NetCurrents (fka NTCS)

[PappaJohn]

London MI5 to monitor the internet.

Somebody send them a NetCurrents sales brochure.

http://www.mmedium.com/cgi-bin/nouvelles.cgi?Id=3576

Translation to English (http://babelfish.altavista.com/) alters a couple words, but you get the drift.

[em]"Great Britain: the MI5 sets up a station control room of the Internet
London (May 1 2000) - (AFP) the service of against espionage of the MI5 prepares the installation of a station control room of all the traffic of electronic mail received and sent in Great Britain, said yesterday Sunday Times.

The center, which will represent a cost of 25 million books (57 millionß CA), will be ready to function within one year with the headquarters of the MI5 in London, according to the newspaper which specifies that the service against espionage will need an agreement with the ministry for the Interior to launch the operation.

According to Sunday Times, the British government will require providers of access such as America Online to install physical links with the computers of the MI5 to allow a follow-up of the traffic.

Sources of the ministry for the Interior quoted by the newspaper stress that this project is necessary to face the growing use of the Internet by the networks of terrorists and international criminals.

The British government already has a right of listening on the lines connecting the computers between them, and this project of the MI5 would provide to against espionage the theoretical technical possiblity to supervise the whole of the communications, although the fulgurating growth of the Internet makes virtually impossible a complete monitoring.

Sunday Times gives a report on the foreseeable reactions of the organizations of defense of civil freedoms in front of this project. " This center will give to the government the possibility of following each site of the fabric visited by somebody, without mandate, thus giving rise to a culture of suspicion by association ", comments Caspar Bowden, director of the Foundation for the Search of the policy of information, quoted by the newspaper."[/em]