Communications Database
Posted: Tue 20 May, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 3 Comments »The BBC are today reporting a plan by the government to store every phone call and email in a database. Hell, even communist russia couldn’t manage to record everything – talk about totalitarian crap. But I must admit that the entire database concept both fascinates and annoys me simultaneously.
First, how long will it take to set up something like this? (Bearing in mind we’re working on Government-time, rather than anything sane) Let’s not forget that the NHS ‘national database’ won’t be completed ’til at least 2014, having already been in development for a fair number of years.
Secondly, how will the data be collected? Would I have to register my home-based SMTP server as something that could be indexed by the database? Or is it a case that all email traffic would just be collected by the ISPs? What about spam? Will the database be recording that as well? What about text messages? Will they be stored? If not, why not? And with the incidence of pay as you go mobile phones for calls etc., how would you trace them to the right person. I suspect there’d be a lot of phones registered in the name Michael Mouse, or Donald Duck, for example.
Then there’s the entire issue of data protection – and even of how long the data will be kept. Twelve months? Twenty-four? Sixty? Considering the data-protection screw-ups of the last twelve months, would you expect the data about your emails and phone calls to stay protected any more securely than – for example – the information about your child benefits, driving licence details, credit card details, or anything else that the Government’s lost copies of recently?
Of course, those questions don’t even scratch the surface of the problems. Why the hell should the government be allowed to just keep all records, based on the premise that they might (and let’s be honest, it’s a pretty fucking slim chance. Even 1000 ‘terrorist’ cases – a number I’ve pulled out of the air – would be less than 1% of 1% of the UK’s populace.) be needed in some kind of anti-terrorism case.
Even more importantly, if this system were to be created and used by the government, now that it’s been publicised, you’d have to be a remarkably fucking stupid terrorist to then communicate via email, phone call, or (perhaps) text message. Instead, they could just go back to using the post, or meeting up, or notice-boards.
Communication doesn’t rely on email and mobile phones – no matter how much the Government wishes it would, so that they could record everything.
Which is maybe part of the thinking around this nonsense. As you say, at the very least it would slow the terrorists down (the internet is an excellent place to share information, quickly and secretly).
I’m also half thinking that they should go ahead with this, if they even get close to setting it up and gaining any benefit by… 2020? I’d be amazed.
But ultimately this is bad. Haven’t they learned that people will just find other ways to communicate? Open new protocols? (Re-open old ones?)… will they monitor ohh… telnet sessions??
Whilst I understand where they are coming from this spanks of a lack of vision, but hey, no surprise there.
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The US is to thank at least in part for this brilliant idea, or rather for developing the ruse that the government will have to ‘store’ the data, since of course the US simply got the telecoms to allow access to the data already on hand. The analysis program the government developed is actually a bit like sorting a desert full of sand through a giant sieve, looking (sifting) for key words and patterns — wildly inefficient as you can imagine, but it doesn’t stop them from rounding up “suspicious” callers anyway. The catch is, the greatest protection we all once had was the hopelessly plodding and ineffective efforts of government. When inefficiency stops getting in the way, it ends up being a little scary.