More State Snooping

The BBC reports in more detail on more state snooping.
I will copy and paste a few snippets here below:

Rules forcing internet companies to keep details of every e-mail sent in the UK are a waste of money and an attack on civil liberties, say critics.
From March all internet service providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year.
Human rights group Liberty says it is worried what will happen next.

Dr Richard Clayton, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge's computer lab, said the money could have been better spent. He said: "There's going to be a record of every single e-mail which arrived addressed to you and all the e-mails you sent out via your ISP. That, of course, includes all the spam."

The rules already apply to telephone companies, which routinely hold much of the data for billing. The Earl of Northesk, a Conservative peer on the House of Lords science and technology committee, said it meant anyone's movements could be traced 24 hours a day.

This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life," he said. "People have to worry about the scale, the virtuality of your life being exposed to about 500 public authorities.

Under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental right... it is important to protect the principle of privacy because once you've lost it, it's very difficult to recover."

The Home Office said the data was a vital tool for investigation and intelligence gathering. "It will allow investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time.

Data can be accessed by more than 600 public bodies, such as the police and councils, if they make a valid request.

More BBC stories here
And here
This one mentions LETTERS