(skynews)
The British Government will today announce legislation leading to a huge expansion of surveillance powers of communications on the internet and mobile phones.

The Communications and Data Bill will allow the police and security services to keep track of who is calling who on mobile phones, the email addresses of all correspondents, and the personal IDs of people chatting on social networking sites.

The bill is likely to provoke huge controversy and has already been attacked by privacy and civil liberty campaigners.

They have noted that its controversial publication comes on the day that much of the media is focussed on David Cameron's appearance at the Leveson Inquiry.

The new powers are seen by the Government, the police and the security services as essential to keep pace with innovations on the internet.

These have allowed organised criminals and terrorists to evade traditional methods of phone interception and monitoring.

Communications Service Providers will have to store communications data, possibly to specially fitted "black boxes" - funded by the taxpayer.

Mobile phone operators will also be expected to provide the duration of calls, the time of day they were made and the location of the caller to police...
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