THE British government is due to announce legislation which will lead to a huge expansion of surveillance powers of communications on the internet and mobile phones.
The Communications and Data Bill will allow the police and security services to keep track of who is calling whom on mobile phones, the email addresses of all correspondents and the personal IDs of people chatting on social networking sites.
The bill is likely to provoke huge controversy and has already been attacked by privacy and civil liberty campaigners.
They have noted that its controversial publication comes on the day that much of the media is focused on David Cameron's appearance at the Levenson Inquiry.
The new powers are seen by the government, the police and the security services as essential to keep pace with innovations on the internet.
These have allowed organized criminals and terrorists to evade traditional methods of phone interception and monitoring.
Communications Service Providers will have to store communications data, and possibly to specially fitted "black boxes" - funded by the taxpayer.
Mobile phone operators will also be expected to provide the duration of calls, the time of day they were made and the location of the caller to police.
No warrant would be required for these surveillance operations, which would need to be authorised by a "senior officer," government sources said.
"There would have to be a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to trigger this sort of data collection," an official said.
A warrant, issued by the Home Secretary, would be needed to access the content of communications.
Officials said that judicial oversight of surveillance was not possible because "there simply aren't enough magistrates."
"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear," said one.
Civil liberties campaigners and many lawmakers are uncomfortable with the expanded powers.
But Gary Beautridge, assistant chief constable of Kent and Essex police and director of the force's serious crime unit, said that criminals were rapidly opening the technology gap with police.
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