Brussels criticizes UK on privacy

"I therefore call on the UK authorities to change their national laws to ensure that British citizens fully benefit from the safeguards set out in EU law concerning confidentiality of electronic communications," said the EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding according to a BBC report.

This follows a European Commission report concluding that the British government should have done more to guarantee online privacy when trials of the controversial ad-serving system Phorm were carried out in 2006.

Brussels said this showed that UK laws, particularly The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, did not do enough to protect data about the e-mails and web browsing habits of citizens. More...

This story reminded me: we had someone take a look at our software and want to 'mine' the content so that if people wrote about 'divorce' they'd be served an ad for divorce-help products. We feel that's an invasion of privacy and won't do it.