Living In The UK? Sorry To Hear It!

The UK government plans to require ISPs and telcoms companies to maintain browsing and email history of UK residents for a period of 12 months and make the data available to police on request without a warrant.

 "The new powers would allow the police to seize details of the website and searches being made by people they wanted to investigate.

" Exactly how they expect the ISPs to provide search histories now that most Google searches use SSL isn't explained (and probably not even considered by those proposing the legislation).

 Similarly with Gmail and other email providers using SMTP TLS and IMAPS, much email is opaque to ISPs.

 Will this drive more use of VPNs and TOR?

This comes alongside news that UK police used powers granted to them by anti-terrorism laws to seize a journalist's laptop.