As word comes down today of the English High Court decision that The Pirate Bay is an illegal site promoting copyright infringing files it seems that the government of that country is planning on setting up what would have to be the largest surveillance program so far in the world.
Its target?
Its own citizens.
The plan is tho force all landline, mobile and broadband companies to store their customer’s data so that the government can access it real-time.
While the companies won’t be required to retain the actual contents of the call, just the details of the sender and the receiver, they will also be required to store the data from their customers to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
For the first time, the security services will have widespread access to information about who has been communicating with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook.
Direct messages between subscribers to websites such as Twitter would also be stored, as well as communications between players in online video games.
The Home Office is understood to have begun negotiations with internet companies in the last two months over the plan, which could be officially announced as early as May.
via Telegraph
One of the biggest problems with this plan, bedsides the plan itself, is that it is the companies that will be storing the data, companies that have already proven that they can easily be hacked into and seem to have any real concern unless information about the hack is leaked out.
The report cited by the Telegraph suggests that we will hear the first official word of the plan come May and the Queen’s Speech.
I can hear the hacker laughing their butts off right now and they prepare their SQL injections and other toys for when this happens.
via Techie-Buzz
