Looming rules that will force internet companies to keep details of every email sent in the UK are an attack on privacy and a waste of money, it was warned today.
From March, all internet service providers (ISP) will have to keep data about emails sent and received in the UK for a year.
Content of individual emails is not being kept by the authorities, but the timing and number of each communication are.
The law is being implemented as part an EC directive, and the Government will reportedly have to pay the ISPs more than £25 million to ensure the law is obeyed.
Dr Richard Clayton, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge's computer lab said the costs of the regulation could have been better spent.
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How the internet has changed the role of media lawyers
Defamation suits aren’t what they used to be. Gone are the days when a defamatory allegation was communicated predominantly in the print media and, though sensational at the time, would generally be relegated to chip-wrapping the next day. As media specialist Amber Melville-Brown at David Price Solicitors & Advocates observes, modern technology means a defamatory story can no longer be forgotten by the time the chips go cold.
‘Rolling news enables a story to be published over and over to millions of people worldwide, while internet archives allow defamatory allegations to remain accessible indefinitely,’ she points out. The internet, in particular, she says, has brought about a fundamental change, with the ‘publisher’ of defamatory material online no longer being only the old but known foe of the media, but an entirely different force: the blogger.
