UK plans to force UK ISPs to store email for a year have been blasted by critics as a waste of money and an attack on civil liberties.

Human rights group Liberty says it is worried what will happen next. The Home Office said it needs to read the three billion British emails sent each day to protect Brits from terrorists. 

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty , said ISPs already kept the information on a voluntary basis but she is worried that the government is going to stick all the information on a central data base.

Dr Richard Clayton, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge's computer lab, said recording every e-mail which arrived addressed to you was a waste of cash.  More than 90% of that will be spam for starters.

ISPs are not that happy about it either, because they have always resisted becoming an unpaid police force for the government.

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