The lady's for turning

We've taken the odd swipe at Jacqui Smith over the last few months, so it only seems fair to applaud her decision to scrap the Home Office's planned über-database of communications data.

The database would have collected data on all electronic correspondence, such as the time, date and length of communication (and, of course, who contacted whom).

Humble Jacqui said that she recognised the public's concerns that a giant database would be a further step toward a surveillance society. And, in a nice little turn of phrase, she said, "To be clear, there are absolutely no plans for a single store."

No longer any plans, Jacqui, no longer.

Of course the cynics will say that Labour couldn't possibly get away with ploughing hundreds of millions of pounds into a deeply un-popular government IT project in light of last week's austerity budget.

We couldn't possibly comment.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that ISPs are now responsible for intercepting and storing the data that crosses their networks. To this end, the Home Office have earmarked £2 billion to help ISPs to expand their storage capabilities.

Mobile and fixed line operators will be required to process and link the data together to build complete profiles of every UK internet user's online activity. Police and the intelligence services would then access the profiles, which will be stored for 12 months, on a case-by-case basis.

Don't be surprised if even this plan is quietly dropped by the Conservatives after the 2010 election.

A final point - John Reid, the frankly terrifying former Home Secretary, argues in an opinion piece today that communications data is vital to identifying serious criminals. In his short but predictably manipulative piece, he kicks off with a tear-jerker about a murdered 17 year old whose killers were brought to justice by communications data. This, he says, happened in 2007.

So you see, Reid shoots himself in the foot before he's reached the end of his first paragraph, by showing that police then already had adequate access to communications data.

He then comes up with a classic piece of patronising lip service: "Used in the right way, and subject to important safeguards, communications data can play a critical role in keeping us safe."

Presumably, these would be the safeguards that ensured only 36,989,300 pieces of personal information were lost by the government in 2008. As for using it in the right way, it's as if he hadn't heard of the scandal of local authorities using the RIPA legislation to spy on dog fouling and catchment areas.

If we really do need a giant central database, they'll need to do a lot better than this to convince the public.