Well done Germany.

After an outcry and more than 35,000 complaints, see here, Germany's High Court has told police and secret services that they must stop storing email and telephone data and delete information already collected. The court said that data was not properly protected and that authorities were not sufficiently clear as to why they needed it. Germany will continue to comply with the EU's Data Retention Directive and keep records for six months BUT will not open data packets to record who Karl contacted on Facebook, for example, without gaining legal permission.

Here in the UK we've only heard of the STASI and only joke, so far, about our police state. YET you are paying over £2 billion for the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP), which plans that communications providers will maintain giant databases of everything YOU do online. They want providers to process the mass of data to link it to individuals, to make it easier for our authorities to access, without asking for a warrant. This will be general oversight and 'phishing' of your personal communications. This will be the equivalent of opening your letters.

Write to your MP and say that the terrorists have won if we are subjected to such Stasi-like surveillance.