I blinked twice and made certain the dateline wasn’t the first of this month. It’s not. Christopher Null, a Yahoo columnist, reports on a horrendous new invasion of privacy by the EU:

In a move that even the most nonchalant of privacy advocates is crying foul over, the UK has put into effect a European Union directive which mandates the archival of information regarding virtually all internet traffic for the next 12 months. The program formally goes into effect today.

The data retention rules require the archival of all email traffic (the identities of the sender and receiver, but not the contents of the messages), records of VOIP telephone calls (traditional phone calls are already monitored), and information about every website visited by any computer user in the country. The rules are being pushed down “across the board to even the smallest company,” as every ISP large or small will be required to collect and store the data. That data will then be accessible — to fight “crime and terrorism,” of course — by “hundreds of public bodies” to investigate whatever crimes they see fit.

The Telegraph.co.uk has more details.

[Thanks to David Klaus, who says “insert George Carlin’s seven deadly words here.”]