Big Brother really will be watching you

So, internet firms will have to store details of every website visited by UK citizens in the past 12 months under planned new surveillance laws.

Apparently such data would consist of a basic domain address and not a full browsing history of pages within that site or search terms entered.

For example, police could see that someone visited mikealmond.blogspot.co.uk

- but not the individual pages of brilliant prose that they viewed.

Comfortingly, the police and security services will have to get permission to access the content - and councils will be banned from trawling the records.

Home Secretary Theresa May insists the powers are needed to fight terrorism and promises tough safeguards. The government recently dropped plans to give the authorities full access to everyone's internet browsing history amid fears it would not get through Parliament.

It is also set to give judges the power to block spying operations authorised by the home secretary. At the moment the home secretary and other senior ministers sign warrants allowing the security services to hack the computers of suspected terrorists and criminals - more than 2,700 were signed last year.

Under the new system, it is thought that a panel of 10 or more judges will have to review the warrants and have the power to overrule ministers.

I’m in two minds about all this. On the one hand I hate the infringement of my liberties that this will usher in. Why should the Government have the right to see which websites I have visited? It’s none of their business.

Then, on the other hand, I want our country to be as safe and secure as possible and there can be no doubt that serious plots have been halted in their tracks thanks to the country’s official snoopers.

My biggest concern is the Government. By that I mean the following – this legislation may come into force when we have a fairly stable and sensible party in power but imagine the scenario if we had some fundamentalist, wacky people running the country. Where would the surveillance stop?

Finally, I have to ask what we, the people, thought would happen when the wonders of the worldwide web became available to us all. It was always clear that the internet would be used as much for bad as for good.

So I guess we have to accept that some “bad” is needed to keep us good.