Jacqui Smith backpedals on UK 'super-database'

HOME SECRETARY Jacqui Smith today backed off from plans for the Government to establish a national 'super-database' of all phone calls, text messages and Internet traffic passing over British telecommunications networks.

She said a state-run database containing such massive quantities of data on citizens' individual communications would be extreme and that it would amount to an unwarranted intrusion into personal privacy by the government.

It sounds like she's also realised that such a monstrous electronic surveillance database would be very complicated, difficult to build, horrendously expensive and prone to data privacy breaches, misuse and abuse. Or maybe she'd prefer not have her husband's web surfing records available to all and sundry.

But she's not ready to give up on the Government's grandiose Orwellian database plan yet.

Instead, the Home Office wants to shift the complexities, costs and risks of such a national electronic surveillance database onto the telecommunications firms and Internet service providers (ISPs) such as BT, Virgin Media, O2 and others.

That means either the costs - estimated to be as high as £12 billion over 10 years - will be borne by the telecoms and ISPs, which will of course pass them straight through to their subscribers, or the Government will have to subsidise those companies, in which case the UK taxpayers will wind up footing the bill.

It never seems to cross ministers' minds that perhaps the public doesn't want the Government to spy on their ordinary communications of daily life, and certainly doesn't want to have to fork out on higher broadband bills or additional taxes to pay for it. µ