The UK government which has progressively increased the amount of monitoring of its citizens has defending an unworkable plan to scan every social networking site in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Privacy campaigners expressed alarm today over government plans to monitor all conversations on social networking sites in an attempt to crackdown on terror.

However the Home Office spokesman said that the government needed to look at Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter as well as internet calls on Skype. The move updates existing plans to store information about every telephone call, email, and internet visit made by anyone in the UK on a central database.

In all seriousness the Home Office said James Bond had “no way of knowing whether Osama bin Laden is chatting to Abu Hamza on Facebook. Or terrorists could be having a four-way chat on Skype.” True, but you have no idea that Osama is not fishing in the pool at Regents Park, but that does not mean you send a crack anti-terrorist squad down there to have a look.

The spokesman said the government was not interested in the contents of the communication, just who is logged on to that site and spoke to someone. It's the who, when and where, not the content unless it was a "high-profile case". Under the new proposals, the sites that host social networks could be required to hold data about who users correspond with for up to a year.

Fortunately what the government does not seem to realise that such a scheme is impossible and is unlikely to stop any terrorist from doing anything. Besides by the time they get the scheme remotely off the ground there will be a change of Government. Most of Britain has had a gutsful of monitoring, particularly when it has not lead to a reduction in crime or terrorism, just an increase in speeding ticket fines.