The spirit of Big Brother past

The Home Office is considering a proposal that will enable the security forces to access communications data from all the emails and faxes you send and the phone calls you make and the websites you visit, going back seven years.

Clearly, this has some major civil liberties implications. On a day when Privacy International is giving out its Big Brother 'awards' to the perpetrators of the past year's major privacy infringements, the timing of this news could hardly be more ironic. Jack Straw is almost guaranteed to pick up a gong at tonight's ceremony. And when his department is seriously considering this proposal, it's hard to argue he doesn't deserve one.

But even disregarding this issue, the proposal, which is backed by MI5, MI6 and the country's most senior police officers, is fundamentally flawed.

The key issue is cost. The document claims the technology required will cost £3m to set up and £9m a year to run. Even if you reversed those figures (which would be closer to the truth) the sums still don't add up.

The burden placed on ISPs was one of the major stumbling blocks with the RIP Bill, and yet there's no mention of this in the document.

So given that this is going to cost a lot - a lot more than the authors of this proposal seem to think - you have to ask just how effective such a use of tax payers' money would be.

The answer? Not very. Sure, there is a growing problem with cybercrime. Sure, there are people out there using the net for illegal purposes. But demanding that the details of every communication made by every UK citizen be retained for seven years is madness.

It's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It would be more efficient and arguably just as effective for the security forces to deal with cybercrime in the way they do other crimes - find evidence of transgression first and then start investigating. There is little justification for spending millions to make sure this data is available 'just in case'.

And on a night when the ghost of Big Brother will be invoked, it rather sinisterly smacks of a regime that treats its citizens as guilty until proven innocent.