British Government Eavesdropping Plans Draw Protest LONDON - British lawmakers and rights activists joined a chorus of protest Monday against reported plans by the government to give the intelligence and security services the ability to monitor the phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Internet use of every person in the country. The Home Office said the measures were vital to provide police and security services with "communications data to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public." Under the proposal, made public in The Sunday Times of London, a law to be introduced later this year would allow the authorities to order Internet companies to install hardware enabling the government's monitoring agency, known by its initials, GCHQ, to examine individual communications without a warrant. A similar effort to enhance the authorities" powers was made by the previous Labour government in 2006, but it was abandoned after ferocious opposition from groups including the two parties - the dominant Conservatives and the smaller Liberal Democrats - which now form the coalition government. Currently, government eavesdroppers need a warrant to monitor specific communications. But the new system would permit the authorities to track communications data such as "time, duration and dialing numbers of a phone call or an e-mail address," the Home Office said in a statement. "It does not include the content of any phone call or e-mail and it is not the intention of the government to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications," the statement said. However, opponents, such as Conservative lawmaker David Davis, said the measures would give the authorities far greater powers to intrude into areas that have traditionally been private. It is not focusing on terrorists or criminals. It is absolutely everybody. Historically, governments have been kept out of our private lives," Mr. Davis said. "Our freedom and privacy has been protected by using the courts, by saying "if you want to intercept, if you want to look at something, fine, if it is a terrorist or a criminal go and ask a magistrate and you'll get your approval." You shouldn't go beyond that in a decent, civilized society but that is what is being proposed. "This is an unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary innocent people in vast numbers," he said. The authorities argue that the new measures are designed to keep pace with rapidly changing communications technology. But opponents worry that, once gathered, information about personal communications - where they were made, with whom, for how long and with what frequency - might not be secure. "The problem we have hade in the past is this information has been leaked, lost, stolen," said Malcolm Bruce, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker. I think there would be very, very real concerns that it could be open to all kinds of abuse. "We have had a situation where police have been selling information to the media," he said, referring to testimony at a judicial inquiry into media ethics and practices. "I think we are in a very, very dangerous situation if too much information is being passed around unnecessarily," he said, according to the Press Association news agency. GCHQ stands for Government Communications Headquarters, which is run in close collaboration with the National Security Agency in the United States. It is one of three British intelligence agencies, along with the domestic MI5 security unit and the overseas MI6 secret intelligence service. Its operations are conducted mainly from its headquarters near the spa town of Cheltenham, where most of its 5,500 staff members work, according to its Web site. Information gathered by GCHQ has played a major part in the security service's efforts to foil purported terrorist plots since the July 7, 2005, London bombings. In February, electronic surveillance was cited as a significant weapon deployed by the authorities to foil a conspiracy inspired by Al Qaeda to place a bomb in the toilets of the London Stock Exchange, with the hope that the multistory building would catch fire. At the time, Alexander Carlile, a member of the House of Lords and formerly the government's independent reviewer of counterterrorism legislation, said the monitoring had been "an excellent example of the surveillance and interception capabilities of British intelligence, as good as and probably better than any other country in the world." British officials have taken to warning that London will be a target when it hosts the 2012 Olympics this summer, strengthening the case for enhanced powers to intercept communications. But the proposed new legislation has recalled that the coalition came into office promising to respect individual rights. Nick Pickles, director of a pro-privacy group called Big Brother Watch, said "no amount of scare-mongering can hide the fact the" planned law had been attacked by lawmakers in all major parties. "The government has offered no justification for what is unprecedented intrusion into our lives, nor explained why promises made about civil liberties are being junked," he said.