UK’s database plan condemned by Europe
Robert Verkaik writes in The Independent:
Britain must rethink plans for a database holding details of every email, mobile phone and internet visit, Europe’s human rights commissioner has said in an outspoken attack on the growth of surveillance societies. Thomas Hammarberg said that UK proposals for sweeping powers to collect and store data will increase the risk of the “violation of an individual’s privacy”.
Plans for the database of emails, phone calls and internet visits are to be published by the Home Office in January. These proposals have already been described by the Government’s own terrorism-law watchdog as “awful” and attacked by civil liberty groups for laying the basis of a Big Brother state.
