It’s occured to me that this Government has already used Anti-Terror police to arrest and detain an Opposition MP in the pursuit of whistleblowers.

Now they have the formal, legal means to discover exactly who’s been sending emails to whom – assuming they can get a warrant. 

As an aside, this makes the BBC’s top technology story (which of course means no-one but nerds will ever see it), while the Italian quake disaster will be dominating the new agenda for the next week. 

Quote,

The plans were drawn up in the wake of the London bombings in 2005.

Brilliant. And there’s more:

Without communications data resolving crimes such as the Rhys Jones murder would be very difficult if not impossible.

Ah, it’s all the classics.

Meanwhile, the Social Democratic Paradise that is Sweden is ignoring this directive, and the Germans are going to fight it in the courts. Getting this one through the EU was a masterstroke, I must say. Apparently it was a ‘commercial’ matter rather than a ‘policing’ matter, so technically it didn’t require the vote to be unanimous in order to be mandatory for all EU countries. 

Brown, Chancellor of the World. Hmm. Can think of another famous Chancellor who wanted that title.