Govt to snoop on Facebook

Plans to monitor email traffic and telephone calls made in the UK could be extended to social networks, the government has said.

Ministers have announced that they want activity on sites such as Facebook and MySpace to be monitored to help in the fight against organised crime and terrorism.

The EU already asks communications companies to monitor email and telephone traffic in Europe in response to terror attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.

The UK government last year announced plans for its own anti-terror database and is now targeting social networks in the hope of exposing terror networks in the UK.

Vernon Coaker MP announced the idea to a House of Commons Committee and while acknowledging that such a move would be controversial he said privacy issues would be considered.

"Social networking sites, such as MySpace or Bebo, are not covered by the [EU] directive. I accept this is an extremely difficult area," Coaker said.

"The interface between retaining data, private security and all such issues of privacy is extremely important. It is absolutely right to point out the difficulty of ensuring we maintain a capability and a capacity to deal with crime and issues of national security – and where that butts up against issues of privacy," he continued.

However, the Liberal Democrats were highly critical of the idea.

Tom Brake MP said: "Plans to monitor our phone and email records threaten to be the most expensive snooper's charter in history. It is deeply worrying that they now intend to monitor social networking sites which contain very sensitive data like sexual orientation, religious beliefs and political views.

"Given the Government's disastrous record with large IT projects and data security, it is likely that data will leak out of every memory stick, port and disk drive when they start monitoring Facebook, Bebo and MySpace," Brake continued.

Privacy International was forthright in its criticism of the plans, saying it would "do everything we can to stop them".

"This is the real world equivalent of having to report to the government who you met with at the pub last night, and giving them the option to retroactively monitor your conversations," a PI spokesman told Web User.

Privacy issues have already been in the news this week with the controversy surrounding the launch of Google's Street View.

What do you think of government plans to monitor social networks? Have your say in the Web User forums.