From March, the UK government has instated a law that commits all internet providers to keep information about every single email send by their customers. Several human rights groups have already declared they disagree with this law. The worry is what will be next in controlling our lives.
The data that will be harvested are the details on the email sent, which does not include the content. The government insists this data is vital for crime and terror inquiries.
The human rights organisation 'Liberty' does not trust any government or organisation with so much sensitive information.
This law was already passed for telephone conversations some years ago. The telephone companies already had all this data for billing reasons but nowadays the governments gets to look at them as well. With the mailing data combined this could mean anyone could be traced 24 hrs a day, so says The Earl of Northesk
Apart from the conflict with the human rights, this will mean a great deal of money must be spend to set up the system and keeping it running. Money that could be spend on more usefull reasons according to the several organisations.

Reaction:
I really agree with the statement that the human rights organistations made. If we let the governments go through with this, where will it end? Piece by piece a system is build which will be able to track us down to the meter for 24 hrs a day. Once such systems will be activated it's hard to go back and with that said we lose our privacy once chunk at a time. It's rediculous that these measures are taken without real and direct approval of the civilians, because it involves every one of them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7819230.stm