We can't assume the good intentions of future (or current) governments. Lawmakers should consider how a power might be abused, especially when it comes to civil liberties or giving ministers statutory powers (enabling acts). Then if it absolutely must go ahead, it should have a sunset clause, requiring a vote in parliament every five years for its continued existence.
There are immense practical difficulties with these plans. Real-time access to all of this data is an immense technological challenge. There will be monumental data storage, bandwidth, and processing requirements. It will be a huge challenge to keep up-to-date (if people start using a new social network for example, traffic to and from the servers for that site will need to be understood by the snooping system). This is a huge undertaking, and will lead to the intelligence services demanding more and more resources to make the most of their shiny new toy.
It will be hard enough to keep up with normal uses of the Internet. It will not have a chance of dealing with internet traffic which uses networks of proxies (outside the UK), such as "Tor", and/or uses encryption and steganography.
It will be expensive. Either it will have to be paid for out of taxation, or ISPs and telecoms companies will pass the costs on to customers, but one way or another I think it will be misdirecting economic resources, and will be yet another drag on those of us just trying to do productive things to earn money to support our families, despite high taxes, high costs of property, and the myriad other problems we face.
You can always make an argument that new powers will stop nasty things happening, but what we're after is a balance between state power and privacy, and a proper sensible debate about that. So to hear the home secretary suggesting that it will catch paedophiles and terrorists is galling, I hoped such tired arguments and populist simplicity was only a thing of the last Labour government.
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