" are misleading. I think we are all pretty sure that the various
militarised security organisations do that already if they want. These
proposals are meant to force companies to keep their logs for a long
time, just in case someone does want to RIP them. The scary thing isn't
so much the extra invasion of privacy as the evidence of the
authoritarian personality of the authors.
Ken Brown
"Clive D.W. Feather" wrote:
>
> Caspar Bowden said:
> > <<..Britain's intelligence services are seeking powers to seize all records
> > of telephone calls, emails and internet connections made by every person
> > living in this country. A document circulated to Home Office officials and
> > obtained by The Observer reveals that MI5, MI6 and the police are demanding
> > new legislation to log every phone call made in this country and store the
> > information for seven years at a vast government-run 'data warehouse', a
> > super computer that will hold the information...>>
> >
> > The document referred to in the Observer front page story today appears to
> > have been posted on the US website "Cryptome".
> >
> > ==> http://cryptome.org/ncis-carnivore.htm
>
> Calling this "NCIS carnivore" is misleading. It's concerned with
> transaction logs (who logged in when, web site logs, the sort of thing
> covered as "communications data" in RIP). Nothing to do with the contents
> of phone calls or email.
>
> I've been aware of these proposals for some time. Basically, the police
> *have* the power to obtain this data *where the CSP has retained it*. What
> this paper wants is to retain all the data for the length of time that it
> could be useful, and for ease of access (under lawful authority, of course)
> consolidate it in a single database.
>
> It is pointed out that defence lawyers have use for such data as well.
>
> [I disagree strongly with the proposals, both on civil liberties grounds
> and because I think maintaining a "clean" database will be impractical.]
