Good article Suw, thanks. You might be interested in a little discussion going on a forum for people living in the SE1 area of London, related to Transport for London's installation of trial technology for congestion charge vehicle tracking (which, to be successful will need to be rolled out across the country probably). While data on vehicle movements doesn't fit within the current proposal for communications data retention, nobody should be in any doubt that the police would like this kind of data to be retained too. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/02/17/london_charge_zone_is_security/ and http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68429,00.html?tw=rss.TOP for information about alternative technologies, like RFID. Forum here: http://www.london-se1.co.uk/forum/read.php?1,39340 Other discussion here: http://www.spy.org.uk/cgi-bin/cclondon.pl More watching the watchmen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pickard/31221898/ although I'd agree it's a little more difficult to do with something as quasi-intangible as data retention.