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The USA and Europe are both pushing hard to have all mobile-phone and internet communications logged and retained for extended periods -- all in the name of the war against terror you understand.

Right now, you can walk into just about any consumer electronics store and pick up a pre-paid mobile phone for under $200. Pay cash, wear a bit of a disguise (to fool the store cameras) and there's virtually no way that this phone can be linked to you.

So long as you're not silly enough to make calls to third parties that can identify you (ie: stick to calling other anonymous pre-paid mobiles) then you can safely communicate with others in total anonymity.

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Of course, if you were under surveillance by authorities, they could build a pretty strong inventory of circumstantial evidence against you by comparing the cell-locations from which calls were made/received and your actual physical position at the time those calls were made -- but I'm sure that smart crims/terrorists would take care to exchange their anonymous phones on a regular basis, thus weakening that link.

When it comes to net-based communications, there are plenty of strong encryption programs available that will at least slow down, if not stop, law-enforcement officers in their tracks. Even if the encryption can be (eventually) broken, the use of an additional layer involving cryptic phrases and code-words would add an extra level of protection to such messages.

Which kind of leaves me wondering if there's any real value in all this planned eavesdropping and data-logging that governments seem keen to enforce on us.

Sure, if you know the phone number of a suspect and if that suspect is naive enough to exchange emails in plaintext then it'll work -- but I'm sure that any group capable of operating under the radar long enough to launch attacks like those of 9/11 or last seek's blasts in London is too smart for that.

In the meantime we have to ask what price we, the public are paying for such measures.

Do we not have the right to expect that our calls and other communications remain free from the prying eyes and ears of authorities?

Or is the concept of privacy an outdated 20th-century construct that will soon be nothing but a vague memory or a chapter in the history books?

Will the knowledge that everything you say and write using modern communications technology may be logged and stored affect the way you TXT, email and say on your mobile?

Should anonymous pre-paid mobile phones be banned in the name of national security?

Should the use of strong encryption be banned in the name of national security?

Are some countries on the verge of going too far in the war against terror?

And before you suggest that internet data-logging is just a brain-phart of the European and US administrations -- let's not forget that it *will* affect you if you exchange emails with people in those countries.

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