The British government is planning to store details of phone calls,
text messages, email traffic and websites visited online as part of its
new anti-terror plans.
Landline and
mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store
the data for a year and make it available to the security services.
The
databases would not record the contents of calls, texts or emails but
the numbers or email addresses of who they are sent and received by.
For
the first time, the security services will have widespread access to
information about who has been communicating with each other on social
networking sites such as Facebook, The Telegraph reported.
The
Home Office is understood to have begun negotiations with internet
companies in the last two months over the plan, which could be
officially announced as early as May.
The plan has been drawn up
on the advice of MI5, the home security service, MI6, which operates
abroad, and GCHQ, the Government's "listening post" responsible for
monitoring communications.
