'Snooper's charter' to check texts and emails

· Hundreds of public bodies to access personal details
· Home Office measure driven by EU directive
Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone's personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals. Ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety. The Home Office admitted that the measure will mean companies have to store "a billion incidents of data exchange a day". As the measure is the result of an EU directive, the data will be made available to public investigators across Europe.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

The list of organizations that have access to personal information of this type in the UK includes the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. And when the UK’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was discussed in the British House of Lords in 2000, it emerged that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain is considered to be a public authority and that it uses “covert surveillance”.