That's the primary objective of the Internet and telecommunications and SM networks. Official spies are no longer the only ones and may be the least threatening but a handy stimulus for all-too-suspicious privacy and security products that have all-too-hackable holes and, ahem, faulty implementations to be blamed on the victims who shouldn't trust shit, so says those who rush shit to market. Damn, who is who in the race to cruelly exploit while waving a flag of warning. Somebody crankily said he is fed up with newly discovered security breaches and faults which turn out to be false alarms hiding deeper treacheries which turn out to be "harmless" design features which turn out to be fucked-up works in progress forced to market by economic and political ambitions. So what if a few thousands die, "compared to auto and cancer and suicide deaths those are insignificant." Apologists have it right. Jump to admit minor, formulaic, entertaining errors to divert attention from unspeakables. At 04:48 PM 12/8/2011 +0100, you wrote:

It's official. See page 17 of http://www.wikileaks.org/spyfiles/files/0/188_201106-ISS-ELAMAN3.pdf

"The primary objective in data retention is traffic analysis and mass surveillance. By analyzing the retained data governments can identify an individual's location, their associates and members of a group, such as political opponents." ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That's remarkably candid.

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE