Despite being rejected by Europe once, the UK government is again restarting its bid to have controversial new data retention laws approved. The move comes just days after London was bombed by terrorists:

Under the proposals, telecoms operators and Internet service providers would have to keep records of emails, telephone calls and text messages for between 12 months and three years. Law enforcement agencies would be able to see who had sent and received these communications, although the content of these communications would not be stored.

Home secretary Charles Clarke claims that the powers would help to establish links between individuals. "Telecommunications records, whether of telephones or of emails, which record what calls were made from what number to another number at what time are of important use for intelligence," said Clarke, according to reports.

Unsurprisingly the government has already used the attack on London as political capital for their proposals by attempting to highlight their benefit in the war on terror.

That would be fine if it was to only be applied at such extremes, yet the proposals typically go far beyond the bounds that they are promoted against. Not enough regulation and monitoring of who handles the data remains one among many concerns. More @ ZDNet.