"Orwellian" UK Govt. to monitor every phone call, email or website visit

London, Apr.25 (ANI): The Gordon Brown Government has revealed that it plans to monitor every phone call, email or website visit.

Plans for this exercise are to be unveiled next week, reports The Telegraph.

According to the paper, the proposals will give police and security services the power to snoop on every single communication made by the public with the data then likely to be stored in an enormous national database.

The precise content of calls and other communications would not be accessible but even text messages and visits to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter would be tracked.

The move branded "Orwellian" has alarmed civil liberty campaigners, and the country's data protection watchdog last night warned the proposals would be "unacceptable".

According to the paper, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will argue the powers are needed to target terrorists and serious criminals who are taking advantage of the increasing complex nature of communications to plot atrocities and crimes.

A consultation document on the plans, known in Whitehall as the Interception Modernisation Programme, is likely to put great emphasis on the threat facing Britain and warn the alternative to the powers would be a massive expansion of surveillance.

But that will fuel concerns among critics that the Government is using a climate of fear to expand the surveillance state.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, the country's data watchdog, told the Daily Telegraph: "I have no problem with the targeted surveillance of terrorist suspects.

The proposed powers will allow police and security services to monitor communication "traffic", which is who calls, texts, emails who, when and where but not what is said. (ANI)