Building the new Jerusalem

The Guardian has an editorial on the Home Secretary's proposed database of every communication, including all phone calls, text messages and internet visits:

If you believe it is reasonable for the state to maintain a permanent database, holding details about everyone's communications; if you believe that the state has a good record of safeguarding individual databases on benefits, health and the military; and if you are confident that Britain's anti-terrorist laws will never be used for other purposes, then you will support Ms Smith's planned bill. If, on the other hand, you agree with articles four, eight and nine of the European convention on human rights, or with the US fourth amendment, or even if you simply think that Britain's creeping surveillance society has got to be reined in before it is too late, then you will respond to Sir Ken's warning and insist that, as with 42-day detention without trial, this new degradation of our freedoms is one that parliament must never allow to pass. As the prime minister so succinctly put it: which side are you on?

There is a third point of view - that of practicality. There are some 70 million mobile phones in the UK. If you assume that, on average, each is used twice a day (once for a text message, once for voice communication) then each week will add about a billion items to the database. (And that is before you add in all those websites visited on the internet, all the e-mails, or the telephone calls made from landlines.) Accordingly, after the first year, at an absolute minimum, there will be more than 50 billion separate entries. Or possibly three times as many. Do the tools exist to store, maintain or search such an enormous database?