'Stupid' snooping plan slammed by former MI5 agent

Government proposals that would allow security forces to monitor and store all electronic data over a seven-year period have been labelled as 'stupid' and 'impractical' by leading privacy advocates.

In this week's News in View, opponents to the plan were outspoken in their disapproval. Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, claimed the plan was the worst to come out of government in a long time. "The proposal must be the most extraordinarily stupid thing to come out of law enforcement agencies in years," he said. "It's the sort of thing where you wake up in the morning and you have a hangover and you're embarrassed about it. But obviously someone has decided to continue with it." Simon Moores, director of The Research Group, said the public could rest safe in the knowledge that the government is too incompetent to implement the proposal. "I think the government is not as efficient as we believe. The freedoms we've come to enjoy now may well be with us for time into the future," he said. Former MI5 agent David Shayler agreed with Moores that the government has a dismal track record in implementing technical projects, but warned there is still cause for concern. "One of the things I've noticed from working in the intelligence services is that half of these technical things aren't capable of doing what they're supposed to do. But there's no shortage of the will to do this kind of thing, which is worrying," he said. Roland Perry, CEO of ISP Linx, dismissed the proposal, claiming the government could not administer it on the allocated budget of £9m a year. "It's difficult to see how it will work on a practical level. I don't think you'll find anything particularly intrusive put in for that amount of cash," he said.