Politicians in Canada and Britain have recently undertaken separate but similar initiatives that seek to provide government with unfettered access to exhaustive records of individual’s Internet use.
The basics of the UK scheme, as detailed by RawStory.com:
The British government is in the process of developing a scheme whereby all phone companies and broadband internet providers will be required to store customer transaction data for a year and hand it over to security services upon request.
The databases would also include Facebook communications, Twitter posts — including direct messages between subscribers — and even communications between players in online video games.
And Canada’s, via BoingBoing.net:
Criticism of C-30, Canada’s proposed domestic spying law, has focused on the fact that the police could access certain kinds of ISP subscriber information without a warrant. But as Terry Milewski writes on the CBC, the bill also gives the government the power to appoint special inspectors who can monitor and copy all information that passes through an ISP, also without a warrant.
Online poker certainly sits at the intersection of a number of areas of potential government interest, including financial transactions, gambling income and online gambling regulation, to name just a few.
Bearing that in mind, it seems like no stretch of the imagination that the online poker habits of players from Canada and the UK will be tracked and monitored to some degree – possibly a substantial one – should these initiatives eventually pass into law.
Source:
RawStory.com
BoingBoing.net
