Government to Monitor Facebook

The BBC is reporting that the government proposes to keep a record of interactions on social networking sites like facebook. They claim they will not be looking at message content, just who is talking to who.

Apparantly this will help to tackle crime gangs and terrorists. Some friends of mine have expressed amazement at the idea that any terrorist or gangster worth his salt would ever post anything remotely compromising on something like facebook.

As it happens I recall reading an odd case in Private Eye a month or two back where some racist bigots got someone Asian sacked at work and then were stupid enough to boast about it in an easily accessible group on Facebook. So I think monitoring facebook in this way will help to catch some criminals.

But I think the sorts of cases it will help in aren't those involving organised criminal gangs or terrorists. Anyone involved at that level will know that their internet activity can easily be monitored. If you think that there is a loss of privacy in police having access to who you are interacting with (which I do) I'm doubtful that you can point to 'the war on terror' as a justification. Does the potential for dealing with less serious criminality justify police monitoring these sites?