The UK government is considering the mass surveillance and retention of all user communications on social-networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo.Again, thank fuck I left the UK. Even Sen. Conroy isn't thinking along these lines (that we know of). He's just being a patronizing tool who's listened to the "won't somebody think of the chiiilldren" mob and thinks we need protecting from all the T & A. Hugely annoying but relatively mild compared to the UK government's seeming intention to inspect every word of every form of web based communication in and out of Britain.
Home Office security minister Vernon Coaker said on Monday that the EU Data Retention Directive, under which ISPs must store communications data for 12 months, does not go far enough. Communications such as those on social networking sites and instant messaging could also be monitored, he said.
"Social-networking sites, such as MySpace or Bebo, are not covered by the directive," said Coaker, speaking at a meeting of the House of Commons Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee. "That is one reason why the government are looking at what we should do about the Intercept Modernization Program, because there are certain aspects of communications which are not covered by the directive."
Note also the dead hand of the EU involved in this. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a federal Europe might not necessarily be bad if it was completely democratic, transparent, accountable and generally desired by the people of Europe in the first place, and who knows, it might have happened naturally in a couple of centuries. This undemocratic, unaccountable, unelected (the Commission) and semi-sovietized EU that exists at the moment is fucking scary.