Government to spy on e-mails and phone calls

Plans to create a £12 billion database, that holds all the phone calls, e-mails, and internet browsing patterns of everyone in the UK, have been proposed by the British government.

The government says the database will help it to combat terrorism and reduce crime.

A statement from the Home Office said no official decision has been made yet, but there is general agreement between the government and the security services on the programme.

British Telecom and Vodafone are also on board – it is believed that the two telecoms providers have agreed that monitoring probes could be installed on their services.

However, shadow home secretary, Dominic Grieve, labelled the proposals ‘extremely sinister’.

Other critics have raised questions as to whether such a vast monitoring system would be cost effective or secure, with 1,800 texts having to be monitored and securely stored every second.

At the moment, security services can carry out text and email surveillance, but every individual case has to be cleared by the Home Office before monitoring can go ahead.