Big brother is watching you!

The government is now looking into monitoring social networking sites, with a view to using the information gathered to tackle crime gangs and terrorists.

Critics are attacking the idea on the basis that tracking the sensitive personal information stored on social networking sites amounts to an infringement of privacy. Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake said the plans constituted the ‘most expensive snooper’s charter in history’.

This is the latest of a series of news stories about privacy issues with sites such as Facebook. The site ran into trouble in February, when the terms were changed, explaining that Facebook would store personal information, including photographs and messages of users, even when they had unsubscribed from the site.

As a result of an onslaught of negative feedback, along with a heated media debate about the ownership of user generated content, the terms were subsequently changed back again.