WRITTEN ON October 13th, 2008 BY Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom GCMG KCVO AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

Sir Bonar writes

It behoves me, in the wake of recent stories in the news media about our Intercept Modernisation plans, to reiterate why it is important that we retain communications data. People have nothing to fear from this straightforward administrative measure, indeed they should welcome it.

Communications data has nothing to do with the contents of a call, email or webpage. It simply records technical details such as the numbers called, the name and address of the caller, the IMEI number and approximate location of a mobile phone, and any internet protocol or “IP” addresses and telephone line used.

No-one will be recording the content of day to day phone calls (except as duly authorised under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act). No-one will be listening in to private conversations between loved ones (thugh I should add that Euphorbia and I use Skype, which saves money and also has the benefit of being encrypted). This is simply about keeping an administrative record of the codes machines use to make the system work.

Collecting all communications data is entirely justified. It is a vital investigative and evidential tool for law enforcement.

I might also point out that it is required of the UK under a European directive. The UK took a strong lead on this and worked extremely hard to get this European directive passed, against stiff opposition from the Germans and Scandinavians. It would hardly do for the UK now to become a law-breaker by not implementing this straightforward administrative measure into UK law.

The population at large and the news media have to bear in mind that at the moment the police can already get whatever critical information it needs from communications service providers such as telephone companies to help them solve crimes. This information is used in order to prevent and detect crime on a day-to-day basis – not just serious crimes such as terrorism, drug-taking and paedophilia, but also environmental crimes to do with inappropriate waste disposal, dog fouling, and loitering.

Remember firstly, the world is now an extraordinarily dangerous place. And secondly, there have been, not to put too fine a point on it, new developments in technology.

People expect us in Whitehall to act and to take control of the situation.

This is why we need to transform our capacity, in a manner we shall present as a simple update. Instead of begging phone companies for occasional scraps of data (and having to pay them for their troubles, I might add) it’s high time we simply hoovered up the lot from every phone company and ISP, and placed it somewhere safe under lock and key. In today’s upsied down world it turns out to be cheaper to know everything than to mess about working out what we might never need. Once we have made this considerable investment (and I must say the news media have greatly under-estimated the eventual cost) the price per intercept will be greatly reduced. This allows us, as I say, to intercept everything, and not merely that which is known to be bad.

We shall place everything in a highly-protected data fusion centre. It can then be transferred to wherever it is needed on a series of memory sticks.

Of course there will be more than adequate safeguards in place to protect the privacy of the public. There has been extensive consultation. The staff having access to the complete communications records of the entire nation will be checked against the Criminal Records Bureau to ensure they are beyond reproach. In the fullness of time they will all have ID cards, thus ensuring they have neither the intention nor the capability to undertake any form of inappropriate activity to do with data of any sort.

There is to be an independent oversight committee. I happen to know that will be first-rate because it is chaired by a former colleague of mine, a tremendous public servant utterly beyond reproach of any sort.

Loss of any of the memory sticks will be punishable by a severe reprimand.

There will be a complete audit trail of everything, which will be copied into my “ring of astral soup” – a sort of living minestrone of total knowledge, accessible at the touch of a button.

Those with nothing to hide will have nothing to fear from Intercept Modernisation. It’s a most exciting development, which will be an enormous help to us in achieving our target of cutting costs and eliminating delinquency and deviancy with half a generation.