A frightening proposal from the UK government:

A government database holding details of every phone call made, email sent and minute spent on the internet by the public could be created as part of a centralised fight against crime and terrorism….

Telecoms companies and internet service providers would be compelled to hand over their records to the Home Office under proposals that could find their way into the new data communications bill.

The information would be stored for at least 12 months and police, security services and other agencies across Europe would be able to access the database with court permission.

These new proposals are vastly more invasive than existing data retention laws. Right now, UK telcos are already required to retain information about calls and text messages, but they don’t store recordings of the calls themselves, nor do they store the text of the text messages. Most people, I think, expect this to happen anyway. The new proposals cover the content of all your online activity: which sites you visited and when, the text of every email you send and receive, logs of every IM message you send and every online chat you participate in — in short, everything you do online.

Then there’s the fact that the UK government would be in charge of storing all that data itself, in one big centralized database. Instead of having to go to the telcos to get it, the cops and spooks would just have to ask the Home Office for it. Those same cops and spooks made 439,000 requests for telecommunications data over a 15-month period in 2005-2006. How long do you think it would take for the Home Office to give in to the inevitable pressure to expedite the process a little by cutting out the judicial oversight? After all, Home Office staff have already been caught hacking into their own department’s records; it will be difficult for them to refuse when that nice policeman tells them he needs their help to stop the terrorists.

If Cory Doctorow hadn’t mentioned it in passing in a Forbes article, I would have missed this story from last April:

“Talking” CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.

They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.

Talking surveillance cameras.

I’ll say it again:

Talking surveillance cameras.

Home Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, “in the minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions”.

“But the vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can’t go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people,” he added.

I live in downtown Vancouver. You know what makes me feel safe? There are always people around. If someone tries to mug me, 20 Korean ESL students will be standing there watching it happen. You know what won’t make me feel safe? CCTV cameras telling me to put my garbage in the garbage can.

I’m not exaggerating about the garbage, by the way:

Downing Street’s “respect tsar”, Louise Casey, said the cameras “nipped problems in the bud” and reduced bureaucracy.

“It gets across the message, ‘please don’t litter our streets because someone else will have to pay to pick up that litter again’,” she told BBC News.

Talking surveillance cameras. To deal with litter.

Also, why does the national government of the United Kingdom have a “respect tsar”?

Competitions would also be held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the voice of the cameras, Mr Reid said.

Talking surveillance cameras … with the voices of schoolchildren.

I guess there’s a kind of poetic justice to it, since the British government insists on treating its citizens like children.

Future Now calls attention to a brief report in the January/February issue of Foreign Policy:

China censors the Internet effectively, and it appears to be exporting that expertise to other dictatorships. Beijing recently sent engineers trained in phone tapping to Zimbabwe. It also arranged to send computer equipment designed for filtering—or spying—on the Internet. In 2004, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s state-owned telecom, TelOne, made Internet service providers sign contracts allowing it to monitor and censor illegal material. The Chinese hardware could make this job much easier.

Future Now observes, “If you’re a dictator or president for life, why choose the completely open, dangerously destabilizing Western version of the Internet, when you could go with an Internet that lets you control the content your citizens see and observe what they do?”

Given current trends, I’m not so sure those of us in what used to be known as “the free world” will continue to enjoy the open and destabilizing version of the Internet either.