UK considering huge telecoms database to deal with terror threat

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Britain is considering setting up a database of all phone and e-mail traffic in the country as part of a high-tech strategy to fight terrorism and crime, its top law-and-order official said Wednesday. Opposition politicians and civil liberties groups immediately condemned the idea, and the country's terror-law ombudsman said the government must not be allowed to set up a vast "data warehouse." Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Britain's police and security services need new ways to collect and store records of phone calls, e-mails and Internet traffic. Technological changes have created a "complex and fragmented" online world that meant information such as telephone billing data was not always retained, she said, adding that new measures would try to find "some way or other to collect that data and store it."