The private correspondence of millions of people who use social networking sites could be tracked and saved on a “big brother” database, under new plans being drawn up by the UK government.Ministers revealed yesterday that they were considering policing messages sent via sites such as MySpace and Facebook, alongside plans to store information about every phone call, e-mail and internet visit made by everyone in the United Kingdom.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5973731.eceUK monitoring may extend to social networking sites
The Government may expand its plans to keep a record of all email, internet and phone communications to include communication over social networking sites. Users of services such as Facebook and Bebo can send each other messages via the sites.Home Office security minister Vernon Coaker told a Parliamentary committee that it is considering including social networking site traffic in its plans to monitor online communications.The Government is planning to store communications data for 12 months in order to comply with the European Union’s Data Retention Directive. Communications data is information about web use or a phone call but not its content.
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