Fergie's Tech Blog

UK: Government Orders Data Retention by ISPs

Via OUT-LAW. com.

Phone and internet companies will soon be forced to keep logs of internet usage to be made available to the police under a new law announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown this week.

The law, the Communications Data Bill, will implement the remainder of the European Union's Data Retention Directive.

Last October the Government enacted regulations which said that telcos must keep records of phone calls to and from land lines and mobile telephones. That requirement will be extended to records of customers' internet usage, email usage and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) records.

The Bill is likely to follow the lead of last year's Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations in ordering providers to keep the data for 12 months.

posted by Fergie @ 5/15/2008 07:41:00 PM