veganinja used our newssubmit to tell us that the United Kingdom has passed a law, that obligates Communication Service Providers to install equipment that makes it possible to monitor the communications of their customers.
Of course the monitorring will only be done on people that are suspect to a crime and will not be used on 'normal' customers. The law will be effective from August 1th.
The Act demands that organisations it dubs Communication Service Providers (CSP) - broadly anyone that helps people keep in touch via the web, fax machine or phone - install technology that can automatically monitor what many of their customers are doing. |
It also demands that service providers start monitoring a customer within 24 hours of being told that the police or other investigation agencies want to snoop on them.
The information collected must also be passed on electronically to the agency which asked for the snooping to start.
The question is, what is the use of this kind of equipment when people are encrypting their traffic. P2P networks like the FastTrack network already claim encrypted transfers.
Anyway, read the entire story on the BBC's website here.
Source: BBC.co.uk
