If you’re currently resident in the UK, expect your life to become a lot less private over the next few years. The British Government is considering plans to spy on every phone call, text, and email sent and received. All in the name of national security.

At the moment, life in the UK is relatively free. Okay, so we’re technically all subjects to the monarchy rather than being citizens, but in every other respect, life is good. But things are changing, as just like in the US after 9/11, national security is being used as an excuse to take away freedoms and tighten the authorities’ watch on ordinary people.

We’ve already seen the idea of a national identity card proposed and accepted, an idea that caused outrage amongst law-abiding citizens seeing their freedoms being taken away from them. And now, according to The Telegraph, comes news of a £12 billion eavesdropping programme that will see every phone call, text, and email monitored and stored for future reference.

If the proposals are accepted, a huge central database will be created to store each and every piece of communication that takes place involving UK residents. At the moment, MI5 has to obtain special permission to intercept email and Internet communications, but this would all change, with GCHQ being able to monitor every single thing live as it occurs.

The proposals are being pushed under the ever-present blanket of “the fight against terrorism”. But while no-one doubts the importance of being able to stop terrorist attacks and capturing the people behind such atrocities, civil liberties surely shouldn’t just be ignored as a result.

There is also the question of how long and how safely this information will be stored. There has been numerous incidences of data being mislaid or stolen over the past few years, and if that were to happen in this case, the results could be terrible.

Then there’s the cost, which at $12 billion is much more than the already proposed ID card system. I’d personally rather that money was spent on more important things such as education and healthcare. It shouldn’t be spent on enabling all of us to be watched 24 hours, 7 days a week.