ISPs to store e-mails and Web traffic details under new laws

Internet service providers are now obliged to store the details of every email sent in the UK, under an EU directive that came into force as UK law Tuesday.

Under the new law, likely to further anger privacy campaigners, ISPs must store for a year the details of emails as well as all internet sites visited. Many of the large ISPs already store such details voluntarily, but smaller providers often do not.

The data may be accessible to over 600 public bodies, such as the police and councils, it was previously reported. The government may even have to pay over £25 million to help ISPs set up the system, under which they will store the data for a year.

When news emerged in January that the directive would become UK law, the Home Office said the data was a vital tool for investigation and intelligence gathering. "It will allow investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time," a spokesperson said.

ISPs expressed frustration when news of the law emerged in January. Malcolm Hutty of ISP body LINX told the BBC it was "not clear" what steps the service providers will have to take to comply with the rules. The government had given indications that small ISPs would be exempt, he said, but firms were concerned over future lawsuits if they became bigger and had to store data.

The government is also considering outsourcing a planned database of its own, containing all the emails and calls made in the country, as well as allowing police officers to hack into citizens' PCs without a warrant.

A highly critical report last month, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, called for the communications database scheme to be "scrapped or substantially redesigned", saying it was "almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law".

Dr Richard Clayton, a security researcher at Cambridge University, said in an interview with the BBC in January that money tracking online communications could be better spent. "There are much better things to do to spend our billions on than snooping on everybody in the country just on the off-chance that they're a criminal," he said.