'Black Boxes' to monitor all Internet and Phone Data

Internet and phone firms are preparing to install "black boxes" to monitor UK internet and phone traffic, and decode encrypted messages - including Facebook and GMail messages.

As part of the Home Office's communications data bill, internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone companies will be obliged to collect communications records and keep them for a year, writes Channel 4 News Technology Producer Geoff White.

It has now emerged that the Home Office has held meetings with the UK's largest ISPs and mobile network operators, and has given them information about the hardware which companies will have to use to monitor traffic flowing through their systems.

Dominic Raab, a Conservative MP who has criticised the bill, said: "The use of data mining and black boxes to monitor everyone's phone, email and web-based communications is a sobering thought that would give Britain the most intrusive surveillance regime in the west. But, many technical experts are raising equally serious doubts about its feasibility and vulnerability to hacking and other abuse."

A representative of the ISPs Association said: "We understand that government wants to move with the times, and we want to work with them on that. But this is a massive project. We'd rather they told us what they want to achieve, then sit down with us to work out how."

"Our other main concern with this is speed. If you're having to route all traffic through one box, it's going to cut down on connection speeds. 

The hardware can only look at a certain amount of traffic per second - if lots of streams from the BBC iPlayer are going through it, for example, how is it going to handle the traffic?"