IM and email surveillance to be legalized in UK, no more privacy for Britons?

 The government of the United Kingdom plans a new legislation that would require Internet service providers to retain and disclose data about instant messages, e-mail and other electronic communications. It states that the knowledge about the participants, timing and method of a communication -- but not its contents -- is vital in protecting the public from serious crime and terrorism.

"It is a highly technical area and one which demands a fine balance between privacy and maintaining the capabilities of the police and security services," according to a statement attributed to David Hanson, minister of state for security, counter-terrorism, crime and policing. "We will now work with communications service providers and others to develop these proposals and aim to introduce necessary legislation as soon as possible."

The position was formulated by the government after it asked public authorities, private companies and the public for their views on how communications data should be collected, under what authority and how it should be stored. Out of 221 institutions asked about 90% gave no answer on the score of their opposition to any kind of surveillance on the part of authorities.

The government plan stipulates requiring service providers to retain all communications data, even that related to third-party services which are accessed using their networks. It claims that the existing European Union legislation - the E.U. Data Retention Directive - does not go far enough and only covers the services provided by the network provider. Under that directive, data must be retained for 12 months.

Under the proposed bill the data gathered should be stored by the service providers and not in a central database. The terms of data storage however were not determined yet. Meanwhile, using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000, which mandates rules for accessing communications data, government will require data from the ISPs.

Service providers will spend about £2 billion (US$3.34 billion) according to estimates in order to implement technology to comply with a new law requiring data to be retained.