Hi Peerless

Just to clear up a small transatlantic misunderstanding, when I said "tongue in cheek" it basically means "joke" or "said as a joke", not "insult". So I did not believe, or intend to imply, that you threw in an insult.

Moving on, although I cannot say whether MS has struck a deal on spying with the EU or any individual government within the EU but there is one thing I do know and that is most British governments has always wanted to hide information or to know everything the public is doing and thinking.

And to make things worse, the Home Office (similar to the US DHS) was conspiring with Phorm (a former secret spy and ad-ware planting company) to allow British Telecom (biggest ISP in the UK) to plant tracking ad-ware on their customers Internet communications, and so breaking EU law.

The last British (Labour) government at one stage wanted to pass a law forcing all UK, and some non-UK, ISPs to store a copy of all emails sent and received within the UK. However, that daft suggestion fell at the consultation stage, the government could not find anyone that supported this proposal out side of the sycophantic civil service.

The next daft suggestion, again proposed by the last government, was that all ISPs must keep a log of all telecommunications (telephone calls, emails, instant messages. any and all methods of electronic communications) for inspection by any organisation deemed to be in authority. This would have become law if a general election was not called at the time it was, even though there was organised opposition, both political and otherwise, against this invasive proposal.

The current (Con/LibDem) government is, at the moment, more interested in drastically cutting the UK's economic deficit rather than spying on it's citizens.

You know, all western governments have been looking for ways and excuses to spy on their citizens that their populace will accept. And in some cases 9/11 has given them or has been used as an excuse to do just that.

I believe that western governments do not need to spy on all of it's citizens in order to keep tabs on terrorist because they already have the necessary laws in place. I think that they want to spy on us so that they can turn our thoughts and feelings into their own political gain.



UK Bob