Britain Considers Database for Telephone and E-Mail Traffic

The British government is considering setting up a database of all phone and e-mail traffic in the country as part of a high-tech strategy to fight terrorism and crime, its senior law enforcement official said Wednesday. The official, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, said Britain's police and security services needed new ways to collect and store records of phone calls, e-mail messages and Internet traffic. Technological changes have created an online world that is complex and fragmented, Ms. Smith said, and important information like telephone billing data is not always retained. New strategies are needed to find "some way or other to collect that data and store it," she said. Opposition politicians and civil liberties groups immediately condemned the idea, and the country's independent reviewer of terrorism laws, Lord Carlile, said the government should not be allowed to set up a vast "data warehouse."