UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has passed a law that will force phone and internet companies to keep full logs of their customer’s internet usage. The data will also need to be made readily available to the police if they need it.
The law, dubbed the “Communications Data Bill”, is an offshoot of the EU’s “Data Retention Directive”. Last October the first part of the bill was passed and forced telcos to “keep records of phone calls to and from land lines and mobile telephones.” That will now be extended to internet usage, emails, and VoIP records.
“The aim of the [Directive] is to ensure that certain data is retained to enable public authorities to undertake their lawful activities to investigate, detect and prosecute crime and to protect the public,” added a Home Office spokeswoman.
“The first part of the [Directive] was transposed into UK law in October 2007 but the Government made a declaration … to postpone its application to the retention of communications data relating to internet access, internet telephony and internet email until 2009. So the measures referred to in the Communications Data Bill will complete the transposition of the Directive for IP [internet protocol] communications data,” said the Home Office spokeswoman.
If the Bill follows the lead of the Data Retention Directive then the ISPs will have to keep the data logs for 12 months. Police and other law enforcement agencies can get access to the files through a court-ordered warrant.
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