The snoopers’ error

Eeek! The snooper’s charter is back from the dead! And still, for some reason, its advocates don’t seem able to grasp that the objections stem not from what they want to do, but from the manner in which they wish to do it.

It’s not about your web history, they say, or your browsing habits or anything like that. Rather, again and again, they use the analogy of telephones. The idea is that the law currently facilitates monitoring when terrorists or criminals ring each other, but not when they Skype each other or send emails. And, as Theresa May keeps telling us, all they want to do is bring the latter into line.

I believe her. But internet communications traffic is not distinct from other internet traffic. If you want to record some of it, you’ve got to record all of it. So if you want to stick with this telephone analogy, what this entails is not just the equivalent of recording details of whom you call, but something more like the equivalent of recording absolutely everything you ever do in any room of your house that has a telephone in it.