And this will help....how?

Now, by this point I believe every reader here will know I have little time for the govenments IT policy here.

Bluntly, I believe that a legion of winged monkeys could do a better job.

Here's another example.

The first couple of paragraphs for those reading in interesting places:

The government is compiling a database to track and store the international travel records of millions of Britons.

Computerised records of all 250 million journeys made by individuals in and out of the UK each year will be kept for up to 10 years.

The government says the database is essential in the fight against crime, illegal immigration and terrorism.

But opposition MPs and privacy campaigners fear it is a significant step towards a surveillance society.

The intelligence centre will store names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit card details of travellers.

And what could be wrong with that? Well, let's see...

First, we've got the massive invasion of privacy issues. Why should the government know where I go on holiday? More to the point, what good will it do them? Of these 250-million records how many will actually be terrorists or criminals?

On the other hand, if the plan was to run the name of every traveler against a list of known wanted people and then destroyed - I'd be happier. But that's not what they want to do. They want to know everywhere I've been in the last 10 years.

Then there's the usefulness of the information. Let's suppose...we're looking for a terrorist we know trained in a terrorist training camp in Canada. How useful is that information? None at all. Every year millions of trips will be from or to Canada.

The sheer volume of junk information makes this sort of exercise damn near useless. Even then, what if they traveled to Canada (ok, Palestine is more likely) via some harmless third party? Or even the 4th, 5th or 17th harmless country? Or booked a cruise and spent 6 months traveling around the world to get there?

So not only should the government not be collecting this, once they do it'll be useless.

And why are they doing this. To fight crime - hold it, we can do that by just checking and deleting the names on a current list. Otherwise what would it catch? Crimes against the environment? Incitement to travel?

Terrorism isn't going to be hugely effected. After all, if you're going to blow yourself up in a suicide bombing knowing who's entered the country in the last xxx days isn't going to help much....

It'll help still less against home grown terrorists - who this won't spot.

Even against illegal immigration - if they arn't allowed in the country why are they getting past the airport??

Here I was under the impression that the way to get into the UK was via a container or in the back of a lorry. Not first class on a 747.

Just another waste of money...