Did you notice the Home Office "publishing" proposals yesterday? Well, The Guardian has the story.

Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone's personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals published yesterday.

Ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety.

The Home Office last night admitted that the measure will mean companies have to store "a billion incidents of data exchange a day". As the measure is the result of an EU directive, the data will be made available to public investigators across Europe.

The government are pretending this is a part of the "War" on terrorism.

The Home Office confirmed yesterday that access to personal internet and text data will also be available to all public bodies licensed under the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).

This means that hundreds of public bodies including local councils, health authorities, the Food Standards Agency, the Health and Safety Commission and even the education standards watchdog, Ofsted, will be able to require telecommunications companies to hand over the personal data.

The Liberal Democrats oppose this, and surprisingly, so do the Conservatives. So should you. Otherwise, we might as well be living in China.