New E-mail Regulations

Much comment has been made by people such as I regarding the above.

This new 'law' by our Lords & Masters in Brussels is going to cost us more of the money we haven't got and it is important that our right to privacy is maintained. Remember those rights which a government takes from us are extremely difficult to recover.

What is really ludicrous about this is that the 'watchers' will not have access to the content of our e-mails, only the e-mail addresses and the timings. This is being done, so we are told, to combat terrorism, terrorism being a convenient 'cover/reason' to bring in new laws which are gradually removing those rights we still have left.

To further illustrate the stupidity of this 'law', small ISPs are exempted from having to keep this data. As Musings On Liberty says:

"Did you get that? Small ISPs will be exempt. Forget them worrying about becoming big enough to incur the costs - any terrorist or 'undesirable' with 1/10th of a brain cell will just use the ISPs not on the list and so render the entire project completely useless.............. I mean seriously, are we this stupid?"

The EU Directive is in fact 2006/24/EC and bearing in mind the recent 'mutterings' of Mr. Culture (Andy Burnham) and the Poisoned Dwarf (Hazel - Yes, I am a nut - Blears) you can bet your last 'quantitatively eased' pound that it won't be long before this bunch of control freaks - aka our Government - decide they want more information. Like not just who has sent something to whom, but what the content actually says.

You see, being a Directive it is necessary that there is national enabling legislation (unlike a Regulation) so the 'control freaks' can tinker a tad with it (add a bit). For example, remember the HIPS fiasco? All the original EU legislation required was an Energy Certificate; so what did the 'control freaks' add on? - survey reports, land searches etc; oh and created another 'army' of state employees to monitor/implement it!

For those who consider we 'web-based critics' are talking 'tosh' in respect of our 'comedians' (aka government) - go read your history of the last Labour Government, then come back and try and tell us we are talking 'tosh'!