The £18m bill for snooping on email and phone calls

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 7 Aug 2008 at 07:42

British ISPs and telecommunications companies have received more than £18 million in Government grants over the past five years for the installation of surveillance equipment.

Telcos and ISPs are required to retain data on users' communications under a code of practice agreed by Parliament in 2003.

They can apply for grants to cover the cost of installing such surveillance equipment under the 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act and the 2007 Data Retention Regulations.

Figures published on the UK crypto list by renowned privacy advocate Dr Richard Clayton show that in 2004 the Government made five such grants at a total cost of £84,582.

By 2007, that figure had spiralled to £8,346,495, with the average grant rising to more than £800,000. The total cost over the past five years is more than £18 million.

The costs look set to continue at roughly the same level this year, with more than £4 million of grants awarded up until July of this year.

"What you're seeing is much larger entities obtaining money for data retention," Clayton writes on the UK Crypto mailing list. "Note that this is in the run up to the time when the mobile companies and telcos had to move to retaining data for a year; whereas one might suspect that 2004 was all about tiny little ISPs."

The figures don't reveal which telcos or ISPs have benefited from the grants.