Who the heck is going to read all this stuff,
read it properly, chase down names etc.
terrorists will change the meaningful words with
fruit names ie a bomb could be named a banana.
Though think how many people will be employed.
great stuff.

Peter, Ratoath,

No need to worry too much George,all power structures collapse eventually. people maturally seek their own benefit, and when they cannot they cease to strive,this is why the Soviet Union failed.

Eddy, Bury St.Edmunds,

I may add that we are already subject to Big Brother more than we wd. like to admit. The model is Switzerland or Singapore which we in the UK might classify as police states. The majority of their citizens feel more secure in their everyday lives & do not complain of being harassed by the State.

Ian Cheese, london, uk

Presuambly Ian Cheese of London also has no problems with his house being randomly searched, his mail being opened and being required to produce his papers on demand. The truth is that databases will not protect anybody from the criminality that is the problem for most people. ie yobs and thugs

Steve, Manchester,

Rich-I have a short nose, so no problem what you are saying. I don't think we need get paranoid about Brother, big or small. The majority of people just want to be protected from criminality. And if Big or Small Brother usurp their role to be the guardians of the people then they will be off!

Ian cheese, london, uk

Ian Cheese - would you feel the same if the BNP came to power? Would you mind them exercising 'Big Brother' over us? Look further than the end of your own nose.

Rich, Derby, UK

I'm all for Big Brother. Only criminals & anyone to hide need worry about Brother!

Ian cheese, london, uk

Terrorism provides a handy excuse for every invasion of privacy. There are remarkably few terrorists in the world. Their PR campaign however is global. Handled for free by Governments who have a vested interest in keeping their citizens afraid. Our fathers fought for freedom not cyber slavery.

Susan Wade Weeks, YORK, UK

Muhammed, I will meet you down the dog and duck where we can discuss our next 'project' ..Honestly, the EU and our Govt have the organisational and strategic intelligence of a group of sixth form sociology students, they are Dangerous.

Adrian Peirson, Luton, Grear Britain

We taxpayers will, however, be robbed of billions of pounds as the IT consultancies draw up their bids to design and deliver the ".
And to me, that is criminal. But then we are talking about the party of waste. LABOUR!

Samantha Jones, Bucks, England

Ah well, why not try spending a few billion of taxpayers money on trying to achieve the un-achievable

Labour have a track record of failed billion pound IT schemes but a Klondyke for their chosen IT companies.

You couldn'tmake it up!

wullie, Luss, Scotland

Why do they never learn and never listen?! If I go into tin-hat mode I might suspect that all these pipedreams are really the government's way of moving billions of pounds into UFO cover-ups and flying saucer development... I mean, what other reason is there for them being so flipping stupid!!

Mike Rouse, Coventry,

And when its all in place and all emails are being read and the internet watched... the bad guys revert to sending a letter containing instructions and a blueprint and a map.

Bill Quango MP, sp,

If I were a terrorist I would welcome this with open arms. The government would let its guard down in the certain knowledge that it could find the data unencrypted amongst all those calls from call centres, spam for porn and Viagra and file attachments. Of course it will...

Dave, Slough,

I send very few e-mails, but if the technology ever arises to meet the aspirations of those who would controlI ,I will invest in the device that can send thousands, if not tens of thousands automatically every day.
Spam for the masses,indigestion for the elite.

robert everitt, wolverhampton,

On different subjects I hear the old refrain"If we dont do it voluntarily the EU will force us.If this is so why do we always have to be fiirst.I think the EU is more liberal than our Gov.I also think that in Germany the DB's that we are being threatened with for ID are illegal.Our Gov want this.Why

JohnP, Newcastle, UK

I sometimes wonder if the government's constant threats to abolish our privacy and freedom are a deliberate ploy to encourage even more indiginous skilled and professional people to quit Britain, because they tend not to vote for the Labour party.
Paranoia? No, just Labour-attitude aware.

Paul , Nottingham, UK

This is the begining of, "The Road To Serfdom"

Phil, Surrey, United Kingdom

A lot of the e-mails I send have 10MB attachments. And I can't be the only one.

Rosemary, Germany,

"He who defends all, defends nothing"

CA, Dawn,

Keep watching & roll on big brother. Only those with something to hide have something to fear from big brother.

Ian cheese, london, uk

This is crass. It presupposes that everybody will use a predefined set of communication protocols, but any truly malevolent network could easily create new internet message protocols that bypass ISP e-mail systems/SMS etc. It would take a good comms programmer a few days.

Mark Williams, Hampshire, England

I thought the intention was to legislate that the ISP's had to collect and store the data and make it available to the government if asked for. No doubt the costs will be passed on to their customers.

max, london,

Mark, the problem is that just storing the header data would be meaningless. What does "X sent an email to Y" actually mean? Without the content of email, or the content of certain data, then it becomes meaningless. This is why the proposals are also to store all SMS messages.

Phil Hendren, London,

Most of what you say is correct but you're forgetting that we're not talking about ISPs logging everything, just the basic header and location data from e-mails and websites. Many already have the capability to do this and store such information for a more limited period of time.

Mark Jackson, Poole, England

Phil, there are two issues here. The first being "do we want to live in a state that wants to hold this sort of data" and the second of "is it technically feasable".The answer to the first has to be no. The answer to the second is also no, as you point out. Alas, I will have to finish on your blog.

Benedict White, Cuckfield, UK

It comes to pretty pass when we have to rely on the incompetence of a malevolent government to protect ourselves from them. And of course, this is based on the demands of an antidemocratic EU, our new rulers, so even if our government wasn't malevolent, they would still have to do it to us.

Geprge Edwards, rawcliffe, uk