[LINK] UK Government To Monitor Facebook

[Chris Gilbey]

March 25, 2009
Now 'Big Brother' targets Facebook
By Nigel Morris, deputy political editor
Minister wants government database to monitor social networking sites

Millions of Britons who use social networking sites such as Facebook could
soon have their every move monitored by the Government and saved on a "Big
Brother" database.

Ministers faced a civil liberties outcry last night over the plans, with
accusations of excessive snooping on the private lives of law-abiding
citizens.

The idea to police MySpace, Bebo and Facebook comes on top of plans to store
information about every phone call, email and internet visit made by
everyone in the United Kingdom. Almost half the British population ­ some 25
million people ­ are thought to use social networking sites. There are
already proposals under a European Union directive ­ dating back to after
the 7 July 2005 bombs ­ for emails and internet usage to be monitored and
added to a planned database to track terror plots.

But technology has moved on in the past three years, and the use of social
networking sites has boomed ­ so security services fear that that has left a
loophole for terrorists and criminal gangs to exploit.

To close this loophole, Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, has
disclosed that social networking sites could be forced to retain information
about users' web-browsing habits. They could be required to hold data about
every person users correspond with via the sites, although the contents of
messages sent would not be collected. Mr Coaker said: "Social networking
sites, such as MySpace or Bebo, are not covered by the directive. That is
one reason why the Government are looking at what we should do about the
intercept modernisation programme because there are certain aspects of
communications which are not covered by the directive."

In exchanges with the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Tom Brake, he
insisted: "I accept this is an extremely difficult area. 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."

Facebook boasts 17 million Britons as members. Bebo, which caters mainly for
teenagers and young adults, has more than 10 million users. A similar number
of music fans are thought to use MySpace.

Moves to include the sites in mass surveillance of Britons' internet habits
has provoked alarm among MPs, civil liberties groups and security experts.

Mr Brake 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."

Isabella Sankey, policy director at Liberty, said: "Even before you throw
Facebook and other social networking sites into the mix, the proposed
central communications database is a terrifying prospect. It would allow the
Government to record every email, text message and phone call and would turn
millions of innocent Britons into permanent suspects."

Richard Clayton, a computer security expert at Cambridge University, said:
"What they are doing is looking at who you communicate with and who your
friends are, which is greatly intrusive into your private life."

Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said yesterday that it was
considering lobbying ministers over the proposal, which he called
"overkill".

A Home Office spokeswoman said the Government was not interested in the
content of emails, texts, conversations or social networking sites. She
added: "We have been clear that communications revolution has been rapid in
this country and the way in which we collect communications data needs to
change so law enforcement agencies can maintain their ability to tackle
terrorism and gather evidence."

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