Facebook-based privacy campaign to spam Wacky Jacqui

10 for effort, 0 for irony appreciation

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Government, 23rd January 2009 14:36 GMT

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More than 3,000 people have agreed to protest against the privacy threat from the government's forthcoming consultation on communications data... by joining a Facebook group.

Participants in "CC all your emails to Jacqui Smith Day" plan to bombard the Home Secretary's inbox with their daily trivia to register opposition to expansion of internet surveillance systems, currently being devised under the Interception Modernisation Programme.

"That way Jacqui Smith and the Home Office will be able to see how difficult it will be to get on with their actual work - keeping our country safe - when they're trying to monitor every harmless private thing we say and do," wrote the group's creator.

The date of the protest has yet to be decided.

The government has been in talks with communications providers since 2007 about the perceived threat to law enforcement posed by IP-based communications. It's known GCHQ's preferred solution is a massive centralised database containing details (who contacts whom, when, where and how) of every email, phone call, SMS and web browsing session.

If the irony (or perhaps appropriateness?) of protesting against the growth of monitoring and retention of communications data via a business whose raison d'être is the monitoring and retention of communications data isn't too much for you to bear, there's more here. ®

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