
Blair's gone so should his laws
Recall that this preemptive monitoring of everyone in advance of a warrant or probable cause was a Blair demand. He basically argued that it was how they caught the other suspected bomber in Italy (from his phone logs).
http://rfe.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/08/aec5d068-be7a-42fb-85af-842263639703.html
He had special leverage because of this claim. However this was not quite true, they caught him from his *current* phone position *after* a warrant had been issued. So his demand did not represent the full truth.
Blair also argued that it was already recorded information, and so it was not *more* invasive to insist it was recorded. But this is a nonsensical argument, if it was already done then the law was not needed. It was also untrue, the extra information stored was the location data (the signal strength) and sim card to phone data. It added location tracking to everyone's data trail. So any little sh*t like me in telecoms can pull up details of where you've been, who you called, who was also there at the same location, which phones you've used. Previously I could not do this.
Currently the UK police are equating having multiple SIM cards with being a terrorist, so they've totally lost reality at this point. The SIM to PHONE ID match gives them a database to mine for their paranoid nonsense which otherwise wouldn't exist.
http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/campaign_ct_2008.htm
Remember that creepiness in one EU country results in entries in the police information database which is shared with other police forces and cannot be viewed or challenged by the person affected. Dysfunctional enforcement policy spreads like a disease unless checked. It will not be confined to the UK.
The thing is, we have our privacy law, and that protects Europeans from overzealous enforcement, then we have the UK which is creepyville CCTV land. Does Europe want to become like the UK or do we enforce our privacy law.
Do we accept mass surveillance sans warrant or cause? Is Blair still in government? If his arguments stood the test of the UK, why was he forced out of power? The privacy right has been there for decades in it's current form and even centuries in other forms. Blair is gone.