Sunday July 10, 01:42 PM

Government wants email and phone data kept for intelligence
LONDON (Reuters) - Three days after the London bombings, Britain said on Sunday it would seek new EU rules to make telecoms companies store records for much longer showing who their customers are calling and emailing.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke said he would raise the issue on Wednesday at a meeting of European Union interior ministers which he has called in Brussels to discuss a joint response to the bombings by suspected Islamist militants.

"We believe that telecommunications records, whether of telephones or emails, which record what calls were made from what number to another number at what time, are of very important use for intelligence," Clarke told the BBC.

"I'm not talking now about the content of any call, but the fact that a call was made. And we believe it's important to get a retention of data, of what calls were made, for some considerable time."

Phone records are likely to play an important role in the probe into Thursday's attacks by suspected al Qaeda-linked bombers who killed more than 50 people aboard three London underground trains and a bus.

TIME AND LOCATION

Mobile phone data show not only what numbers are connected to each other via calls, voicemail and text messages, but also the time and the physical location of the parties within the cell network when a given conversation took place.